Honour on Trial (13 page)

"This was 2 o'clock," said Mehdizadeh.

"You are saying right," Tooba replied.

Slowly but surely the officer was gathering key information. Mehdizadeh told her about the van wiretaps and how she had already incriminated herself, placing them at Kingston Mills prior to the deaths.

"I am certain you have been there," he said.

"No, never," Tooba replied.

Then he pointed out how ludicrous it would be for Rona, more than 50 years old, to go on a joyride at 2 o'clock in the morning. "That woman was 50 years old but you would have thought she was a 25-year-old girl," Tooba responded.

Tooba then admitted in the video interrogation that one of her brothers had told her about Shafia's saying he wanted to kill Zainab. "He had told my brother, yes," she said, but he never said anything directly to her. "My brother told me that he had told [him] this, so it's obvious that he has done it then, maybe," Tooba said.

Then there was a breakthrough. Tooba placed herself at Kingston Mills that night, sitting in the car with the four women and waiting for her husband and Hamed to return from finding a motel room.

"But I request you one thing that [you] never tell my husband," she said. "Yes, never tell my husband that I have said this."

At one point, she said Zainab needed to go to the washroom. "We got out and wanted to go to the toilet. Since it was dark, she got scared. She was scared and said, 'No, I don't want to go. Wait till Dad comes.' When her dad … uh, while the car was parked on this side at the corner of the street … when her dad came, I went and sat with the two. But her dad was behind the wheel, behind the Lexus was her dad. I went and sat with him. Once I sat with him, believe me that I don't know anything what had happened since then."

She claimed she fell asleep in the Lexus but then described a scene that police believe may have occurred — some form of pre-drowning of the women at the basin below the top lock.

"If I was awake," she said, "and they were pressing and putting them into the water, I might have known it. As a human, I would have been shaken or would have heard a sound of splashing or something, but that time, believe me, I don't know nothing about the detail of this story how it has happened."

She appeared to be telling the story of the deaths, cautiously, without implicating herself.

"Did these girls, did these girls ever come into the motel? Did this car ever come to the motel?" Mehdizadeh asked. "Tell me the truth."

"No. I told you no," said Tooba.

"This car has never come to the motel?"

"No."

On a piece of paper, Mehdizadeh drew Kingston Mills and the location of the cars for her to see.

"What were these girls doing? Madam, what am I saying? I am telling you that when someone falls into the cold water, it is not a joke to say that I fell into this cold water. It is not a joke to say that I fell into this cold water. I am suffocated and will die … Were those ladies asleep or awake? Tell me the truth."

Tooba: "Let me think about it. No, they were awake. They were awake."

Mehdizadeh: "So you are saying they were awake. Somebody came and took the car from there to here and pushed it in and nobody, nobody, uh, all of them were sitting in the car to die?… I am not [a] stupid person!"

"No, your claim is right," she said.

He implored her, in the memory of her dead daughters, to tell him the truth. They went over the story again about who was driving which vehicle at the locks.

"When we changed the car and they went, I was with the girls, sitting calmly," Tooba began again. "My older daughter said she wanted toilet, then we got off and saw it was dark."

Mehdizadeh was growing impatient again. "You have told me this," he said.

Tooba picked up the story when the Lexus returned to the lockstation and she ran to it. "Both of them came out of Lexus," Tooba said. "Shafia was driving. Yes, then Hamed was standing there. I don't know whether he was peeing or doing something else. Anyway, he was standing on the other side. Then I came and Shafia took the Lexus. Shafia took the Lexus."

She went on: "He came and I was standing with Hamed on the other side talking with him. I was talking with him and I heard a sound.[Do] you understand? But I ask you not to tell Shafia about this. Believe me, don't tell Shafia. I heard a noise. Hamed and I heard it. We both ran and we saw a car was in the water. This car had fallen into the water."

Tooba acknowledged the Lexus was also at the edge of the lock where the Nissan fell in.

Mehdizadeh wanted to know how the vehicles got there. "Who, who brought the car, the Nissan, from where you were waiting for them when Shafia and Hamed came? Who brought this car to the place where it fell into the water? Who was driving? Were you driving or Shafia?" he demanded.

