Dateline Originals - Motive for Murder - Ep. 3: The Twin Connection

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

A second murder raises perplexing questions for investigators.This episode was originally published on May 14, 2020. 

November 2012. It's been 10 months since Gelare Bagherzade was murdered, and police have hit a wall. Her killer still walks free. Now it's late on a Monday afternoon. The sun is about to dip behind the office towers that make up the Houston skyline. And everything in this case will soon come into clearer focus. You're about to hear a 911 call.

A young woman is on the line. She's desperate. Her voice piercing. Stop screaming. I can't understand you. Oh, ma'am, my husband's been shot. Did he shoot himself or did somebody else shoot him? Stop screaming. I can't understand you. Did he shoot himself or did somebody else shoot him? No, no, I'm Felicia. I'm Felicia. I'm a phone nurse. I promise to be fine. Okay, what's your name?

My name is Nazreen Ersan. Nazreen. Nazreen. Nazreen. Nazreen. Nazreen. Spell it. Anna Venanti. Nazreen Ersan. The operator tries to talk Nazreen through CPR. It's too late. Her husband is dead. and then nezreen calls out to a higher power first responders arrive all right ma'am I have to hang up.

It turns out Nasreen has things to say that will get at the heart of the questions being asked. Things about love, things about money, and about pride. Soon she will tell a twisted story, as lengthy as it is improbable. Before that can happen, waiting police will have some questions for her. What did she see? And where has she been? I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and you're listening to Motive for Murder, the latest podcast from Dateline. Let's step back from this terrible scene for just a moment. You remember Corey Beavers. He was the guy in a new relationship with Gelleray when she was gunned down inside her car late one January night. Corey and Gelleray had just fallen for each other.

She was like one of the first people that I dated that I feel like you didn't have to change anything about yourself. She was totally happy with who I was. And so I was just really comfortable being with her. It was never like having to put on a face at all. And then suddenly she was gone. 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.

Now it's November, ten months later, and this second murder is about to hit Corey even harder. It's tough to imagine more than the loss of his girlfriend. Not a lot can hit harder than new young love cut short. Except this victim wasn't just someone Corey loved. It was the person closest to Corey on earth. Practically his own reflection. Because this victim is his identical twin brother, Cody Beavers. The twins' mother, Shirley, is first to receive the news. They told me they were homicide. Around midnight, sheriff's deputies pounding on her door wake her. It's one of those things where a million things go through your mind all at once, you know, and their voices just kind of fade away for a little while. Now it falls to Shirley to tell her surviving twin son.

I had to go tell Corey. So she gets in the car and drives straight to him. It was very hard. Because where he was and where I lived, that was a long drive at 1 in the morning. But I didn't want to call him on the phone. That drive takes an hour. Shirley does it in a daze. She's not sure she's at the right address even as she knocks on the door. It was about 1.30 in the morning, and I just kind of woke up and rolled over and saw that text message.

She said, I'm at your front door. Come open the door. I don't think I really even told him anything. She doesn't have to say much. He just knew something was wrong, of course, if mom shows up at 1.30 in the morning. Corey was Cody's younger brother by a total of two minutes. He says earlier that day, something had been nagging at him. I was going to school and I had a really big test and I was just like, I was out of it. It was like brain fog. And I remember like driving to school and I was like, what's wrong with you? Like, you need to get your head in the game because they were like high stakes tests.

If you failed them, then you were out of the program. I don't know. It was just really weird as far as when people talk about that twin to twin connection, that that happened that day. But yeah. The twin to twin connection. There's been a lot written and said about it. To Corey, it's unquestionably real. The psychic bond with his twin Cody.

Corey says he just knew something was very wrong with his brother. And so when his mom showed up on his doorstep in the dead of night, it was a sort of dreadful confirmation. And he's like, what's wrong? Something's wrong. Is it Cody? She just said somebody killed Cody. Well, he just did. In less than a year, Corey Beavers had lost his girlfriend and his brother. It was too horrible to be real,

too much to comprehend. Most people never know anybody that's been murdered. That's what I tell, yeah. Right. But to know two. In separate incidents. Right, exactly. Yeah, I mean, before this, I never knew somebody that even, I never even knew somebody that knew somebody that had been murdered, you know? And then it's one thing

if two people are murdered at one point and then it's another that like one person is murdered and then 10 months later, somebody else is murdered. And to be like stuck right in the middle of that. So think about that. These murders, could they be a coincidence? I've said it before, homicide detectives usually don't believe in that. And I have to say, I'm with them.

