[soft piano instrumental playing]
[man] I don't believe that you can justly kill anybody.
I'm not for people losing their life.
I just got dragged into the mix.
There was so much media arousal over the case.
They purported it to be a... a religious murder,
which is not the fact.
There's nothing in the Muslim religion that states for you to hurt anybody.
[music turns ominous]
[man] I'm thankful that I'm alive,
but at the same time, I sometimes regret my decision.
I feel like there was something we... we could've done,
just at the time we didn't know.
I didn't know what I could do.
[music intensifies, fades]
[theme music playing]
[unsettling music playing]
[man 1] Warden has given permission for him not to wear the handcuffs.
- [man 2] Okay. Thank you so much. - [man 1] Okay.
My name is Nasim Ali Irsan.
I was convicted of first-degree murder charge
and my sentence is a 40-year sentence in TDCJ.
[gentle guitar music playing]
[Nasim] I was born September 17, 1993,
and I grew up in Conroe, Texas, Houston area.
My childhood was a little bit rough.
I had a total of 12 siblings,
uh, including myself, and my family is... is... Hmm, it's complicated.
[music fades]
[ominous music playing]
[Nasim] I was born to strict parents.
You just did what you were told, and that was it.
There was no questions asked.
Religion dominated everything in the house.
I didn't know why I was a Muslim.
I just knew that I was a Muslim by force of my father.
He pushed everything that he believed upon us.
If you missed a prayer,
that, you know, that was grounds for having your ass beat.
Excuse my language.
But he grew up in a city
of a Middle Eastern Third World country.
So, he believes that the way that he grew up on was the religion,
which is not the fact.
That's the culture upon which he was brought up.
[music continues]
[Nasim] As kids, we were not allowed to have any kind of friends.
He deemed everybody who was not a Muslim, or of his same denomination,
to be infidels.
When I was in school, I got pulled out of school
and my parents refused to allow me back in school because I made some friends.
It kind of made me a social outcast.
Uh, I never... I never grew up around anybody to talk to.
So, I was... I was sort of a loner.
I have four older sisters.
One of them, I... I barely ever met.
The other sister underneath her is Nadia.
And then, the one underneath her is Nesreen.
Nadia and Nesreen had a little clique,
a little pact that they had between each other.
They're the ones that took care of everything.
They fed everybody, cleaned the house.
My mom and dad's duty was... was merely just an existence.
They never cooked for us, they never cleaned for us.
They... they punished us, but they never really played a part in our life.
That was all Nadia and Nesreen.
[faint sirens wailing]
[poignant music playing]
[Nasim] The proposition was brought to them that
they were either gonna go to college
or they were gonna go to Jordan and be forced into marriage.
So they chose to go to college,
and, uh... [hesitates] ...but there...
there was a strict rule that they'd have to take the same classes
and be in the same... same courses.
That way they could watch over each other.
The few friends that my father did believe that they had
were allegedly Muslims, and they were females.
In such a sense, he'd approved of it.
To his knowledge, they'd go straight from college,
do their classes, and come straight home.
It became about two years into it
when Nesreen and Nadia started be... becoming more, um,
I want to say "rebellious" to his orders.
If he would have known about the independence or the social life
that my sisters had in college, it would've been a problem.
[unsettling music playing]
My father, Ali, did tell my sister Nesreen,
"I would put a bullet between your eyes
if I found out you were dating anybody that wasn't a Muslim."
[ominous rumble]
It enraged him knowing that she was intentionally
and purposely disobeying his orders.
She would have been killed had she stayed in the house any longer than she did.
[dramatic sting, music continues]
[Nasim] She managed to escape, and she ran out of a window
that, you know, that she had cracked open, and she made it out.
Everything started from the day that Nesreen ran away...
and that's what led to the unfortunate events
that we are in prison for right now.
[poignant music playing]
[Nasim] My dad felt like he took his daughter away from him.
But he believed that the dishonor was blamed on the friends
that he found out she had in college.
