Dateline Originals - Motive for Murder - Ep. 2: Was it Love?

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Investigators learn more about the men in Gelareh’s life.This episode was originally published on May 7, 2020. 

16 miles. Continue straight. Okay, now. Ready? Mm-hmm. Stay in the right two lanes. Yes, I will. We're in Carmine, Texas here. Small town. What do you see?

It's pretty green here. I see a lot of little houses along a road that probably has gotten bigger and bigger as time went by. Over the years, we at Dateline have gone all over America to report on stories. The murder of Galeray Bagherzadeh brought us to Texas. You inevitably spend a lot of time driving here across some wide open spaces. On this day, I had some company on the long trip. Podcast producer Mary Knopf was in the passenger seat with her microphone. We were headed to speak with some of Galleray's loved ones and see what they had to say about the case.

And we got to talking about the hardest part of my job. What was the learning curve for you with talking to people that have undergone such extreme tragedy? Well, you've got to remember, local news, where I began, is very good training for talking to people who've gone through something terrible. I remember on a weekend thinking to myself, man, that was an emotionally very draining week. Because on Monday, I was talking to a family who had lost family members in a fire. And on Tuesday, I was talking to someone who had lost someone to murder. So local news is definitely pretty good training for how to speak with people who've undergone a terrible loss. And on Dateline, you know, the advantage that we have is that we're not just getting one quick soundbite from these families.

It's one of the reasons that families agree to do this, because in a lot of cases, it's the only time that that person's story is going to be told. And it's going to be told at length. There's some depth to the coverage. Stories about lives lost and those left behind to tell them. On this drive, that brought me back to Gelleray's murder. In the last episode, police arrived at the crime scene.

In this episode, we'll dig into the evidence they found there. In the real world, homicide investigations usually aren't like the ones you see on TV dramas. They are not wrapped up in an hour. And I'll be honest, for a long time, there were no answers to be found in the murder of Galeray Bagherzadeh. Investigators did get there eventually. As with every good mystery,

the culprit in this crime was nearby, lurking in the shadows. One small slip, and they'd be out in the open. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and you're listening to Motive for Murder, the latest podcast from Dateline. Homicide detective Richard Bolton began investigating Gallaret's murder from the moment he was on the scene. You know, there's a car, and it has ran into a garage door. Galleray had been shot through the passenger side window of her car.

Inside, Bolton could see her body slumped over toward the right side of the vehicle. We think she had her hand on the steering wheel, and that bullet gra her arm right here and then that's probably the first shot and then the second shot is the one that took her life. Was she shot in the head? Yes, sir. What kind of gun killed Gelleray? According to our firearms analysis, it was a.38 caliber. Pretty common. Yes, sir. Detective Bolton and his team survey the rest of the scene and collect as much evidence as they can, which ends up being not much. Her cell phone, her purse, her wallet, all that stuff of Gallaret's was still there.

All there. So? No robbery. Obviously no sexual assault. No sexual assault. So what's going on here? Yeah. I mean, at that point in time,

we really don't know. So they keep digging. One theory mentioned in the news had to do with Gelleray's big voice and how vocal she was about democracy and freedom in Iran. Gelleray's death had made national headlines, bringing a lot of attention to her story. CNN covered the unsolved murder. Meantime, police in Texas are upping the ante as they search for answers in the killing of an Iranian student who was found shot in her car in January. And Gelleray's parents worried about her speaking out

against the Iranian government. Her father, Ebrahim, said he talked with her about her safety. But he says she just gave him a very galore answer. She wasn't worried? No. Detective Bolton said police also wanted to see whether the Iranian government could have been involved in her death. Early on in our investigation, we reached out to the FBI. We even met with an FBI retired agent who was probably an expert in like Middle East affairs and what have you,

to try to determine if this could be something politically done, you know, that she was so active in women's rights and what have you, if somebody might have harmed her. Her friend Kathy Soltani says few in their group of protesters were more visible or more active than Gallaret. Still, she had a hard time imagining that international politics had anything to do with the murder. They wouldn't waste their energy and time to come and do something like this. And if they had, they would make sure people know, the Iranian population all over the world knows that this is what they are going to do. They would take credit for it.

