originally both parents were sentenced to the death penalty....i'm not sure why the mother's sentence was overturned, but she got life without parole instead...
stlmag.com
In Cold Blood
Dee Joyce-Hayes
Of Counsel, Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, LLP
By 1991, then-assistant circuit attorney Dee Joyce-Hayes had already handled several cases involving rape, murder and child abuse—but nothing had prepared her for the case of 16-year-old Palestina “Tina” Isa.
“This is the only time in my life where the murder is actually caught on tape,” says Joyce-Hayes, who later served eight years as St. Louis circuit attorney.
Tina, multilingual and bright, was a popular student at Roosevelt High School and had already been awarded a college scholarship. In 1989, the FBI began to suspect that Tina’s father, Zein, was a member of an Abu Nidal terror cell. He was placed under surveillance, and the family’s apartment was bugged. What the FBI caught on tape was chilling.
Upset that their daughter was dating an African-American boy, Zein and his wife, Maria, hatched a plan to murder their daughter. When Tina arrived home one night in 1989, Maria—a big, strong woman—held her daughter down while Zein stabbed her almost 20 times with a butcher knife.
“Mother, please help me,” Tina pleaded on the tape.
Joyce-Hayes says, “There was a point where he was pricking around her left breast,” and even though Zein was speaking in Arabic, there was “a cadence to his speech.” When the tape, the translations and the photos were matched, Joyce-Hayes says, it became clear that Isa was taunting his daughter. “Are you going to be a good girl now?” he asked as he stabbed her.
High-pitched screams rushed from Tina’s mouth, replaced by moans and, finally, silence.
Both parents were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die. Zein became ill and died on death row. Maria’s conviction was overturned, and she was sentenced to life in prison without parole at her second trial.
No other case has ever chilled Joyce-Hayes more. |