That's when he told me there was this girl named Gelareh
that had played a part in my sister Nesreen's running away
and converting to a Christian.
[tense music playing]
[Nasim] My father believed that she aided and abetted my sister
in disobeying his orders,
and he deemed my sister to be his honor.
So, he felt that she had soiled his honor
by assisting my sister Nesreen to be converted into a Christian.
He felt like that was enough for her to be killed.
The only way to clean his honor would be by blood.
And he began the stalking of Miss Gelareh.
[tense music continues]
[Nasim] It would be nights that he would go out
and monitor her movements.
See where she's going, see who she talks to.
My father, he had GPS trackers that he purchased online
to gather information, intel, on Miss Gelareh's car,
which is how, in the end, he had found out where she was.
I used to go on these checks
and my job was to watch and document license plates numbers
and things that I seen going in and out of this house.
I was only 17, 18 years old at the time, and I didn't know no better.
- [tense music continues] - [dog barking]
[Nasim] There was night watches to plan what the attack would be.
And that's what... what led to that.
[music fades]
- [menacing music playing] - [sirens wailing]
[gunfire]
[phone static]
[woman 1] Houston Fire and Ambulance.
- What's the location of the emergency? - [woman 2 ] Augusta Drive.
My neighbor's been shot. I think she's in the car.
Please send someone quickly. I'm not sure she's alive.
[woman 1] Can you tell if she's awake right now?
[woman 2] She's not.
[woman 1] Okay, we are dispatching emergency units.
[woman 1] Okay, just remain safe if the assailant is nearby.
Do not disturb the scene or move any weapons.
[woman 2] Yeah. Oh, God.
[tense music playing]
[man] This is probably one of the cases that, you know, got to me personally.
I had a plan to retire a year earlier than I did, but I just couldn't.
I couldn't let it go.
This is the case that kept me here.
My name's, uh, Officer Richard Bolton.
Retired now, but I was a police officer for the City of Houston for 32 years.
Well, this is not a high crime area. This is a really nice area of Houston.
It was just shocking to think something like that would happen here.
When I arrived that night,
her vehicle was smashed into this garage door right here.
And the door was all caved in.
The car was still in gear and the tires were still spinning.
You know, you could smell the burning rubber, still.
We're shining flashlights in here.
She was sitting in the driver's seat,
and she was slumped over the console this way...
[inhales]...you know, facedown.
There was one wound to her upper arm
and one wound to the right side of her head,
and it was apparent that the victim had been shot.
At least twice.
Point-blank range through the passenger window.
This wasn't a robbery.
Her purse and wallet were still in the front seat of her car.
Somebody, they followed her in here to kill her.
It was a pretty horrific scene.
You don't ever get used to it.
The most difficult thing is we had to make death notification to her parents.
You know, it almost made you want to break down. It... It was that...
You know... [hesitates] ...it was hard.
We didn't have any answers for them.
We did not know a motive.
We didn't have a clue who did this to her.
[somber music playing]
[man, on video] Gelareh, say something.
What? Like what?
[man] A message to Iran.
[sighs]
[in Farsi] I look forward to a day when we can all be free like this in Iran.
[somber music continues]
[man, in English] This is where I first met Gelareh.
It was during a candle vigil for people who died during the protest in Iran.
Gelareh was right at the front.
Out of thousands of faces, she had a face that you would remember.
The sun was going down.
Candles...
Music, singing...
It... It was a very special moment.
The irony is, later on, we had a candle vigil for Gelareh.
Here, the very same place.
My name is Seth Eslami,
and I was a friend of Gelareh.
Gelareh grew up in the capital of Iran, Tehran, the largest city.
When you grow up in a country where
there's a certain power in charge that tells you how to think,
what to think, what to like. Right?
Then freedom becomes very valuable.
So when you come to a free environment like here,
then you realize it, and you're like, "Wow, this is so sweet."
"This is so wonderful," you know?
She wanted her friends and family and fellow, you know, countrymen
to have the same thing.
Especially as a female, she was definitely passionate about equality.