Right, Gilroy wasn't a big enough fish. No, none of us was. Next, Bolton's partner, Sergeant J.C. Padilla, starts piecing together what he can from crime scene photos. Here's Bolton again. We noticed that light was out. So Sergeant Padilla's going, man, you know, the guy could have, whoever it could have been, may have unscrewed that light where the light wouldn't have been shining on him. Maybe it was somebody waiting there.

They pull the light bulb for prints and... We found some prints on the car. They send those off to be checked. Bolton keeps looking for any sign of physical evidence. And then a tiny artifact with a lot of potential pops up. There was a cigarette butt on the ground back there. In a homicide investigation, a cigarette butt can tell you a lot. For starters, forensic techs might be able to pull DNA off of it. All of it is sent out to be tested, along with the bullets recovered at the scene. And then the waiting game begins. Bolton and his team are searching for any witness who might have seen something. They canvassed the homes around the area. I knocked on one door, and it's the gentleman lives upstairs,

and I forget his name now, but his bedroom faces down the drive toward that back exit drive with that gallery and whomever may have drove down. And he heard the gunshots, and then moments later, he saw either a light blue or silver Honda Accord or Toyota Camry fleeing the scene. An eyewitness to a fleeing car sounds helpful. Except... Well, how many light blue or silver Toyota Camrys

or Honda Accords drive around in Harris County, Texas. Thousands. You'd think someone would have seen or heard something. Anything. During our campus that night, a lot of people, most people, didn't hear anything. A few heard gunshots, and some called the cops, but no one saw the killer.

And then, just like on TV, the lab calls. Except, unlike on TV, all of that evidence is pretty much useless. The lab couldn't pull any prints off the light bulb. And the prints on the car? They were essentially friendly fire. When the officers, patrol officers, first got there, one of them was having to sit there. When they shut the engine off, the car started to roll back. So we found his prints on the trunk, you know, where he stopped the car from rolling back. There were other prints on the car, but those came from a mechanic, not the killer. And to paraphrase a famous thinker, sometimes a cigarette butt is just a cigarette butt. We processed it and it really didn't get us anything.

You know what I mean? Could have been rain, you know, anything. We didn't get no DNA off of it. Either of those bullets in good enough shape to match it to a gun eventually? The bullet probably would have been, but we never recovered a weapon. Which means there's nothing to match those bullets to. Frustrating?

A little. A wet cigarette butt, some useless prints, and neighbors who didn't see much of anything. Frankly, it was bleak. I asked Detective Bolton what struck him

when he first ducked under that yellow crime scene tape and approached the scene. He said it wasn't an image. It was a smell. And you can smell like, you know, burning tire, like spinning tires, like burnt rubber. The smell of Galleray's tires after her car hit the garage. The car was just sitting there and just spinning for a while after she was shot. So she had her foot on the gas when she was

shot? Well, she might have had her foot on the brake, but after getting shot, more likely it slipped off the brake pedal. And it just ran into the door and it just kept spinning. Detective Bolton and others would continue to pursue the case. But that image of wheels feverishly spinning in place and going nowhere,

well, that seemed a pretty good metaphor for what was happening at the time. As Mary and I drove the flat Texas roads, I thought about how slowly investigations can go. Some families never get the answers they're looking for. And even when they do, it's sometimes not enough. Say, listener or viewers want, viewers want closure. There's this dirty word called closure. People say, oh, I hope the family's able to get closure. Like what? The guy's locked up or he's on death row and so what? We're even? There isn't any such thing. It's nonsense. If I were going to write a book, it would be called The Myth

of Closure. People are not okay after that's over. I mean, better that the person get locked up. Better that other families don't have to go through what you went through. But closure? Ask anybody who's suffered that kind of loss. You know, there's a pretty good argument to be made that murder involving someone you know, someone you love, is something you never get over. You might be okay again. You might stop crying. You might be happy again. But that won't leave you. The criminal justice system is not some kind of time machine

that's going to take you back to a time before this murder happened. There isn't any closure. Closure isn't within reach, but a conviction can be. And that means detectives had to figure out why someone would have killed a young woman this way. The motive that might lead to the murderer. Gelleray's killer was calculating, careful. This was not a sloppy crime. And without a motive, this murderer would not be easy to catch. Careful. This was not a sloppy crime.