"Shafia," Tooba replied.

"Or Hamed?"

"Shafia was driving."

Then came this almost inconceivable recount by Tooba of her daughters' last moments: "I, I just, just saw that, when the noise came from the water, since Hamed and I was a bit far away. Hamed was walking around and we were chatting … When the noise of the water came, I, when the noise of the water came, we ran. We ran and came [to the water]. We came. At that moment I became so stressed, as I didn't understand where the Lexus was or where this car was …"

Mehdizadeh asked: "What were the girls doing when the car went into the water?"

"Nothing," she replied. "I, believe me, I fell down. I screamed and fell down … I screamed and fell down so I didn't understand that this car — where the Lexus went — what happened to this car? Just when I realized [the Nissan] went into the water, I screamed and fell down. I screamed and fell down so … I became unconscious.

"Hamed and I ran. We ran and we saw that the car was in the water. After that, I don't remember. Believe in God that I didn't understand anything. I grab my hair and fell down, fell down, then I didn't understand."

Then: "When I got to the motel, I was still not thinking that the girls had fallen into the water. I thought that their dad had already taken them. I was thinking like this. Do you understand?"

"No," said Mehdizadeh, "It's impossible because you knew that the girls were in the car."

"They were in the car," she agreed, "but I was thinking this: Why [didn't] these girls come down after me because they were always coming after me. Wherever I was going, they were following me. I was thinking like the car had been fallen empty."

Tooba said Shafia drove to the Kingston East Motel and Hamed helped her into the room. But Mehdizadeh went back to the scene at Kingston Mills.

"You saw Shafia was driving and hit at the back of this car with the Lexus and pushed it into the water?" he asked.

"I didn't see it [with] my eyes," said Tooba."Didn't see it with my eyes — just I am telling [you] that I didn't see the Lexus with my eyes pushing the other. Believe me, I didn't see this with my eyes."

After she screamed and fell down, Mehdizadeh wanted to know, did Hamed try to help his sisters? "Hamed went into the water to save them?" he asked.

"Into the water, no. He couldn't go into the water."

"Why?" Mehdizadeh asked.

"He couldn't go [because] we ran and I fell down."

"Nobody called the police?"

"To the police?" said Tooba. "I don't know anything after that. I don't know anything."

Mehdizadeh pointed out how perplexing the family's actions were from that point on. Hamed drove to Montreal, ostensibly for business or to get the laptop and didn't report the incident from that night. The rest of them went to bed at the Kingston East Motel and didn't call police.

"Shafia was there. You say that Shafia has done this. Okay, obviously Shafia didn't want to call the police," said Mehdizadeh. "What else [did] he want to do, because you said Shafia was behind the wheel of the Lexus. Their mother is there. Their brother is there. A brother who, when the Lexus hits a pole in Montreal the next day, immediately calls the police because of the accident. Nobody called the police here."

Tooba's response was to defend Hamed. "Maybe he didn't have his cellphone," she offered.

"No, it was with him," said Mehdizadeh. He pulled out all the stops, taking Tooba's hands in his, begging for the truth so the victims could rest peacefully in their graves. Later, in the courtroom, Mohammad and Tooba both broke down crying. On the video screen, Tooba began to backtrack from her statements. Mehdizadeh again wanted to know what the women were doing as the car went over the edge.

"How do I know that?" she replied with one of the most chilling remarks of the entire trial. "In the darkness, it was as dark as the grave over there."

Realizing she had told too much, Tooba's story started to change. When she and Hamed heard the car go into the water, she thought Shafia had moved the children from the Nissan to the Lexus. But why, Mehdizadeh asked, would Shafia plunge the Nissan into the water?

"I didn't know whether the children were [in it] or not," she said. "I didn't know anything. I became unconscious."

Mehdizadeh clenched his fists in front of him and asked Tooba: "Do you see that their hands are like this? Do you know why they became like this? Because they have been drowned, Madam. You are trying to tell me that no one, none of them, wanted to come out of the car?"

They argued over why neither she nor Hamed called the police. Tooba said it was because she was unconscious. Why not Hamed, then? "Maybe he also became unconscious," said Tooba.

