Dateline Originals - Motive for Murder - Ep. 6: Straight to Hell

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

A conversation with a killer and the motive for murder is revealed.This episode was originally published on June 4, 2020. 

You know, prosecutors said and police say that you're an angry, controlling guy who wants his way and becomes violent when he doesn't get it. If I was a controlling guy, I would not have my two daughters going to college, driving their own self, having a car. My daughter stood in court and lied through her teeth. As he faced me through a thick pane of Texas prison glass, Ali Ersan still wouldn't admit he had done anything wrong. Over the years, I've interviewed plenty of criminals, most of them murderers. Those conversations always make me think about good and evil, and about the false steps that can so quickly take you from one to the other. There's no question, most people are basically decent, honest. But

the older I get, the more often I run into outliers. People who don't seem to have empathy. People who apparently don't feel remorse. People who don't look back and wonder, how could I have done that? People like Ali Irsan. I had lots of questions for him, not only about the murders of Gelleray and Cody, but also about another homicide in his past. I'm Josh Mankiewicz,

and this is the final episode of Motive for Murder, a podcast from Dateline. It would be difficult for investigators to decipher what was driving Ali Ersan. They thought they had evidence putting Ersan near the scene of Galeray's shooting, specifically that fateful traffic stop we told you about in the last episode. Still, it seemed like a stretch to think a phone call could be the connection between Ersan and Galeray. He had never met her. They'd only spoken briefly on the phone a couple of times. Ersan wanted Gallaret to convince his daughter to come home, and Gallaret was having none of it. She probably wasn't terribly polite on the phone, but that was the extent of their interaction.

And even though Ersan's name was raised early on as a possible suspect, it really wasn't enough for law enforcement to pursue. Imagine how many people would be killed in this country if being rude on the phone was enough to get you murdered. When it came to Cody Beaver's murder, the motive seemed more straightforward. Ali Ersan simply did not want to see his daughter married to Cody. Except if Ersan had executed his son-in-law, he'd done a good job covering his tracks. There wasn't a shred of physical evidence to connect him to that crime scene. So the task force had stayed on Ersan, quietly and covertly watching the family home.

Here's FBI Special Agent Carlos Acosta again. One of our surveillance teams contacted me, and they informed me that they had observed two of Ali's sons accessing an area of the roofline of the house, the rear of the house, which they believe was a hidden compartment. Acosta says that sighting led to a third search warrant. So we go to and we search the roof. We actually take off part of the roof.

And we cannot find, well, anything we were looking for. You didn't find a hidden compartment? You didn't find a hidden compartment? We didn't find a hidden compartment. Disappointing? Sure. But the warrant gave them wide discretion. And they kept looking. Our search teams did find a hidden area under the faucet of the roof that removed a screen and found two GPS units that you used to get from one location to the other.

Those portable GPS units, the kind you used to put on your dashboard before every car and every iPhone could supply directions. And we submitted those to the Greater Houston Regional Computer Forensic Lab, and they were able, on one of the units, to recover data which put that unit not only to the exact location, but within the same date and time period of the Cody murder. And it's a roadmap from Ollie's house to Cody's house on the day of the murder. The day of the murder actually departs Ollie's primary residence all the day of the murder. The day of the murder actually departs Ollie's primary residence

all the way to the apartment where Cody's murdered. The GPS units showed someone making a trip from the Ursan home to Cody and Nasreen's home on the day of Cody's murder at what police believed was also the time of the murder.

It was a telltale digital record, a missing piece of the puzzle that was suddenly glaringly visible. And it tipped the Cody Beavers murder case in the direction investigators needed. Sergeant Duce knew it. That gets you in arrest warrant. That got charges on him, yes. For murder. Correct. I guess. Ersan was now indicted for both Gallaret and Cody's murders.

And it was a capital case, meaning if convicted, he could face the death penalty. And the DA said Ersan had help. His wife Shmoo and their son Nassim were also indicted for murder. Prosecutors still had to make a convincing case for his guilt and tell an improbable story of how the two murders were connected. When the trial began, Kathy Sultani accompanied Gallaret's parents to court. She vividly remembers the tension and fear. You went to the trial every day? Mm-hmm.