And without a motive, this murderer would not be easy to catch. And that was the thing. It wouldn't be clear for a long time which motive was at play. Love? Money? Pride? Police would start with number one on our list. Love. And that brought them back to the men in Gelleray's life.

After combing through Gelleray's murder scene that night, Detective Bolton returned to his office. To find out a motive for the crime, Bolton needed to understand the people involved. And at the top of the list was the guy who showed up at the crime scene. The guy who was the last person to speak with the victim. We started looking at Rabin. Rabin said he had rushed to Galleray's home after their phone call and was trying to find out what happened when police spotted him. One of the cops turned around and saw me talking to the neighbor.

And they grabbed me and put me in the back of a patrol car. So keep you from learning anything else. Exactly. I was there for hours and I got angry and I remember calling a friend and telling them you know I don't know what happened, but if you don't hear anything from me, like by tomorrow noon, look for me, because I sense something's wrong, and I didn't know. And that you're going to be blamed for it? Possibly, I don't know. Police wanted to know why he was on the scene that night, but also, what did he hear, and what did he hear? And what did he know?

I believe that I was the main suspect because I was on the phone with him. That wasn't the only reason police wanted to question Rabin. Rabin had history with Gallaret. He was a friend and her ex-boyfriend. That alone was enough to make him a person of interest. So Rabin had to do a lot of talking. I've been back and forth for over a month or so, you know,

to police station downtown. What were police asking you? Just about everything. They asked me to take a polygraph test. You did? I did, willingly. You didn't hire an attorney? No. Just an aside here, but please, if the police ever want to polygraph you, it's probably a good idea to speak with an attorney first. Okay, back to Rabin. I definitely did, yes.

And as for Rabin and Gallaret's romance, police know that can be tricky territory. Relationships ending. Relationships that don't go the way someone wants. Those are so often the breeding grounds for motive. So police wanted to know, how did things end? I think what happened was me and Gelleret dated for some time. And because of my job, I had to travel.

And we had a lot of similarities, you know, personality-wise and all that. And we had strong feelings, but we clashed so much. So we decided to stay friends. So you made the transition from boyfriend-girlfriend to being pals. Exactly. And that worked out? It worked out. That's a tricky moment for a lot of couples. Sometimes it works.

Sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes someone gets angry. Police asked you about all of this, I'm sure. Oh, yeah, they did. About whether there was any lingering anger that things hadn't worked out between you and Galleray? That was the main concern, yes. As you can probably tell, Rabin seems like a pretty polite guy. Forthcoming, even.

Investigators wanted to know if there were things about his relationship with Galleray that could have provided a motive. Things Rabin maybe wasn't talking about. Police wondered why he was at the scene so soon after her murder. Maybe he knew more than he was saying. And even though he'd been on the phone at the time of the shooting, Rabin didn't report hearing gunshots or screeching tires. And that was a little odd. I guess I was in denial. I didn't want to acknowledge the fact that she's dead.

Or maybe, police thought, he was hedging, taking time to come up with a believable story. I asked Detective Bolton about Rabin's behavior. He didn't know what had happened. No, he didn't know what.

It's like she said, oh, no, oh, no, is what, if I remember correctly, what he told us. And then he heard something, but, you know, he couldn't be definite, I think, that it was a gunshot. It was just loud, he said. You know, we did a lot of investigation with him. That included digging into his social media, where they saw something interesting. I posted a picture of some guns. My colleagues, they were hunting, and they had this table full of rifles

that they were cleaning after. You know, I'd never seen that many guns, you know, in front of me. So I took a picture and posted it on Facebook. This is Texas. But even so, those guns were a red flag. We went back and we met with him again over that. I mean, what did you see and what made you meet with him?

