Killer Dads (31 page)

Figure 14.1. Jessica poses for a photo in a hijab and the modest clothing that her stepdad preferred.
Courtesy of Wendy Wasinski, in memory of her loving daughter and best friend, Jessica Amanda Mohamad Mokdad.

The murder made national news because the media quickly labeled it as an honor killing in which Jessica was murdered to save her stepfather's “honor.” He thought she was becoming “too Westernized,” said Cataldo after Alfetlawi was busted. “I think this was a very nice young lady wanting to experiment with Western culture without control and without abuse.”

But the “honor killing” label was immediately contentious. The brand angered many in the local Muslim community, who emphasized that the homicide had nothing to do with them, with their religion, or with their cultural beliefs. Jessica's biological father, Mohamed Mokdad, and his wife complained to the press and went on TV to denounce the label, calling Alfetlawi a sick man obsessed with Jessica whose attack had absolutely no connection to Islam. County officials quickly responded to and removed the “honor” issue from the killings. This “has little or nothing to do with Arabic culture,” Cataldo clarified. “It has everything to do with male domination of women, something that transcends cultures.”

The case was complicated. Details emerged that Alfetlawi was obsessed with managing every aspect of Jessica's life, to such an extent that he arranged to have spyware installed on her computer and phone, and he hid recording devices in their home and in family cars in which she traveled so he could track her every move. A frightened Jessica confided to a passenger she met on a train shortly before her death that she fought with Alfetlawi over her decision to go out without her hijab—and that she feared he would kill her one day.

Americans were on the alert for any hint of honor killings. There had already been a handful of the notorious honor murders of daughters by their dads in the United States. But as the circumstances of Jessica's murder became clearer, it defied easy categorization as an honor killing. Even though he had raised her and treated her like his own daughter, Alfetlawi was Jessica's stepdad, which raised issues about the sometimes-fraught relationships between fathers and stepchildren and the increased potential for violence uncovered by researchers Martin Daly and Margo Wilson. Other information emerged that Alfetlawi's relationship was hardly a typical father-daughter interaction, and that the murder may have been the furious violence of a male losing control over a young woman he considered not a
daughter, but a sex partner. In a particularly disturbing development, prosecutors revealed in court that Alfetlawi had raped Jessica at least once. Jessica told her mother of the attack the night before she was killed, Wendy told me in an interview. “He said that if I tell you, he would kill you, Mom,” Wasinski quoted Jessica as saying. Investigators believe Alfetlawi decided to kill Jessica in part to stop her from reporting the rape to police. “That's what put him over the edge,” said Cataldo at Alfetlawi's trial, though the prosecutor also pointed out that Rahim would be “embarrassed” if information about his rape became known, which could also represent a threat to his honor.

The crime became a locus of heated debate in the culture wars. Many argued that officials were too quick to brand Jessica's murder an honor killing, while others then criticized law enforcement authorities for a “whitewash” after too hastily backing off the label because they were too concerned about “political correctness” in the face of anger by the Dearborn Muslim community. Some argued that branding the case an honor killing was a distraction from the serious problem of domestic violence and child abuse throughout the country, while others argued that it was one more nuance in a range of domestic murder that demanded a thorough examination. Jessica's murder—yet another iteration of the murder of a child by her stepfather—did involve unique cultural aspects of Alfetlawi's background, but it also concerned the more common domestic-violence ingredients of American-style paternalism, access to guns, and sex abuse.

Jessica's mom, Wendy Wasinski, was born in Hamtranck, Michigan, to a Polish-American Catholic family in Michigan, but grew up with Muslim friends. She met and fell in love with Mohamed Mokdad. They married and had a baby, Jessica, a “girlie girl,” as her mom described her daughter to me, who loved to wear dresses and play with dolls. “She was a compassionate, thoughtful girl. Jessica was always the kind of kid who would hold doors open for people, or get a shopping cart for an elderly woman at the grocery store,” said her mom. Wendy worked for a time at a daycare facility for elderly people and often took Jessica with her. “She had a blast with the old people, and they loved her,” said Wendy. Wendy and Mohamed divorced, but she then met Rahim Alfetlawi when Jessica was seven years old. Rahim
raised Jessica like his own daughter, and the girl eventually donned the head-covering hijab veil of her faith in heartland America. “He cared for her, he watched after, he protected her,” recalled Wendy, who had converted to Islam just months before she met Rahim and quickly donned the hijab herself. Islam intrigued Wendy. She was impressed by the families of her Muslim friends. “Ironically, I especially appreciated how close their families were,” she told me. “They helped one another. You didn't have to leave the home at 18. They were always there for each other.”

Figure 14.2. Jessica snuggles up to her mom, Wendy. Her mother, born in Michigan, converted to Islam before she married Jessica's stepdad.
Courtesy of Wendy Wasinski, in memory of her loving daughter and best friend, Jessica Amanda Mohamad Mokdad.