Which was how many days? Almost two months, yes, two months. And you did that why? I mean, I don't know. That's loyalty. Yeah, I couldn't live with them, you know. And I had to translate the whole thing, so I would hear it in English, then we would go home, I would go over the whole day again.

For her parents. So for her parents, in case they, I mean, they the whole day again. For her parents. So for her parents in case they, I mean they understand English, especially the dad does more, so. So you're living every day twice, basically. Yes. Galleray and Cody were murdered in 2012. It took

six years for Ali Irsan to face a jury. On July 25th, 2018, it was 91 degrees and humid in Houston as the People vs. Ali Ersan began. Each day, that jury of eight men and four women listened as prosecutors put on their case. Corey and Cody's older brother, Adam, was there.

What was that like to go to the trial and see Ali Ersan sitting right there? He's an evil man. I didn't realize how sinister and evil he is. So he's worse than you expected? I'm being serious when I say he's worse than Charles Manson. He's incredibly evil and calculating and very deliberate with what he was doing. But he would try and intimidate people in the gallery.

Even while he's on trial for murder? Even while he's on trial for murder. At one point during the trial, he built a paper pinwheel. We were seeing graphic photos of the murder scenes. And they're being projected up on the screen. He wouldn't even look at them, and he would just spin this paper pinwheel. Kathy Soltani and Galleray's parents said they felt Ersan's gaze in the courtroom, and it shook them. Well, the first day we walked into the courtroom, the three of us, I mean, we were holding hands, the three of us,

her parents and myself. And we just, for a second, when we saw him sitting there and staring, he was staring at her parents. He was looking at them. I don't know how he could look at them like that. And the three of us, it felt like we were stuck to the ground for a second. If the evidence was any indication, they had reason to be scared. Prosecutors argued items found at the Irsan compound showed him hunting his victims like prey. They presented stacks of paper found under a sofa cushion at the Irsan home. Pages upon pages of printed out internet searches on Shirley, on Corey, Cody, and Galleray. Information on some of the tiniest details of their lives.

Special Prosecutor Anna Emmons. Then when they went inside that house, they found what we referred to as a stalking packet, which showed all of the evidence that they were actually stalking. And they were looking for these people. Like what specifically? Their addresses. Addresses of family members. They were actually stalking, and they were looking for these people. Like what? Like what specifically? Their addresses, addresses of family members, everything that they had done, buying trackers.

Now, remember that envelope we told you about in the last episode? Investigators found it in Ersan's car, marked with scribbles, numbers and words that didn't make sense at the time. After some police work, those scribbles came to life and told a frightening story. Some of the seemingly random numbers and letters on the envelope turned out to be the street address for Gallaret's former home. It was still listed on her driver's license at the time of her murder. Others were matched to license plate information for a car that Cody had once rented after his was vandalized. Prosecutors said it was all proof that Ersan was stalking Cody and Nasreen. Suddenly, those scribbles became significant evidence, because they tied both murders together, linking Gallaret and Cody to Ali Ersan. Or did they?

At the same time, it was all circumstantial. Nasreen identified the handwriting on the envelope as being her father's. But there was nothing to prove that. There were also no fingerprints, no DNA, no firearms analysis to connect Ersan to the killings. Prosecutors would need something else, or someone else, to put the puzzle together. Nezrin Ersan said she knew exactly how scary her father, Ali Ersan, could be.

Our producer, Anne Priceman, has spoken with Nazreen and met with her in person. Everybody had gave us the impression she was cowering and terrified at all times, which obviously what she'd endured. You could understand that. You could understand the pain and fear she carries with her. But as a person, she's dynamic. She has a lot of verve to her. When people tend to describe somebody as terrified, they describe them... You get this feeling that they're this meek little mouse. Yeah, she's scared, she's scared,

but she's got a lot of strength to her. That strength was what Nezrin needed to help bring her father to justice for murdering her husband. She told her story where it counts most, in a courtroom. Special Prosecutor Anna Emmons remembers when Nezreen took the stand. It was very emotional for Nezreen to get on the stand. She just being in the same room again with her father, who she knows killed her friend and her husband. And she's how far away from him?

