Dateline Originals - Motive for Murder - Ep. 4: Baggage

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

An escape from danger becomes the beginning of the nightmare.This episode was originally published on May 21, 2020. 

She arrived all alone. No luggage, but plenty of baggage. Remember the woman we told you about at the beginning of Episode 1? The one who was held against her will? The one who climbed through her bathroom window and ran away from that secluded Texas home, that was Nazreen. The day of her escape, she went to Shirley's house,

knocked on her door, and asked if she could come in. Because in that moment, Nazreen had nowhere else to go. So Nazreen comes and lives with you. She doesn't have any clothes, any... No. No clothes, no... No clothes. No underwear, no shoes, no makeup. No hairbrush, nothing.

I went and purchased a lot of that for her. Because she only had the clothes on her back. When Nazreen Ersan slipped out of her bathroom window that summer day in 2011, she didn't even pack a bag. She carried only her desperation, her hope, and her fear of what might happen if she stayed or if she had to return. That escape was so risky. Anything weighing her down like a change of clothes or even a hairbrush

was too much of a chance to take. What had Nazreen been through? And what was she running from? Or more accurately, who was she running from? I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Motive for Murder, a podcast from Dateline. You go back to your office and sit in those ring down. Again, maybe now that the initial shock's worn off, how's she doing and sort of how's she strike you? Is her demeanor changing at all? She was obviously still upset,

and we're getting more details about the situation with her family. When Sergeant James Ducey of the Harris County, Texas Sheriff's Office sat down to interview Nazreen, he was speaking with her as a potential suspect. Hours earlier, her husband, Cody Beavers, had been shot dead in their home. By now, I think most of you know, in a murder, any murder, the spouse is looked at first. And Nazreen? Well, she'd been the one to find her husband dead. She had a gun in her purse. The detective had all kinds of questions about

Nasreen, about her husband Cody, and about their relationship. But as Nasreen began talking, it wasn't Cody she wanted to discuss. It was her father. It was a long story. It was unbelievable the way she described her father. His name was Ali Ersan. He'd come to the U.S. from Jordan in the early 1980s and settled in Texas, where he raised his growing family. Nasreen was his fourth child out of 12. They lived outside of Houston in a sort of compound, three lots, a few structures beaten by the Texas sun. As a father, Ersan wasn't exactly the kind of dad who plays catch or takes you fishing. Nasreen described him as violent and abusive. She said her father required almost militaristic

order within the walls of their home. Nasreen said one of the only things that could get her out of the house was her education. She describes a life in which she essentially had been cooped up in her home until almost that moment when she went away to school. She went to public school for a short time there in Montgomery County. And she described she never got to wear makeup. And that she would go to school and she would see other girls her age wearing makeup, and she would actually borrow makeup from those friends that she would make, and that when she'd get home, her father would beat her because she was wearing makeup. You know, one situation is that the school bus driver had felt sorry for her and bought her her own makeup kit. And so she would keep that at school

and put it on when she'd get there and take it off before she came home. She described an instance where her father showed up at school one day by surprise, had them call her down to the office, and that's when he decided to take her out of school. And she got punished for that. Nazreen said that after her father pulled her out of middle school, the plan was that she'd be educated at home for the entirety of high school.

That didn't really happen. While she was required to spend most of her time in the house, Nasreen said, it wasn't to get an education. Instead, she cooked, she cleaned, she looked after the younger kids. The only education Nasreen had was about how bleak the rest of her life might be. Additionally, Ali Irsan expected all his children to be devout Muslims. He insisted they put his own interpretation of Islam before all else. And to Irsan, being a good Muslim son or daughter or wife

meant absolute submission to the whims of the man of the house. So Nasreen was obligated to do whatever he demanded, as long as she was under his roof. She described that, you know, all her siblings, you know, they were treated in similar fashion. He was very strict with them. It turned out she hadn't completely surrendered. Alone, Nesreen read books.