[children exclaiming]
[Seth] We started working together during the protest events
and got closer and we became good friends.
She became good friends with my wife.
She was the only person who ever babysit for us.
She was one of those optimistic ones.
You wouldn't see much pessimism in her. Yeah, she... she never gave up hope.
[poignant music playing]
[birdsong]
[Seth] It was a feeling of pure shock.
No, these are not feelings that...
Uh... This is the feeling that I hope nobody has to go through.
Let's just put it this way.
It just didn't make any sense.
As far as I know, police had no suspects.
And they came up with the largest reward in Houston history.
They put a $200,000 reward for any information.
And then the news got big.
Thirty-year-old Gelareh Bagherzadeh was murdered,
shot to death near her parents' home in the Galleria area.
Mysterious death of an activist pushing for women's rights in Iran.
Now there are new questions about whether her activist past
could have played a role in her death.
There was a theory that this was done because of her activism.
"Oh, yes, the Iranian government went and killed this, you know, activist."
But this doesn't make sense.
You know, yes, we're not a fan of the Iranian government,
but let's focus on something more realistic.
Certain questions never leave your mind, you know?
Did you miss something? Did you... Is there something to know,
or is there something to be afraid of?
But, in her case, it just did not make any sense.
I can't imagine how her family was going through with it.
You know, as a friend, it was difficult for me, but her family...
Unbelievable.
Every time I met them, you could see it in her mother's eyes.
Me, friends, people that I knew, we had no idea.
We had no clue.
[music continues]
[music fades]
[ominous music playing]
- [Nesreen screaming] - [woman, on phone] 911, hello?
[Nesreen] Oh, ma'am, my husband's been shot!
He's on the ground, and there's blood all over the place!
- Ma'am, please help me! I love him! - [woman] Okay.
[Nesreen, crying] Why, God? Why did God do this to me?
[woman] God wasn't the one that did it, sweetie.
[Nesreen sobbing]
[soft suspenseful music playing]
[man] I've worked criminal cases, I've worked counterterrorism cases.
This one, I'll always remember.
My name is Carlos Acosta. I'm a special agent with FBI,
and I was the lead investigator on the Nasim Irsan investigation.
After the FBI became involved,
we identified that there was a clear link between both murders.
Nesreen was Coty Beavers' wife and Gelareh's best friend.
The first thing we did was interview Nesreen.
She made the allegations that her father, Ali, was involved in both...
not only the murder of Coty Beavers,
but also the murder of her best friend, Gelareh.
So we focused on Nesreen's father, Ali,
and we started by searching his property.
It was one of the longest non-stop search warrants that we conducted.
We were able to find evidence linking back to the murders.
One was a particular .38 caliber revolver,
which was the same caliber as the murder weapon
that was utilized in the Gelareh murder.
We also discovered that in the faucets of the roof
were two car navigation devices.
And so, with those we had enough evidence to put him at both murder sites.
All of the evidence was pointing to Ali.
So we... we thought we had him for both murders.
Until we discovered a call between Ali and Nasim.
[crows cawing]
Ali was in jail, so everything that he was saying
on the open line was recorded.
Nasim was speaking to his dad about the murder of Gelareh.
[Ali, on recording] Nasim, listen to me, baby.
[Nasim] I'm a very, very bad man.
I'm very bad. I don't know how many lives have to be lost.
[Ali] Nasim, listen to me, baby.
[Nasim] I'm dangerous. I'm a very, very dangerous man.
That's all I can say.
God knows.
God knows and soon the world will too.
[Ali] Nasim, listen to me.
[Nasim] There was two people that knew and now they can't speak.
[Carlos] After the jail call, we realized that Nasim was involved.
He was feeling guilty,
and he was pretty much making admission to murder.
That was quite a break.
So, we start looking into Nasim.
And other pieces of evidence started to mount up.
[suspenseful music intensifies]
[Carlos] We realized on the night Gelareh was killed,
the family was stopped,
heading from Houston back toward Conroe.