But Wendy's husband eventually turned out to be the very antithesis of that image. Initially, he demanded Jessica be respectful and obedient, do well in her studies, remain chaste until marriage, and follow the tenets of Islam, including not drinking, and wearing the hair-covering hijab any time she was outside of her home. But his control took a dark twist as she became a teenager, and his attention became an obsession, said Wendy. “There was a point when he wouldn't let her do what her friends were doing, and they were Muslim girls,” she said. “He wouldn't let her go to the mall with them.
So I went around him. I would drive her to the mall myself, telling him we were going shopping, but I would arrange for her to meet her friends there. That was the start of a lot of things I did for her behind his back.”

Figure 14.3. Jessica lets her hair down and mugs in her “other life” as a typical Michigan teenager with pal Kayla Chuba.
Courtesy of Wendy Wasinski, in memory of her loving daughter and best friend, Jessica Amanda Mohamad Mokdad.

In a bizarre development, Rahim pressured Jessica at 18 to marry a boyfriend in a religious ceremony that wasn't legally binding. The two lived for time in the family home. But even though they were “married,” Rahim tried to strictly control their interaction, at times even stopping them from touching one another or even sitting next to each other on the couch, Wendy noted. Jessica eventually left the family's home in Minnesota and attended Macomb Community College in Michigan, where she pursued different interests, including her passion for art that eventually evolved into photography. She lived for a time with her biological dad, but his second wife was only three years older than Jessica, which sometimes caused tension, according to Wasinski. Jessica eventually moved in with her maternal grandmother. Her “husband” joined her for a time, but their relationship soon waned and they broke up.

Throughout it all, Jessica fretted about Alfetlawi. “I hate him with a passion,” Jessica wrote of her stepdad to a friend in texts obtained by police. “He's in love with me. He's obsessed with me. He would punish me and
make me cry every day. I'd like to see his ass beat like he's done to me all these years.” In one text, she talked of Alfetlawi making a surprise visit to her grandmother's home where she was staying at the time, and discovering “I don't wear a scarf.”

Wasinski says Alfetlawi was never physically abusive, but “you could say he was verbally and psychologically abusive” to Jessica. When her daughter was a little girl, Wendy was glad Alfetlawi cared enough to help raise her and set rules for her, even though he began to slip off the rails as she became older. But she never saw him physically violent. “That's why it blew my mind when he shot Jessica,” said Wendy.

Jessica's biological dad stood by to help as she grew up, but his relationship with his daughter waned because Alfetlawi was jealous of it, according to Wasinski. After Alfetlawi was arrested, he initially told police he had taken a gun to Warren to shoot Mohammed Mokdad, but accidentally shot Jessica instead.

Jessica was living in Michigan when Alfetlawi “abducted” her and “forced” her to return to the family's home in Minnesota, she said in texts, just weeks before her murder. She remained there until her mom took her to the train station while Alfetlawi slept so Jessica could return to her grandmother's home. That was the last time Wendy would see Jessica alive. “I hugged her and I kissed her and told her I loved her, and let her go,” Wasinski recalled. She usually kept in daily phone contact with her daughter while she lived in Michigan, but always called from work to conceal her conversations from Alfetlawi.

On the train, a distraught, shaken Jessica poured out her heart to a lawyer she met on the trip. She revealed to him that her stepfather had a long history of control and abuse, he later testified at Alfetlawi's trial. Alfetlawi was temperamental and would often “lose it,” she said, and used “fear, intimidation and violence to get his way,” Jessica told him. Alfetlawi had threatened to harm her and her mother if she attempted to run away again, added Jessica, who described a pattern of multiple forms of abuse against her and her mother, adding that her most recent dispute with her stepdad concerned her decision to not wear the hijab. Jessica used Marlowe's phone to text her friends while she was traveling because she feared Alfetlawi was tracking her
calls. The texts recovered from his cell phone, coupled with his testimony, was key in the decision to file first-degree murder charges against Alfetlawi. Jessica was clearly terrified of her stalking stepdad and was fleeing from him.

Figure 14.4. Jessica flashes a smile in a hijab she often wore. She argued with her stepfather when she opted not to wear a veil, and texted a friend about her conflicts with Alfetlawi shortly before he murdered her.
Courtesy of Wendy Wasinski, in memory of her loving daughter and best friend, Jessica Amanda Mohamad Mokdad.

The day Jessica arrived back in Warren, she helped her grandmother sort through her late great-grandmother's things. Alfetlawi drove from his Minnesota home to help, he said, and carried boxes of belongings to his mother-in-law's house where Jessica was staying. “He wanted me to come along, but I had to work, and it would be a long drive to have to turn around again,” said Wasinski. “He told me he loved me when he left.”