She studied. She educated herself. Her sister Nadia did as well. And then somehow their father allowed them to attend a local community college in Houston. There, Nasreen met Cody. Remember, his twin brother Corey introduced them. By that time, Nazreen had lived enough to be able to see into the future, at least to the point where she could tell with some

certainty that her relationship with Cody Beavers was going to be a big problem with her father. So Nazreen knew she had to keep her relationship with Cody a secret. Here's Cody's twin brother, Corey, again. We had heard stories about her dad, and I had seen, like, when they thought her dad had showed up at school before, how much they, like, they panicked. One night, we were judging a science fair, and he showed up there, it was probably like 7.30, just to make sure that the girls were really at school

and not, like, at the movies or something. Sometimes Nasreen's sister Nadia would warn her about their father and help her out. Sometimes Nadia wasn't really so much of an ally. Cody and Nasreen would run off and when Cody and Nasreen would run off, Nadia would try to go track her down and wonder where she's at. So the more that I diverted her attention from looking for them, then they had more free time together. That was nice of you. Yeah. So she and I, we became really good friends, but it was really just so that she would leave them alone because she would always threaten to go tell her father about their relationship. In fact, Nadia was her father's proclaimed favorite. And she may not have wanted to risk ruining that by helping Nasreen defy him.

Nasreen had tried to hide her relationship with Cody, and she'd been careful, but not careful enough. Her family became suspicious. They searched her room, found her phone, and saw that she'd been texting with Cody. It was over. Nasreen's father had proof she'd been dating Cody behind his back. That didn't go over well, and Nasreen's home became a kind of jail. Sergeant Doucet listened as Nesreen told him the story of those terrifying days. She was being held at the house. Nesreen's how old at this point?

At that point, she was 23, if I'm not mistaken. So she's an adult in the eyes of every state in the United States. Yes, sir. And she's being essentially kidnapped. I mean, held against her will in her parents' house. Not allowed to leave, yes. It was then that Nisreen decided she was not going to remain captive in her father's house.

She told Sergeant Doucet how she escaped. And she went into the bathroom and she said that she climbed out a window and then went to a neighbor's house and asked them to give her a ride. And the neighbor did. And that's when she went to the house in Spring. Where Cody was?

Yes, sir. So that night, Nasreen made a run for it and arrived at the home of Cody and Corey's mom, Shirley. She lived in Spring, Texas, a quiet, safe, middle-class suburb just north of Houston. If that feels or sounds like an escape from danger, think again. In fact, that was when the real nightmare began. We told you Nesreen fled her father's house with nothing. No belongings.

Only the clothes she was wearing. All she wanted in the world was to escape her father's grip and be with Cody. She was about to learn. There was no way her father was going to let her go. Sometime that night we got a phone call from a state trooper because they had the family had called the police and said they were concerned about her welfare and they wanted someone to go and check on her and make sure she was okay. I thought they were trying to find her so that they could basically drag her back home. Nasreen didn't want police to tell her family where she was. And Nasreen was terrified talking to the police officer. She was all just curled up in the chair,

shaking, talking to the police officer on the phone. And saying, I'm where I want to be. I'm fine. I left on my own free will, and I don't want to go back. And please don't tell them that you talked to me because they'll know. Remember, Nazreen was in her 20s. She was an adult. Under the law, she could go and do as she pleased, which meant the police weren't going to drag her back home. So, according to Cody's family, Ali Ersan took things into his own hands. Amid Houston's sprawl with its seemingly endless towns and neighborhoods, he figured out which one was Cody's. Maybe the address was in Nasreen's phone.

Maybe Nadia had narked on Nasreen as she'd done before. And maybe it was just out there on the internet. Whatever the source, Ali Ersan and his family arrived in Shirley's suburban neighborhood just a few days after Nasreen did. Our neighbors told us about seeing them drive through the neighborhood. Her family?

Yes, her family. And then they started going door to door with pictures of Cody, with Ollie's name and phone number on the back. To call him, if you had information, he'd pay $100 for information. About Cody? Yes.

What kind of information? Like where he lived? Yes. If they'd seen Cody. He really was trying to find Nisreen. And he knew if he found Cody, he'd find Nisreen. Sergeant Doucet was hearing all this

from Nisreen in the hours after her husband was murdered. Was she trying to implicate her father? Doucet let her go that night and began to investigate. He spoke with Cody's family and then with neighbors who had noticed things. Many of her neighbors had told her that a person matching her father's description

had approached them and offered them money for information of where she and Cody were living. You eventually confirmed this with the neighbors in Spring? Yes, we did. So Nazreen's telling the truth about this? Yes. Anything she tell you not check out? Anything she say proved to be false?