If you drove from that murder scene,
it was the exact route you'd have had to drive to get to Ali Irsan's residence.
[officer, on video] Come on over here for me.
[Carlos] The time period fit perfectly, the car that he was driving fit perfectly,
and there was a third person in the back seat.
[officer] Why was you going so fast?
We knew it was one of the sons,
and suspect number one was Nasim.
[suspenseful music continues]
[Carlos] Ultimately, his own mother, Shmou, agreed to testify
that it was Nasim that actually committed the murder of Gelareh...
which really corroborated the other evidence that we had uncovered.
I have no doubts that Nasim actually fired that gun that killed Gelareh.
We brought criminal charges on the state charge of capital murder
against Ali and Nasim.
[newscaster] Guilty of capital murder.
That was the verdict today in the Ali Irsan trial.
Arguably, one of the longest murder trials in recent history
with one of the shortest jury deliberations.
Just 35 minutes. The next phase, sentencing.
[unsettling music playing]
[man] In Texas, if you're charged with capital murder,
there are only two possible outcomes.
It's either life without parole, or the death penalty.
As defense attorneys, your duty is to your client,
and getting the best possible outcome for that client.
Sometimes we're in the business of damage control.
My name's Daniel Werlinger,
and I was one of Nasim Irsan's defense attorneys, uh, during his case.
The Nasim I saw was a young man who was very much lost,
but also seemed to have an understanding of what was... what he was facing,
and... and understood that, really, the only way to help himself
was to help us try and save some part of his life.
Once we started looking at Nasim's life,
it became apparent that Ali Irsan very much controlled his son,
and there was a lot of abuse
that ultimately caused Nasim to be a pawn in... in Ali's game.
[Nasim, on recording] My relationship with my father wasn't one
that I believe a normal kid has with their father.
My earliest memory was of my father beating me.
I was probably around the age of three or four,
and that was my earliest memory of him.
We went through a lot of... a lot of punishments
that people would say were extreme,
but, of course at the time, I felt like it was normal.
Everything from beatings to being stabbed by my parents.
Uh, the... the punishments were endless.
When my father wanted something, there was no choice.
He got what he wanted.
Nasim's treatment by his father was absolutely awful.
And no person should ever have to endure that, and there's no...
It's not a cultural thing. It's not a... It's not a discipline thing.
It's just abuse.
Ali Irsan did things to Nasim Irsan that warped him
and turned him from being someone who could be a normal, productive citizen
into being the cold, calculating foot soldier and muscle of Ali Irsan.
Once we really started digging into the case,
and realizing the level of abuse
that Nasim experienced at the hands of his father,
we knew right then and there,
this was going to be, uh, the cornerstone of our defense.
This was the way in which we were going to save his life.
Breaking developments in a story we have been tracking since 2012.
A new guilty plea in the so-called honor killings.
[reporter] Nasim Irsan made his way to court today shackled and disheveled.
Today, Irsan took a plea deal.
His capital murder charge was dismissed in exchange for him going to prison
for 40 years for murder.
Meanwhile, Irsan's father is on death row for killing his daughter's husband.
The reason why he entered a plea of guilty to murder
was because the facts and evidence were...
would've been proved beyond a reasonable doubt
that he was a party to one homicide.
Thankfully, he realized that
if he could be secured a guilty plea for a lesser charge of murder,
then that was the way to go.
[Nasim, on recording] I pled guilty because every time I go to court,
they're telling me that I may receive a life without parole sentence,
or the death penalty sentence, for a crime that I didn't commit.
See, the murder of Gelareh Bagherzadeh, I didn't personally have a hand in.
So, my only option, I felt, was to plead guilty to this charge
and receive the least amount of time that I could.
So this is why you take pleas on the record.
Um, it's not uncommon that, um, once a person gets to prison
that they all of a sudden decide they're not guilty of an offense.
Even if he wants to say now that he didn't pull the trigger,
it doesn't change the fact that he's guilty of murder.
He was very much involved in this case.