Mehdizadeh continued to press her to tell him why she helped kill her daughters.

"I didn't have any reason and didn't help [with] this. In fact, I didn't help Shafia in killing them, believe me," she said calmly. Now, several hours into the investigation, Tooba decided to push back. "You said I helped," she said. "Do you have any evidence that I have helped them?"

Mehdizadeh showed her a photo of Geeti drowned in the car. Her hand, he said, was pointing toward Sahar's in the back seat, as if she were reaching out to the sister she loved so much. "At least have a little respect for your daughters. Their graves are still cold. Their graves haven't even warmed up yet," he said.

Instead of breaking down under the continued pressure from Mehdizadeh, Tooba got more confident. She wanted Mehdizadeh to say why he thought the girls didn't try to escape from the car. "Tell me your thoughts why these girls [didn't] come out," she said, insisting that she didn't know herself. "If they were unconscious — all those medical examinations have been completed … The medical test has been conducted, right? So why hasn't it shown [anywhere] that they had been unconscious?"

Mehdizadeh said the autopsy wasn't completed. Then he cut to the chase. "Have you killed them," he asked.

"No."

"Shafia has killed them?"

"No, I don't know."

"Nobody?"

"I don't know what has happened. What has happened, I don't know myself, don't know," said Tooba. "Somebody else has killed them."

The next day, she informed police that she was recanting everything she'd told Mehdizadeh during the interrogation.

Hamed…

Hamed Shafia, the second child and first son of Mohammad Shafia and Tooba Mohammad Yahya, appears sullen and angry in photographs and on the videotape. He is a good-looking young man but not handsome, bearing a strong resemblance to his mother. He is quiet, his emotions seemingly held in check, and speaks in an understated monotone when questioned. Like his mother, he frequently contradicts himself, compounding one lie with another.

Hamed was interviewed twice on June 30, 2009, by Detective Geoff Dempster at the Kingston Police station. In the afternoon interview, Dempster asked Hamed why he left for Montreal in the middle of the night.

"I needed something personal," Hamed answered vaguely. Later he told Dempster it was to retrieve his laptop which he had forgotten in Montreal, and had been without for a week. "There was a million reasons why I went there," he finally said.

He also slipped in information several times about Zainab and his sisters wanting to drive the car as a possible reason for their going on a joyride in the middle of the night. He recalled being "scared" watching Zainab drive in a parking lot. Even 13-year-old Geeti tried to drive, Hamed told Dempster. He admitted, however, that Rona's presence in the car didn't make sense.

"She was a person who really thought twice about doing things."

Dempster also wanted to know why Hamed went to Montreal in the Lexus but returned in the Montana minivan.

"That was my choice. I just thought I'd bring it," he explained.

Dempster told Hamed that someone at the locks overnight heard a splash and that someone else saw a vehicle drive away from the scene.

"You mean someone pushed them in?" Hamed asked.

"No, that there was someone there," said Dempster.

Kingston Police then learned from Montreal police that Hamed had reported an accident that morning with the Lexus SUV in a supermarket parking lot. They decided to bring him in for another interview at 8:40 pm. Dempster asked him why he was hiding information. Why didn't he tell him about the accident earlier in the day?

"It was nothing related to this," Hamed said, referring to his sisters' deaths.

Dempster wanted to know why the women would have gone joyriding in the Nissan at such a late hour.

"I think they wanted to take it for a test drive," he replied.

Dempster was persistent. "It's weird," he told Hamed. "No one here can make any sense of it."

Hamed said he was in the motel room when Zainab asked for the keys to the Nissan. He then left for Montreal. The girls also left. He didn't know how they got from the motel to the bottom of the Rideau Canal.

"I have nothing to put on the table," Hamed told the officer.

At 11:25 pm on July 22, about 12 hours after being arrested in Montreal, Hamed was brought to an interrogation at the Kingston Police station to meet with Detective Steve Koopman. Koopman's assignment, early in the case, had been to befriend and develop a rapport with the family. He had been the one to escort the grieving parents to the morgue to identify the bodies. He also attended the funeral in Montreal on July 5 — by which time police had concluded that the Lexus SUV had been used to push the Nissan into the canal.