Zein and Maria Isa Kill Their Child for Being American in the U.S.
(“Honor Thy Father,” Forensic Files)
For some parents, having a rebellious teenage daughter means she’s smoking marijuana and dating an ex-con with a neck tattoo.
In the case of one St. Louis couple, it meant that she snagged a part-time job at Wendy’s and went to the prom with a nice young man.
Matchmaker dad. Palestina “Tina” Isa’s mother and father didn’t take pride in their daughter despite that she wanted to earn her own spending money, got good grades, and secured a college scholarship so she could study aeronautical engineering.
Her parents wanted her to work at the family business, marry a Palestinian boy of Zein’s choosing, and move to the West Bank village of Beitin.
Tina’s rejection of the Isas’ cultural traditions upset them so much that they murdered her to save face, in a so-called honor killing.
Catch It If You Can. For this week, I looked around for more background on the family and what happened to Zein and Maria Isa between the murder and their own deaths.
“Honor Thy Father” is hard to catch on TV and unavailable on streaming services but, like the best Forensic Files episodes, it sticks with you after one viewing.
So let’s get going on a recap, along with some added facts drawn from internet research:
Do as I say not as I do. Zein, 60, was a Muslim Palestinian grocery store owner who became a naturalized U.S. citizen, and Maria, 48, was also a naturalized citizen but originally from Brazil, where the couple met and married.
Maria was Roman Catholic but had agreed to bring up the children as Muslims.
It’s not clear why it was okay for Tina’s dad to hitch up with someone from a different background but unacceptable for Tina to do the same. (And there was also the little matter of Zein marrying Maria despite that he already had a wife and three kids back on the West Bank.)
Spoiled the party. The Isas were frustrated with Tina, 16, because she lived outside the boundaries of their culture.
The couple, who moved to the U.S. in 1985, objected to her joining the tennis and soccer teams and trying out for cheerleading.
After Tina stole away to the prom with 18-year-old Clifford Walker (media accounts vary as to whether they were dating or just good friends), her mother, sisters, and at least one male relative showed up at the dance, ambushed her in the women’s bathroom, and made her go home, according to a People magazine account from Jan. 20, 1992.
Witnessing evil. Zein and Maria began proceedings to withdraw Tina from school in her senior year. Her sister referred to her as a whore during a guidance counselor’s meeting, the New York Daily News recounted. She also said Tina deserved to die.
The threat worried guidance counselor Pamela Fournier, who reminded the family they’d end up in prison if they acted upon it, according to the book Guarding the Secrets: Palestinian Terrorism and a Father’s Murder of His Too-American Daughter by Ellen Harris.
But the family wasn’t taking advice from any public school professionals.
On the evening of Nov. 6, 1989, the Isas called 911 to report Tina’s death.
Bloodbath at home. Tina had come home late that night and demanded $5,000, then attacked Zein with a knife when he refused, he explained to first responders.
Out of fear for his life, Zein grabbed the weapon from Tina and stabbed her eight times, he said.
But the medical examiner determined that the number of defensive wounds on Tina’s body refuted her parents’ story that she was the attacker.
Prosecutor’s godsend. Her friends from Roosevelt High School told police that Tina was terrified of Zein and Maria and had said if anything bad happened to her, they should tell police that her parents did it.
But the most explosive piece of evidence came as a surprise, and from the federal government no less.
The FBI had planted recording devices in the Isas’ apartment at 3759 Delor Street because they suspected Zein belonged to Abu Nidal, a terrorist group allegedly planning to blow up the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C.
Disturbing recording. In what St. Louis homicide detective Mike Guzy called a “once in a lifetime evidential gold mine,” the FBI provided a seven-minute audiotape of the murder. (The federal agents couldn’t rescue Tina because no one was monitoring the recording in real time.)
According to “Family Dishonor,” an episode of TV series Arrest & Trial, the first translators who started listening to the tape, which featured a mix of English, Arabic, and Portuguese, were too horrified by Tina’s screams to continue.