In the courtroom we were in, she was very close, less than 15 feet for sure. And she's how far away from him? In the courtroom we were in, she was very close, less than 15 feet for sure. And he's looking right at her? Looking, staring daggers at her. Absolutely. Speaking for both her friend, Gelleray, and her husband, Cody,

Nasreen faced her father, endured those daggers, and testified against him. One more question hung over these proceedings. Did Ali Irsan's Muslim faith have anything to do with this? Many have referred to these murders as honor killings. That's a twisted and fairly rare practice

in which a person, usually a woman, is killed for bringing a perceived shame to herself or her family. Something like marrying outside the faith. To be clear, this was not Irsan's defense. He did not claim the murders were justified. He maintained he didn't do it, that he was not responsible for either crime. Of course, Nasreen was raised Muslim. Cody Beavers was Christian. And that clearly was an issue for Ali Irsan. Except in actual honor killings, it's almost always the family member who's killed, not a third party. So these murders didn't fit the definition of honor killing. And prosecutors confronted that issue head on.

He wanted to kill all of those involved in bringing shame and dishonor in his mind to his family. Here's what special prosecutor John Stevenson told the jury. This is one man and one family's extremist views that were taken to the extreme and led to the deaths of two innocent people, Yalare Bagrizadeh and Cody Beavers. One of the things you talked about in opening arguments is how this isn't really representative of Islam

and how you're not putting the Muslim religion on trial. This is the way Ali orsan interpreted religion. Right, just one man's crazy beliefs and how he used those to stalk and murder innocent people. Witness by witness, the prosecution built a solid, if not airtight case. Until Shmoo. Ali Irsan's second wife. Like her husband, she was in lockup, awaiting her own trial on murder charges.

Just days before her husband's trial, prosecutors dropped by for a talk. Special Prosecutor Anna Emmons said her team was pretty clear about Schmoo's options. We went and visited her in the jail with her attorney and we laid out an opportunity for her and say, you have an opportunity here to finally stand up for yourself. He's left you and the only person that can help you is yourself, and it's time that the truth comes out. Think about it. Let us know. We're going to go forward on your case regardless, but come back and tell us what you think about it. And within a day, we got called by her attorney. Schmoo flipped on her husband, And as the state's star witness,

her testimony on the stand was as memorable as it was devastating. Here is Schmoo's story of how the cold-blooded killings of Gelleray and Cody played out. She told the jury how Ersan had stalked Nesreen, Cody, and their family. She said Ersan forced his own family to help him. And that phone call between Ali Irsan and Galareh? Well, Shmoo testified she heard it all because the call was on speaker. And she was there when the call ended. After Galareh stood up to Irsan, Shmoo described how she heard him say Iranian bitch.

Then he hung up and told Shmoo, Gelleray needs to go. Shmoo also said she was there the night Gelleray was murdered, and that she, her husband, and their eldest son Nassim were all in the car, following Gelleray from location to location. In court, Shmoo recounted how Ersan got out of the car with Nassim. At that point, she said her husband pressured their then 18-year-old son into pulling the trigger. Nassim, she said, shot Gallaret at her husband's direction. The day Cody was killed, Schmoo said she had again been

driving around with her husband and Nassim. She said she waited in the car during the murder in the pre-dawn darkness. And she told jurors her husband's plan didn't stop at Galleray and Cody. According to Schmoo, the plan was also

to kill Corey Beavers, his mother Shirley, and finally Nzreen, special prosecutor Marie Prim. She was very good at articulating what he was thinking and why he was there. Was very chilling at how cold and she delivered what she was saying. She was not a typical witness. In what sense? Most times when you make a deal with a witness or you have a cooperating co-defendant, they try to paint themselves in the best possible light. They don't want to look like the bad guy.