Like guns? Well, if he's got guns, let's see if he still has them. You know, maybe he's got a.38. You know, we can compare it. They had access to everything I can imagine in all my life. And police didn't find anything linking those guns to Galleray's death. Rabin remained a person of interest, but Bolton also looked at who else Galleray knew. A lot of people in Galleray's life. Yeah, she had a lot of friends, yeah.

We interviewed a bunch of people. If police had investigated Rabin, an ex-boyfriend, then Gelleray's current boyfriend, Corey Beavers, definitely needed to be looked at. We heard from Corey in the last episode. He said he and Gelleray were falling in love and spent every moment together for two months straight. Being the love interest certainly means police will ask some questions, but was there something else about Corey?

He was the last person to have actually seen Gelleray that night. The last known person to see her alive. And that was also a big red flag for investigators. Gelleray had been driving home from Corey's place when she was fatally shot. So Detective Bolton had to wonder if something had happened between them that night. Maybe she wanted to break up

or maybe they had a fight. Maybe she said something to set him off. Only Corey knows the answers. Our producer Ann Priceman talked with Corey for six years before he sat down for an interview with me. I get that, but yeah. Are we ready? We're good, Josh.

Tell me your name and spell it. Corey Beavers, C-O-R-Y-B-E-A-V-E-R-S. Corey told us what he remembered about the night Galleray was killed. She had come to my house. I had a big test the next day. He had to study for his test, but if you've learned anything about Galleray so far, you know if she wanted to see Corey, she was going to see Corey. I was studying, and she wasn't supposed to come over, and she did anyway, and she just came to the door, knocked on the door, and was like, surprise, and I was like, what are she did anyway. And she just came to the door, knocked on the door

and was like, surprise. And I was like, what are you doing here? And she's like, I could not stay away. Now, Corey and Gelleray were both serious students. That was part of why they liked each other so much. Corey said he found it difficult to turn down Gelleray's enthusiasm. It was infectious.

So that night he gave in and they hung out for a while before she headed out. Corey says one thought struck him as she left. And I told her like when she got home to text me and let me know that she made it home okay. Gelleray got into her car and then no text, no call, nothing. That evening was the last that I saw her. Corey said he didn't follow up because he wasn't too alarmed. Corey told us and the police. He had no idea his girlfriend was dead until he drove over to her house the day after the shooting.

When I first pulled up, there was a bunch of news crew in the alleyway. This reporter comes up to me and she taps on the glass and she's like, do you know anything about the girl that lived here? And I was like, yeah, that's where my girlfriend lives. And what are you thinking at that point? Oh, I don't know. Like just a million thoughts started racing through my head. She just told me, you need to go talk to the family.

And so I just jumped out of my car and knocked on the door. And her dad answered, he's like, who are you? And I was like, I'm Gelleray's boyfriend. And he's, I was like, what happened to her? And he's like, Geller is dead. And it's like, it sounds weird, but like, I didn't want to believe, like I was thinking maybe she was just in a car accident or something.

Not that like she was just gone. No matter how broken up he appeared, police could not immediately rule him in or out. What about Corey? Did you look at him? We did, yeah. Police did not just look at Corey.

They dug into other crimes that happened the night Gallaret was killed. Crimes that occurred near the murder scene. We look at calls for service that night in that area. There were several carjackings that took place. Could Galleray have been the victim of a violent carjacking? That almost made sense. We're thinking maybe this was the same group trying to steal another car.

Police quickly got to work following that lead. And the clock was ticking because finally there was some momentum. And then the next day at the, off of Martin Luther King down here, they found one of the vehicles that was stolen in one of the carjackings, you know, the night Geller was killed. Well, we had the gang task force over there in that area looking, you know, for this stolen car and what have you. Well, they found it, and they found a couple of suspects with it.