It seemed unthinkable that something did not connect these shootings. So then what could that be? Who'd want to kill Corey's girlfriend and then his brother? Let's unravel this a bit. Nasreen and Corey met when they were both studying at MD Anderson. And at first, Nasreen had been interested in Corey. Nasreen started sending me some text messages on Facebook. When I went back to school, I kind of decided, like, I was just going to school. I wasn't going to, like, date anybody. I just wanted to finish my degree.

And so I really wasn't interested. And then Corey played matchmaker and told Nasreen that his twin, Cody, was single. And I was like, well, hey, why don't you go talk to my brother? Because he looks just like me and he has a ton of free time. And that was it. And then they started dating. You send this reading in the direction of Cody, and what, instantly, she's all up in his Kool-Aid? Yeah. He would come with me to school, because I would go to school all day. He would ride with me to school, and even though he didn't have any classes, he'd stay up there all day just to see her on her breaks. And then when I would leave in the evenings, he'd come home with me.

But he would just hang out in the library, wait for her to get out of class, hang out with her for a little bit, and then go home. Cody was not a student at MD Anderson, but he basically spent his whole day there anyway, just waiting around to hang out with Nasreen. If Cody would come by, like in the middle of class and she would see him in the door, she'd just get up and walk out the door like in the middle of a lecture. And these are smaller classrooms.

There's like 20 people in the class. So it was pretty obvious. Yeah, it's clear that she's getting up and walking out. And that's because her boyfriend walked by. Right, right, yeah. If that isn't the definition of puppy love, then I don't know what is. It wasn't long after that that Nesreen introduced Corey to a friend of hers from school, Galleray.

Corey's intentions to just concentrate on studying? Well, all that changed after he met Galleray. She was a classmate of Nesreen's, and so she was walking out one day, and so Nisreen introduced the two of us. So then I told Nisreen, you know, don't go tell her this, because I knew she would. I was like, yeah, she's pretty cute. And then, so sure enough, she went and told her. And then she had a party, and then we started dating a couple days after that, yeah. And so a new little foursome was formed. Corey and Galleray, Cody and Nasreen, twin brothers dating two good friends.

Until Corey's girlfriend Galleray was murdered. Now his twin Cody had been as well. Corey Beavers found himself caught in the middle of two unspeakably dark crimes. Which meant that rumors involving Corey swirled. What if his twin's murder was a case of mistaken identity? What if the killer had actually intended to kill Corey, rather than his identical twin? In the beginning, I thought, what if they were after Corey?

That's Gelleret's friend again, Kathy Soltani. What if Gelleray and Corey were into something? I mean, we talked about it. And Cody gets killed by mistake. Yes, by mistake. Well, that theory didn't last long. Nothing emerged that would point to Corey being the intended target. And this time around, Corey was fed up with police.

His patience was wearing thin. Detectives hadn't arrested anyone for Galleray's murder. And from the first days, Corey had believed Houston PD detectives were not working the Galleray case hard enough. For Galleray's murder, I was really frustrated because I didn't feel like they were looking at me very hard. And I'm like, I'm the boyfriend. If you don't have any other suspect, you're supposed they were looking at me very hard. And I'm like, I'm the boyfriend. If you don't have any other suspect, you're supposed to be looking at the boyfriend. You were upset because you weren't under enough suspicion? Right. Well, because in my mind, it's like, if you're not looking at me, what are you going to do when you have the guy

that actually did it? Do you think he's going to tell you that he did it while you're interrogating him? So the fact that you didn't feel under sufficient suspicion made you feel like they weren't working very hard. Right, exactly, yeah. By the time his brother was murdered, Corey says he lost faith. That mystery was becoming harder to solve, not easier. He had little hope cops would be able to untangle this web. Now, on that first night after Cody's murder, caring for Nasreen was the priority. We had to go to the police station to pick up Nasreen because we were all that she had. It was a night infused with a sudden newfound fear. And then we didn't go back to my house to spend the night because...