The recording revealed that the confrontation started with Maria arguing with Tina about her lifestyle, followed by Zein announcing that “tonight you are going to die” and stabbing her with a seven-inch deboning knife while the 200-pound Maria held her down.
Tina begged her mother for help during the attack. Maria told her to shut up.
Contrary to the Isas’ claim, Tina never demanded $5,000.
Shaky story. In the run-up to the ensuing trial, the defense strenuously argued that the judge should bar the tape from the courtroom.
That process ate up about a year but didn’t win any concessions.
The Isas’ explanation for what happened to Tina could be summed up as “here’s why she deserved to die, but we didn’t really murder her.”
First assistant circuit attorney Dee Joyce-Hayes, who Forensic Files watchers may remember from “Slippery Motives,” led the prosecution.
Sisters not protective. In addition to the murder tape, Joyce-Hayes had FBI phone recordings of Zein speaking to his older, married daughters, who encouraged the brutality.
Tina’s sister Soraia Salem, 24, suggested chaining the teenager in the basement and hiring a hit man, while another sister, Fatima Abdeljabbar, said that God should make Tina “sleep and not get up,” according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch account.
Fatima would later say in court she didn’t remember any such conversation.
The newspaper mentioned that the family owned some assets on the West Bank, so it’s possible Tina’s sisters wanted to get rid of her instead of share. Or perhaps Tina’s freedom made them jealous as they were trapped in drudgery-filled marriages, as Guarding the Secrets implies.
‘She’s the violent one.’ Whatever the case, the defense stuck to its story that Zein’s taunts of “Die, my daughter, die” were retorts in response to Tina’s knife attack upon him.
Defense lawyer Dan Reardon contended that on past occasions, Tina had attacked Zein with a meat cleaver and kicked him in his bad leg, the AP reported.
More doublespeak. Maria’s lawyer argued that Maria tried to protect Tina and was guilty of nothing but “being married to Zein Isa.”
At the same time, Maria told the judge that her daughter was disrespectful and that she and her husband “should not have to pay with our lives for something [Tina] did.”
Joyce-Hayes was careful to avoid stoking Islamaphobia as part of the prosecution’s case, according to a St. Louis Post Dispatch account:
“‘Many bad things have been done in the name of the Christian religion and in the name of Islam. We are not here to blame Islam or Islamic culture. We’re here to blame these people,’ said Joyce-Hayes, gesturing toward the defendants.”
Diabolical doings. The jury deliberated for just under four hours before returning with guilty verdicts.
Judge Charles Shaw gave Zein and Maria Isa sentences of death by lethal injection.
In 1993, Zein Isa briefly faced another indictment on racketeering charges for plotting the terrorist attack. (In fact, an alternative theory about Tina’s murder conjectures that Zein’s primary motive was to silence his youngest daughter because she knew too much about his activities in Abu Nidal.)
Goodbye to you. The feds decided to drop the terrorism charges against Zein because he already had virtually no chance of getting out of prison.
And fortunately, the state of Missouri didn’t have to pay for Zein’s three hots and a cot for very long.
His health deteriorated on death row. In 1997, authorities moved him to Boone Hospital Center with corrections officers guarding him 24 hours a day.
Mom gets a break. He died of diabetes and other complications a week later, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch and a New York Daily News retrospective from Nov. 10, 2013.
In 1997, Maria’s capital punishment sentence was reduced to LWOP because a court ruled her brutality should be considered separately from her husband’s, according to the NY Daily News.
Her son-in-law Azizz Hamed called Maria “a victim of her husband, and society here,” according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 17, 1997.
Inappropriate terminology? Maria died of natural causes at age 70 on April 30, 2014, in the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic, and Correctional Center, commonly known as the Vandalia.
Good riddance.
Finally, it should be pointed out that some observers believe that categorizing deaths like Tina Isa’s as “honor killings” is to falsely normalize them, because they’re aberrations that most Islamic peoples find horrifying. And they are caused by sexism, not Islam.
Or as one YouTube commenter summed it up, “This isn’t Islam, it’s Hislam.”
That’s all for this post, until next time, cheers. — RR