And so they're maybe a little reluctant. Maybe they don't tell as good a story. Well, they might say, well, he was really bad, but I was telling him not to do that, or somehow tried to absolve himself of some of the degree of guilt that exists. Shmoo didn't do that. No, she, in fact, was very clear at the beginning. She wanted all these people to die. She was happy for them all to die. And there was one final chilling detail Schmoo gave to the jury. She witnessed her husband watching news coverage of the murders. He wanted to watch it, she said, because his achievement made him proud. Schmoo finished testifying, the prosecution rested. Then it was Ali Ersan's turn.

In his own defense, Ersan took the stand and, to almost no one's surprise, denied everything. Okay. almost no one's surprise, denied everything. According to Ersan, the accusations against him were all made up by police and by his own relatives, who were out to get him. At Dateline, we always try to sit down with everyone in every story. In this case, that would mean looking Ali Irsan in the eye and asking him about the crimes, both bloodless and bloody, of which he'd been accused. So we asked him for an interview, and he agreed. It happened in the heat of the summer, in a tightly run facility of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Since we are talking about Dateline here, the first thing I noticed was that I'd been there before,

inside the wire at that same facility. That was for a different case, another accused Texas killer. Upon entering, you as a reporter are personally searched, along with the gear the camera crew brings in. You're allowed no phones, no briefcase, no makeup, just a pad and a pen. And you are thoroughly padded down. If you're there for a TV interview, it's just you and the two-person camera crew. My producer, Ann, had to wait in the parking lot. Now, I've covered plenty of presidential and campaign events over the years, and I can tell you, the U.S. Secret Service

has nothing on the Texas prison system. After the search, you're taken across the yard to a worn cinderblock room where prisoners meet with their attorneys and sometimes with their families as well. You sit facing a glass cubicle. The person you're there to meet sits opposite you, behind the glass, and you communicate via old-style telephone handsets. You're the star of your own noir film. The crew set up our dateline cameras, and then Ali Irsan was brought in, wearing Texas prison white. The deal is that you have an hour for the interview. Mr. Irsan began by explaining how he was the victim in all of this.

Okay. And the law enforcement and the government and the United States right now, as well, they did to me. They they bullied, blackmailed and. Intimidate every person that put me here. Your wife, your nephew, your daughter, who all testified against you, you think that only happened because they were intimidated? Yes, they were intimidated? Yes. They were forced. If you don't do it, we're going to get you.

Ersan told me it was Nasreen who was violent and out of control. He said she was going to wipe out anyone who stood in her way. So Nasreen's the real villain here. I have no idea. Yes, she is. Yes, she is. Nasreen is the villain. Yes, sir. Nasreen was pretty clearly afraid of you and didn't want anything to do with you

and wanted you to leave her alone. And if you had left her alone, you probably wouldn't be in here. Look, if the police did not use the KGB tactic, I would not be here. So you didn't murder Cody Beavers? No, I did not. So the fact that you stalked him in Nazarene, that you talked to the neighbors, that you tried to find out where they were living,

that you clearly hated the fact that your daughter had married this guy and that you saw that as a sort of personal offense against you and your family, that's all a coincidence. I did not kill the guy. I never saw him face to face. Never saw him except in pictures. And people who testified that you did and that you were there. To be honest, it was kind of hard to get a word in edgewise.

They're lying because they were intimidated. Look, I was after my daughter. I was trying to establish communication. Probably at the wrong place and the wrong time. But I did not kill the guy. Investigators found GPS units, which showed a route from your house to where Cody was murdered on the day he was murdered. Let me explain something to you. In my house, I was not the only driver. The GPS units show that someone went from your house to Cody's house on the day he was killed.

If that wasn't you, who was it? I have no idea. I have no idea. Over the years, I've noticed the accused murderers I've interviewed usually have one thing in common, and it's this. By the time they're sitting across from me, they're on their best behavior as they roll out the story of how this is all one big mistake. I'm not that guy. I'm no killer. I don't have murder in me. And there's one thing I hear all the time. I'm being framed. Some of those very familiar themes definitely came through in my conversation with Ali Ersan. What was new was his unconcealed fury, a white-hot rage that threatened to melt the glass separating us. If Ali Ersan was trying to convince me that he's a great guy who could never be angry enough to commit a murder,

well, he might have played this wrong. Here he is talking about Cody, his daughter's husband, shot seven times after walking his new wife to her car. I have nothing to do with him. I am not sorry that he died. To hell, he can go straight to hell. But I didn't kill him. I did not kill the guy.