Not that I can think of, no. So you're growing more confident that she's giving you the straight story? It's sure leading that way at that point. Were those stories enough for investigators to arrest anyone? Well, that's not exactly how things work in real life. It takes time. And that is something law enforcement has in common with Dateline. We often stay on a story for years. People ask us where we find our stories and the answer is sometimes they come to us from sources we've developed over many years and many other datelines. Police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and local TV stations have all

contacted us. People also reach out through social media. Yes, we do read your Twitter DMs. And often the starting line for our stories is just a headline in the newspaper. That's how our producer, Ann Priceman, first heard about this particular case. Dateline assigns its producers to keep an eye on the news in different areas of the country. And Ann handles Houston. I've done quite a few stories in Houston. We were driving to an interview with Ann and Dateline associate producer Emily Wickwire. So people would be assigned specific zones, like you might have Arkansas or Maine or whatever state.

And for bigger states, there would be specific parts of the state. First time I was assigned the zone and I started scanning the papers in my zone, I found the story. So it was 2012 when that happened. When you follow a story as long as Anne has, you build some genuine relationships and you come to know your subjects well. It's how Dateline tells stories in a way that no one else does, including those of people who've gone through unimaginable tragedy. You have to Dateline report ends up being an hour or two on television, the path to justice is much, much longer for the families we follow. And that brings us back to Corey Beavers.

He had no trouble believing Nasreen's dad could be behind his brother's murder. Corey remembers a fight he witnessed between Nasreen and her sister Nadia back in college. Cody and Nasreen were leaving one day to go get food. And Nadia kind of chased them to the car, telling her, no, you're not going with him. You're coming with me and we're going home. And she was like pulling on Nisreen's shirt, trying to get her to go back towards the school because Nadia didn't have her driver's license. Nisreen is the only one that was driving. And so they finally, they got to the car and Nisreen gave Nadia the keys and was like, if you want to go home here, here's the keys, go home. And it was kind of like Nadia knew she couldn't go home without her sister.

And so did Nisreen. And that's why she did it. And there was nothing she could do about it. And then Cody kind of like stepped in between them. And he was like, why don't you just leave her alone? Why can't we just go across the street and get food and it not be such a big deal? And she was already mad from what Ms. Green had said. And then she was just like, I can't wait until my dad puts a bullet in your head.

Were you there for that? Mm-hmm. What did you think when she said that? I believed her. As Corey saw it, Ali Irsan was so brazenly frightening. He should have been stopped a lot earlier. It's just like the ball keeps getting dropped over and over again, and every time it does, somebody else ends up dead.

The family told police that even before Cody was murdered, they'd been stalked and harassed, and they suspected Ali Ersan was behind all of it. Our cars were vandalized. So you come out. Initially, we kept having the flat tires, because I don't think they punctured the tires. They just let the air out. So we come out, we had flat tires.

So they're coming right up to your house in the middle of the night? Yes. We started parking the cars, two cars in the garage at night and one across the street because we knew they were driving by and any car that was in the driveway would be a target. How many times did that happen? Every morning we came out we had to check the tires before we left. So they were letting the air out of your tires nightly? Almost, yeah. And then after Cody had been murdered, Cody and Corey's older brother Adam said the family had trouble getting any answers about what was going on in the investigation.

What are you going to do to provide safety for our family and to solve this murder and hold the people accountable? And when you would talk like that, what would happen? Anything? They listened, but we were given very limited response on it. We're working the case, very generic kind of answers. Adam was frustrated, and Corey was wrestling with a mixture of sorrow and rage, not just over the murder of his twin. Corey had lost his girlfriend, Galleray, as well.

And somehow, he was sure it was all connected. But if Nasreen's father was somehow involved in these murders, what could be his motive? Love? Money? Or pride? And how would all that lead back to Galleray? The answer wouldn't be easy to find. We know that Nazrin was Gelleray's close friend. But if this was somehow about Nazrin's dad,

then there was a very big problem with that theory. As far as investigators knew, Gelleray and Ali Ersan had never once met. They'd never even been in the same room together. So if there was a connection there, what could it possibly be? It simply didn't make sense that Ali Ersan, whatever his issues were, would declare war on a woman he had never even met. Next time on Motive for Murder,

the investigation into these two murders gets even bigger as a completely different kind of crime comes to light.