And of course, in Texas, if you are a party to a crime,
you're guilty no matter what role you played in that offense,
whether you were the triggerman, a setup man or a getaway driver.
But, regardless of what Nasim tells you today versus what he said in the past,
the evidence is crystal clear
that Nasim's father is the mastermind of these offenses.
And if you take him out of the equation, none of this happens.
Nasim did not have an issue with Gelareh.
He did not have an issue with Coty Beavers.
Uh, his issue was that if his father told him to jump,
his response was, "How high?"
That was his issue.
[Seth] I grew up with an abusive father.
Sometimes those figures have a certain influence on us,
that they want... that we want to please them.
We want to do whatever it takes, regardless of how evil their plans are.
I don't want anybody to get abused.
I don't want anybody to get beaten, but that doesn't justify murder.
That doesn't justify murder in any way.
And in this specific case, Gelareh did nothing to this guy.
Gelareh did absolutely nothing to this guy.
If, you know, if someone else abuses you, you don't go murder someone else.
[Nasim, on recording] I can't say for certain who shot Gelareh Bagherzadeh
because I wasn't...
I wasn't there at the actual moment that she was shot.
Now, I can only assume that it was my father.
I stress the fact that
I... my job, personally, was only that of... of mandate.
I was at the house and I was... I was forced to wake up,
and when... when the murder was done,
I was forced to take the pistol that was used, the gun that was used,
and bury it in the backyard.
[click]
Wow.
Uh, well. [sighs]
Uh, my first impression is, I... I don't believe it.
I don't believe what he's saying.
I think he is just trying to find a way to get out of prison early.
What he is saying, that...
he didn't do it, and he doesn't know who did it... [laughs]
...'cause he wasn't there. I... I don't...
I don't believe it.
Even if what he just said is true,
which I strongly doubt... it doesn't change anything.
He refused to say anything after her murder.
Whether he was the one who pulled the trigger or not,
he could have gone at any point and said something.
And that would have saved Coty Beavers's life.
It's a little aggravating.
I say a little... [rueful laugh] ...but more than a little.
It's done. It's finished.
You know, you pleaded guilty.
You went through the entire process. It wasn't like an overnight process.
Years went by, and then after all these years,
you just come and say, "Oh, well, it wasn't me."
"I don't even know who did it."
It's... it's insulting in a way. It's...
You know? It's insulting to everybody who was involved.
Do I think that he was the mastermind behind the whole thing?
No. Everybody knows that's not true.
But, he had his chances.
He could have... [inhales]
...he could have helped his own conscience.
Big time.
But he didn't.
[dark music playing]
[Nasim] I'm not a murderer. I've never even hurt an animal.
We're so numb to emotion. We just do what we're told.
Even... even somebody talking about murder, it doesn't affect you.
I didn't know those people.
I didn't blame Nesreen for leaving,
I didn't blame my sister for wanting to get out of the house.
I didn't blame my sister for going somewhere where she felt safe,
because I tried to do that, and I wasn't able.
I never thought anything she did was wrong,
and I never thought anything this serious would come out of it.
[Nasim, on recording] I'm a very, very bad man.
I'm very bad. I don't know how many lives have to be lost.
[Ali] Nasim, listen to me, baby.
[Nasim] I'm dangerous. I'm a very, very dangerous man.
So, yeah, that phone call is hard to explain
if you're only looking at those statements by itself.
I didn't say that I killed those people.
I said that they were dead because of me.
They were dead because of me because I could've said something to the police.
I could have said something. Even though I might've been killed for it.
I... I... There's a chance I could have stopped that.
I feel morally culpable, but not as much as I used to.
I feel that there's a... there's a sense of blame,
but not... not so much that I lost my life behind... in prison but behind it,
because I didn't do anything, and...
People say that I should have stopped it, I knew enough to stop it,
but they say that from a distance.
They say that not being in the situation, the predicament that I was in.
At times, as a child, you do want your father's approval,
but there's times when you...
you just give up and you don't care anymore.
And you do what you're told.
[melancholic music playing]
[music fades]
[closing theme music playing]