I had nothing to do with him. Why can he go straight to hell? Because he disrupted my family. Because when I was overseas... Ali Ersan wants you to know he's in trouble because of his love for family. Nazreen left. He pursued her. Law enforcement took notice.

And under legal pressure, his family turned against him. That's one way to tell it. Here's another. This story isn't just one of family. It's also about women. About the roles they play in their families and in this world. Specifically, it's about two friends, Nazrin and Galare.

Women Ali Ersan sought to control, Specifically, it's about two friends, Nesreen and Galare. Women Ali Ersan sought to control, both of whom instead stood up to him in defiance. And it's about his wife Shmoo, whose testimony against him was so crucial. In our interview, Ali Ersan and I had a conversation about women and what he saw as their betrayal of him. However, the devil is not dead. And I'll tell you what, the woman is more powerful than a devil. They said when the angel's wings break,

he cannot fly anymore. But when the woman's wings break, she still can fly on a broom. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you're wrong about where women are in society? No. A woman is the main thing in society. She is the main thing. Without her, no society. And without her, society can be destroyed. Sixty minutes after we began speaking, we were headed back out. It was quite an hour.

I'd never experienced anything like it before. What was crystal clear was that time behind Texas bars had not changed Ali Irsan one bit. His only regret appeared to be that in his view his family had sold him out. As we said, his trial began June 25th, 2018. One month later, on July 26th, jurors settled in to deliberate. They wouldn't take long. In fact, it was about 35 minutes.

Less time than it would have taken the Ursan family to drive home after Gallaret's murder. Kathy was with Gallaret's parents in court when the jury emerged. It was amazing. It was, it's so strange though. You think, okay, now the verdict is in, but then nothing changes really. Yeah. Well, that's the mistake a lot of people make. Like, that verdict doesn't bring your friend back. No. It's not a time machine.

Yeah. Corey and Cody's brother Adam was also there for the verdict. Guilty on two counts of capital murder. You look at Ali during that time? Oh, yeah. I looked at him many times.

Just to let him know you're where you need to be right now. It had been six years since Gelare Bagherzadeh's murder. That's when this long, slow march to justice began. And finally, families, investigators, and prosecutors believed they had an answer. When they're trying to prove a murder case in Texas or anywhere else, prosecutors are not required to provide a motive to a jury. And yet jurors, not unlike podcast listeners or Dateline fans, usually want to understand the whole story. Not just the who and the what, but the why.

In court, prosecutors argued it all came down to Ali Ersan's rage after his daughter defied him by running away and marrying Cody Beavers. And then his wounded ego when Gelleray spoke sharply to him. And being spoken to like that by a young woman, even over the telephone, was enough to make Ali Irsan furious. And so his motive

was finally out in the open. It wasn't love. It wasn't love. It wasn't money. It was pride. It's just a man's pride being walked all over by a tiny woman. That was his ego that she stepped all over. It has nothing to do with religion.

I really strongly believe that. But in a way, Ali Irsan's motive had something to do with love, too. You'll remember Cody's wedding band, taken off his ring finger after his murder and switched to another finger. It was puzzling and provocative at the time. In hindsight now, it made complete sense. This was about pride, but also that love between Nasreen and Cody Beavers. Ali Ersan wanted to stop it at all costs. Jurors would now decide his fate. Life in prison without parole

or death by lethal injection. During trial, they'd heard about Ersan's sinister plot to stalk and kill Gallaret and Cody. As sentencing began, they heard yet another story

about Ersan. One that was almost too bizarre to believe. It turns out Ali Ersan was something of a serial son-in-law killer. In addition to Gelleray and Cody, he might have committed a third murder, although really this would be the first murder since it happened in 1999. The scene was Montgomery County, north of Houston, where the Ursan family called home. That night, Nasreen discovered her husband's body. She mentioned this to Sergeant James Doucet.