Not safe. No. So we went to spend the night with some friends. Nisreen, who went from newlywed to widow in the space of a workday, stayed with her mother-in-law. Nisreen slept with me that night and just cried all night and called out for Cody. Houston, Texas is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. and the greater Houston area is gigantic, so not all homicides will be investigated by the Houston PD.

The murder of Cody Beavers fell under the jurisdiction of a different agency. James Ducey, I'm a sergeant with the Harris County Sheriff's Office. By this time, Cody's family was skeptical of law enforcement in general. For all the work the Houston PD did do running down Leeds and Galleray's case, it had not amounted to anything. And I've seen this happen before when a crime goes unsolved. The families left behind often become frustrated,

angry even, with the pace of an investigation. So to Corey, meeting Sergeant Doucet felt like a fresh start. Yeah, he seemed like somebody that we could depend on. I didn't feel like he was going to give up on this case. Doucet came across as familiar, and that restored some faith. Kind of a country boy, and he was going to get justice, yeah. Sergeant Doucet had his work cut out for him.

When he arrived at the crime scene the night of Cody's murder, evidence did not immediately point in any one direction. And the crime itself had taken place hours earlier. The scene had had time to settle. Based on what I saw, I knew it had been some time. And that's just from experience. What tips you off to that? Condition of the body, condition of the blood that's present,

and whether or not it's dry, and the appearance of the body, and sometimes you can tell by the odor. And that was all present this time. The blood was dry, and it was starting to smell. It was beginning to be, yes, sir. What story did Nazarene tell you about when she had last seen her husband and what was going on at that point? I learned that she had last seen him that morning, earlier in the morning, possibly around 5.30 in the morning, and that she had left for work at that time.

He would walk her to her car. It's still dark at that hour? Yes, sir. It was still dark. And he would walk her to her vehicle. They were parking at the front of the complex away from their building. And he would get in the vehicle with her. She would drive him back to the building. He would get out, go back upstairs. And then he was to text her. Did she get that text? She did not that day.

Did she try calling him? She did. No answer? No, sir. Nazreen said she was worried and texted her husband all day without an answer. Investigators checked her phone and confirmed that. By then, they'd placed the time of death as early morning, around the time Nasreen said she left for work. That time frame was supported by this. No one had heard a single gunshot, even though Cody had been

shot multiple times. Your department hadn't had any calls earlier in the day about shots being fired at that address? No. Because at that hour, most of the neighbors were likely asleep. They accounted for seven strikes on his body. Only before sunrise, it seems, could so much commotion go unnoticed. And inside, the emerging outlines of the case were grim. There was also a closet door that was partially open that was open just behind the front door. And the closet door being open makes you think, what, somebody was hiding in the closet, came out and shot him? It was just hard to tell at that point. However, it was very

possible, given what Sergeant Doucet would soon learn. Now, one thing that Nezreen described to us there at the scene is that when Cody would walk her down to her vehicle in the mornings, they had only been issued one apartment key, one key to that apartment. And they only lived there for a little over a month at that

point, so that was fairly new to them. But he would go down and walk her to her car. Well, he didn't lock the apartment. He would leave it unlocked because she had a key. And so that closet that I talked about being open, you know, there's something that this was unusual. So somebody's maybe observing their routine and goes into the apartment knowing it's unlocked while they're walking to her car and hides in the closet and waits for Cody to come back?

It's very possible. If this theory was correct, someone had taken the time to learn the couple's routine. But why? And what were they after? Anything about this robbery? It did not. There was, I mean, there was electronics that were present. There was a television that was still there.

Anything's possible at that point, but it didn't really just scream out as a robbery. Was someone watching the newlyweds? Just days before the murder, one neighbor told investigators about an unusual interaction with a stranger who'd been walking around the apartment complex. We also spoke with another witness that lived in the same complex, lived in the same building. This was on a Monday that this happened. And on the Friday before, someone had knocked on her door asking if she knew where Cody lived. You mean which apartment? Yes. That person

did not know Cody and told the person no. She talked to the person through the door and she only looked through the peephole at the individual. She did not get much of a look at that person. Description?