Well, they brought them in, you know, to us, and we interviewed those guys for several hours, and they said, no, man, that wasn't us. I said, well, how do you know? He says, did them people use a pistol or a long gun? And I said, well, tell me what y'all used. He said, man, we had a shotgun. He said, we robbed people with shotguns.

That felt like another dead end. The investigation also led police to a story about Gelleray's father. Ebrahim was involved in a lawsuit with his former employer, and that suit was putting a lot of money and a lot of people's reputations on the line. Investigators had been weighing love as a motive. You know, the boyfriends. But now they wondered, could it be money? Police wondered if that legal tug-of- war had put Galleray in danger. And that came up when they talked with

Corey. It was for quite a bit of money. And so I told him maybe they were out for some kind of revenge or something against her dad. But in the end, there was no evidence of foul play there either. Leeds were drying up quickly. The weeks ticked by, but the tips, they began to taper off. You talked to Yelary's family, did they want updates? We did talk to them, you know, on occasion more, you know, the direct family would be more with Ali, the son. Four months passed. Remember those families we were talking about? The ones who never get the answers they need?

Galleray's family was starting to feel like one of them. So knowing her killer was still free, they took action. Good afternoon. My name is J.C. Padilla. I'm a sergeant assigned to the Houston Police Department's Homicide Division. I'm joined by the victim's family and also my partner to my right, Detective Rick Bolton. The family offered what was, at the time, the largest Crimestoppers reward in the nation. We're here to announce that the reward for the information leading to the arrest of the person and or persons responsible for Gallery Bagherzadeh has been increased to $200,000. Maybe money could get people talking. Would that persuade someone, anyone to come forward and explain why Gelleray died that night?

So what was happening here? Was Gelleray's murder an act of complete randomness? Had she simply crossed paths with the wrong guy? Or was there something else going on? It turns out Gelleray's current boyfriend was not out to kill her. After some investigating, police used phone records to rule out Corey. But again, you know, cell phone records. I mean, he's at home on the phone.

I mean, I think one of the phone calls, he was on his phone with his brother and maybe even his mother that night, you know, after she had left. So Corey was cleared. He had an alibi. And Galleray's ex-boyfriend Rabin, technology exonerated him, too. At some point in time, you know, we were able to get cell phone records. Rabin was nowhere around. Phone records showed he wasn't anywhere near the crime scene.

And there was more. Gelleray's parents had a plan to find the person who murdered her. And so did police. We hope that this significant amount in the reward will help generate public support for the capture

of the person or persons that are responsible for taking the life of this young woman. And we're hoping that someone- $200,000 is a lot of money. And when Gelleray's brother got up to speak, he said all the family wanted in return was justice. Well, I want to say this is asking you to help us

to bring our family to closure. And it's been four months since my sister got sent to the street, mother, behind our home. And these past four months have been unimaginatively hard on all of us. It wasn't just the pain of losing that bright young life that was so difficult. It was the senselessness, the brutality, and the mystery. No motive, no reason behind any of it. Even a small piece of information,

it would help the investigators on this case. Just a small piece of information, anything. Richard Bolton and other cops were watching the phones. How many tips came in on Crimestoppers for that giant reward? I'll say 10 to 15, you know. 10 to 15 real legitimate tips that you would end up spending man hours checking out? Yep. And any of that go anywhere?

Nope. That press conference and the reward stoked a lot of people's hopes. But ultimately, it felt like a swing and a miss. Homicide cops don't like the term cold case because it suggests no one's working it anymore. So maybe Guillory's case wasn't cold, but it definitely wasn't generating any heat. Stephen King once wrote that murder is like potato chips. It's hard to stop with just one. And the corrosive nature of murder can sometimes lead a perpetrator to strike again. It was another shooting, another murder. This one in a different part of Houston.

The victim? Someone close to Galleray. And just so you know, homicide detectives don't believe in coincidences. On the next episode of our Dateline podcast, Motive for Murder. Around midnight, got knock on the door that no parent wants to get. Police. Right. We explore this second murder as police and family members ask the same question. what in God's name is going on in Houston?