She told me of her oldest sister who had married another male back in 1999 in Montgomery County. And that she told me that her father had shot and killed that male at their home because he did not want him to be married to her daughter, to his eldest daughter. Ersan's eldest daughter is Nasima. In 1999, Ali Ersan shot the man she married. And that crime was prosecuted? It was not. Because? We looked into that case with Montgomery

County Sheriff's Office, and we were advised that he had claimed it was self-defense and that it had been treated as such. According to Nasreen, Ali Ersan was furious that Nasima had married a man who practiced a different form of Islam than the Ersan family. She said Ersan lured the son-in-law to his house under the pretense of smoothing things over. That was a lie, said Nasreen. This was an ambush. Detective Jeff Wells of the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department re-examined the 1999 case. He listened to Nasreen's account. She heard the big boom first and then later, by nine or ten minutes, heard the two pops of the small gun.

Understanding that he was dead before, those shots were, those second shots were fired. How old was Nazreen then? She was 11 in 1999. And at 11, Nazreen became the ear witness to a killing. She says her father shooed the rest of his family into another room, then invited the man over. Then Nazreen said her father killed his new son-in-law

with a shotgun, almost as he walked in the door. And she says that's when the cover-up began. Nazreen said her father took a handgun, fired two shots into the walls and ceiling, and then planted that gun in his dead son-in-law's hand. Only then did Mr. Ersan call 911 and say he'd killed a man in self-defense.

He made the phone call to direct police to the house. He did. Saying there's been a shooting here. There's been a shooting here. And what story does he tell when police say what happened? According to his statement, basically the same, that he had been harassing him. He came in and he hit the schmoo in the eye and blacked her eye.

And we started to ruckus around the house and he had to shoot him. And there was some foundation for that because Ali Ersan had carefully laid it. Prior to the murder itself, Ali had filed false reports with police agencies, with the sheriff's department. The victim was harassing the family, threatening the family. If you're wondering, there is no evidence other than Ersan's claims that his son-in-law was harassing him. It looked like self-defense. He was holding a gun, a gun which had been fired. True, it had been. Jurors heard this whole story as they weighed whether or not to sentence Ersan to death. In court, investigators admitted they'd written off the 1999 case too quickly and bought into a cover-up.

That case would never have been reexamined if Galleray and Cody hadn't been killed. True. It would not have. Because he got away with it. He got away with it. Because he wasn't charged. And he boasted about it. The what-ifs haunt Corey and Cody's brother Adam every day, every minute.

And had Montgomery taken that investigation and worked it the way that they should have, Guillory and Cody would still be alive. When I met with Ali Irsan behind prison walls, I asked him about that killing back in 1999. I want to talk about your son-in-law who was killed, not Cody Beavers, the other one. All right, go ahead, yeah. Okay. Did you set that man up to be killed? No, sir, I did not. Your wife and your daughter testified that you essentially staged this murder and killed your son-in-law in cold blood. They made up this story. My wife, they told her, if you don't testify against your husband,

you're going to get life imprisonment. The sentencing phase of the trial took another two weeks. Difficult testimony, graphic, and heart-wrenching. It was enough to convince the jury Ali Ersan should be put to death. If Nezreen Ersan Beavers has any relief, it comes from knowing her father will never walk free again. Her brother Nassim took a deal and pleaded guilty to murder. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Her sister Nadia is accused of engaging in organized criminal activity,

essentially conspiring with her father in the murders. Nadia's trial still lies ahead. And Ersan's wife, Shmoo, out of custody but with charges still pending, could testify in that case. The 1999 killing won't be pursued because the man at the center of it is already on Texas death row. It's been almost two years since Ali Ersan received his death sentence. Since then, Nasreen has remained estranged from most of her family. Our producer Anne Priceman has spoken with her about how she's doing. I think she's working very hard to move forward. It sounds corny, but I think she's not living in the sorrow of it all. That's not her everyday thought.