Dark complected, possibly Hispanic or Middle Eastern. It's possible that he was not clean-shaven. So, you know, we had that information. At that point, I requested for that witness to meet with a sketch artist, a police sketch artist. And so you get a sketch of what somebody looked like through a peephole? Correct. Well, that sure sounds like your killer stalking the victim. It does. And there was one final and rather unsettling detail, something that made this murder seem quite personal. Cody's wedding ring. In looking at photos of the scene, his wedding ring was actually found on his middle

finger. And I met with his wife and she confirmed that that's not where he wore it. He wore it on the same finger everybody else does. That's correct. Could it be a signal? Could it be a message? Very possible. Okay. Conceivable that the killer used a weapon that didn't eject any cartridges. But taking the time to move a wedding ring from ring finger to middle finger, that's somebody who's as interested in that as they are in killing the person. Which brings us back to Nasreen, the wife who discovered her new husband's body. The voice at the other end of that awful 911 call, questioning why God would have done this to her.

All of it raised questions for investigators. Was there another man in Nezrin's life? Someone who maybe resented her marriage to Cody? Was someone angry at Ne Nasreen for getting married? Or at Cody for marrying her? The business with the ring was something detectives had never seen before. And whatever the answer, someone was making a statement. Investigators needed to decode it.

That first night, Nasreen was beside herself. What condition is she in? Oh, she was obviously extremely upset, crying. It's what you would expect from someone that just lost someone they love. And then Duce saw something else. By the time you came into contact with Nazarene, she did have a gun. She was carrying a gun. Yes.

This wouldn't be the first wife who killed her husband and then later claimed to discover the body and be distraught. That's correct. I mean, obviously she was upset, had a lot of information to give, and the details that she was giving me, you know, led me to wonder about her. I mean, of course I was going to look at her and investigate her to either rule her out, or if she's part of it, then I would want to learn that as well. Is Nasreen a suspect at that point?

At that point, it was wide open. In other words? Anything was possible. Now, let me just say this. I understand that asking people to speak about the worst moments of their lives on camera, in front of the nation, can be tough for the people we're hoping to interview, and even sometimes for us. And I don't blame anyone who questions any of it. That's it. In all my years as a reporter, I've come to believe this.

When it comes to personal tragedy, the experience of talking about it sometimes provides meaning and understanding where there otherwise is none. I'm not going to use the word closure because, as you know, I hate that word. It suggests that survivors of violent loss can simply move on because the scales of justice are somehow even again. Gelleray's parents certainly haven't found closure because that isn't the real world. Often, survivors have to provide the meaning for themselves. And the young woman who's now at the center of this story,

Nasreen, she certainly hasn't put her loss behind her, and she also hasn't come around to our invitation to speak, yet. But we are hoping she does. My producer Anne says, ultimately, Nasreen will tell her own story better than we ever could. But we also want her to share the stories of the people she's lost. Like the friend she really cared about, the husband that she fell in love with, not just the painful, scary stuff, but the really, like, wonderful, positive memories. That's an argument I agree with.

It allows the victim of a crime to take control. Let's go back to the night Nasreen found her husband Cody shot dead to the minutes following her desperate 911 call. Sergeant Doucet was about to take her statement. He had no idea what he was about to hear. She said, Sergeant Doucet, I've got a lot to tell you if you'll listen to me. And I told her at that point that we could take as long as she needed to tell me what she needed to tell me. Sergeant Doucet knew he needed to get her back to the station to get all the details down as quickly as possible. She was obviously still

upset. She was tired. You know, we got her food and drink. Nazreen composed herself, and then she unspooled a terrible tale. You've already heard part of it back at the beginning of our first episode. Because Nasreen was that terrified woman who ran away. She climbed out her window, escaped from her house, ran through the Texas heat, and found a way to break free. Or so she thought. Next time on Motive for Murder,

the words that spill out of Nasreen will answer some questions, but they will also raise many more as detectives team up with the FBI to track down a killer who's been hiding in plain sight.