She's coming up with ways to put it in a box and put it away. And she's figuring out life and career and all of that. And she has a support system. She has people who take care of her. That's very good. You know, the enormity of this can't be overstated. Yeah. I mean, she ran away from her family.

Her husband was killed as a result of that, as was her very good friend. It's very unusual for anyone to go through even one of those tragedies in their life. Yeah, I'm in touch with actually a few people who have survived attempts on their life, or one person in particular. We meet for dinner and inevitably the conversation briefly will go back to the case we know each other from. And it's still there with virtually the same passion and hatred that she had when it happened. The fear's gone. There's a joy that the guy who tried to kill her is sent away.

But, you know, victims of violent crime, families of victims of violent crimes are forever scarred by it. They just, they move on as best they can. The pain is less fresh than when it first happened, but the pain always remains and it can be reactivated by anything, really. By speaking out,

Nazreen did an incredibly brave thing. Without her, her father, a murderer, would likely not be in a Texas prison on death row. Everything. Just for our purposes, can you say your name and your relation to...

Shirley McCormick, Cody's mother. The people left behind are tough. Often they seem tougher than most. Especially the twins' mother, Shirley. She says she's doing okay. I was a huge Dateline fan prior to Cody's murder. Because I just find it fascinating and interesting how the attorneys and the detectives you know solve the cases and take it to trial but it's not a show you ever want to be on

you know for obvious reasons so I didn't watch it for a while after that because I really didn't want to view other people's tragedies, you know, because it's too close to home. I'm still a fan. At Dateline, we spend a lot of time with the people in our stories. And long after those hours have aired, I often end up staying in touch with some of those we've spoken with. Kathy Soltani and I have been texting back and forth during the COVID-19 lockdown. She's enjoying some time with family.

I don't believe in closure. By now you know this. Gelleray's parents, Mona Ray and Ibrahim, definitely do not have anything like closure. You can see it and for, you can hear it. You know, when I laugh, my laughing is changed.

It's not like before. Not like before. No. I'm guessing that the reason Yelare wanted to help so many people is because the two of you taught her that's the right thing to do. I'm guessing that came from you.

Yeah. That came from the two of you. That's who she was. Yeah. When I was angry and she told me, I am like you. Really. And she was. Corey Beavers continues to deal with a double loss, his girlfriend and his twin.

Some of his grief has subsided, and now he focuses on his studies and his family. And then, out of the blue, the pain can rise up again. It's never really over. No. There's a lot of times that, like, I see something that I just, like, think of that I wish I could tell him about that. Or just think, like, how excited he might be to hear this. And he's not there. Surely, the rescuer lives a quiet life. A watchful mother, even to those who aren't technically her own, like Nazreen.

I've seen a change in her since, in the years since she's been able to get out and enjoy life and not be held prisoner by her own family. Have an opportunity to have an actual life. You still think of Nazrin as your daughter-in-law? Yes. Sometimes at the end of a story, you hope it makes sense somehow. Well, this one is pretty hard to understand. Investigators solved the love-money-pride puzzle. The pieces came together, and justice was done.

That said, both these cases, both these murders, defy any attempt to make sense of them. There's a quote from Voltaire I always think about at the end of a murder case, at the time when we supposedly know everything that happened. To the living, we owe respect. To the dead, we owe only the truth. Well, now we have the truth. And I hope we've helped you respect the living.

Motive for Murder is brought to you by Dateline and NBC News. From Dateline, Anne Priceman is producer. Emily Wickwire is our additional producer. Allison Orr is senior producer. And Adam Gorfain is senior broadcast producer. Liz Cole is executive producer. David Corvo is senior executive producer. From Neon Hum Media, Audrey Ngo and Mary Knopf are producers.

Natalie Wren is associate producer. Catherine St. Louis is editor. Jonathan Hirsch is executive producer. Original music, sound design, and mixing by Andrew Eapen. Additional sound design by Artin Aritunians. Additional production support from Nick White, Carla Green, and Mark Bush. Thank you.