>> without it, we couldn't have proved that brad was even dead. he would still be a missing person. even before the attack on the world trade center in new york, intelligence agencies were watching a number of suspected terrorist cells throughout the united states. the fbi uncovered evidence of a terrible crime by some individuals using the cover of a st. louis grocery store. but it took a forensic autopsy and a tape to reveal the entire story. 16-year-old tina isa was the kind of daughter most parents

dream of. she was a high school athlete, popular, a straight a student and wanted to attend college and become an airline pilot. >> tina wanted to be american. tina wanted to be independent. she wanted to have a career. she wanted to travel. she wanted to be her own person. >> her mother and father, zein and maria isa, were immigrants from palestine and ran a grocery store in downtown st. louis. >> like most immigrants, the palestinians went into the food business. that's a tradition in america. food service is one of the easiest types of businesses to operate. what was especially appealing to the isas and their relatives it was another way to rip off america. they could avoid paying taxes. they would play little games with food stamp fraud, grocery coupons. i mean, zein even said he loved america because there were so

many ways to rip it off. >> on november 6, 1989, tina was working the night shift at a fast-food restaurant. according to the isas, tina arrived home at midnight and there was an argument. tina said she wanted to live on her own and demanded her parents give her $5,000 to support herself. when they refused, they say tina pulled a knife from her backpack and threatened them. in the tussle, zein said he turned the knife on his daughter in self-defense. >> the father was saying it was self-defense. the wife was saying, yes, it was self-defense. i was standing there watching it. so the only two witnesses to the crime had their stories kind of get together that their daughter had attacked them and then in defending themselves, the father killed her. >> news of tina isa's death stunned her friends and classmates.

>> just her charisma, just her attitude overall, period. she was too nice of a person to have this happen to. >> why would he want to stab his own child? it's terrible. i feel so bad. >> tina's classmates told police that tina often rebelled against her parents and their old-world traditions. they also said the isas objected to tina's choice of a boyfriend. >> he was an honor student. he was very, very bright. he was at the magnate schools, a sophisticated program in st. louis public schools. he was an artist. he painted. he drew. he wrote poems. >> i don't think it was just that he was black, i think the real issue was she had a boyfriend and they could no longer control her. >> when the fbi heard about tina's death, they called lead

investigator harry hager with some astonishing news. u.s. intelligence had photographed zein isa attending a meeting with known terrorists in mexico. all had ties to the palestine liberation organization and international terror broker, abu nidal. >> abu nidal means father of war. abu, father. nidal, war. and he was one of most vicious terrorists around. he's responsible for simultaneous bombings in vienna, rome. >> over a two-year period, zein isa traveled overseas 14 times to caracas, athens, london, israel, zurich, and madrid. >> the fbi, among others, were maintaining a watch on middle eastern families, some that might presumably have connections with terrorist cells. the isas were maintaining what might have been a safehouse for one of the middle eastern terrorist groups. >> so the isa family were well known to u.s. intelligence. >> as a federal undercover said to me, these people are as organized as the mafia, not nearly as lovable. >> investigators wondered if

there was more to the story of tina's death than her mother and father were saying. tina's parents insisted her death was in self-defense

tina's parents insisted her death was in self-defense because she had attacked them with a knife. tina's father was covered in blood. and had cuts on his hands which he said were defensive wounds that resulted from his daughter's knife attack. >> when i reviewed a little bit of history i knew at the time, it sounded extremely suspicious to me. >> medical examiners have long referred to the autopsy as the silent witness. a way for the victim to tell her story. things that the suspects in a crime usually leave out. at tina's autopsy, forensic pathologist dr. philip burch started his examination with a forensic technique known as wound pattern analysis. >> i didn't look just at one wound in this case, i looked at all of the wounds as a whole. >> tina sustained six deep stab wounds to the solar plexus, all in close proximity.

dr. burch believed any one of them could have caused her death. >> the serious injuries to it, tightly clustered around her lower central chest and abdomen. i was told that she was supposedly involved in a wild free-for-all-type fight with a knife. and that seemed to be very odd that all of the fatal injuries were very tightly clustered within a specific area of the body. >> that's because stabbing victims usually move during an attack. i didn't feel that she was involved in a fight where she was able to move her extremities freely. that is, either she stayed stock still of her own volition, for whatever reason, or was unable to move or she was actually restrained. >> dr. burch's theory was

supported by paramedics who said tina's arms were above her head on the floor, as if she had been restrained. >> zein could not have held her. he was not a big man. his daughter was probably as big or bigger than he. he could not have inflicted that kind of injury pattern on her and held her at the same time. >> the only other person in the room was tina's mother, maria. maria said she was on the sofa when the fight occurred, but forensic evidence indicated otherwise. >> there was body hair and blood from the girl on the insides of the white sweater that maria had been wearing at the time. and that supported our theory that maria was holding her while zein stabbed her. >> stop moving! >> it went beyond self-defense. this was like driven by anger, passion, some purpose other than self-defense. >> investigators then took a closer look at the wounds on zein's hand, wounds that he said

were defensive. >> the story didn't match what we saw. and was a small, like i said, looked like a paper cut. >> i think that in stabbing her, his hands were so bloody and slippery, what really happened, his hand slipped down on the blade of the knife and cut it right across the outside of his palm right below the little finger. >> this explains why zein's blood was found on the handle of the knife found beside his daughter. but prosecutors had a problem. would a jury believe that a father and mother would kill their own child simply because she had an outside job and a boyfriend? >> it sounds so aberrant, so strange. i mean, she was a model student. we are talking about absolute control. zein isa still mentally was listening to tapes from circa 1945 in a palestinian village and that's the way he thought his daughter should behave.

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the forensic evidence clearly showed that 16-year-old tina isa had not been killed in

self-defense as her parents claimed. dr. victor levine is an expert on the middle east and says tina's death sounded tragically familiar. >> zein isa comes from a small town in palestine and he carried with him that whole baggage. every day there are dozens and even hundreds of women who are in some fashion killed for the commission of some crime involving the sexual honor of the family. >> though dating is common in the united states, it's discouraged in parts of the middle east where arranged marriages are the norm. >> when a man and his family have daughters, daughters are the purity of these women, of the daughters, then guarantees a marriage. you see, and the delivery of the girl intact, virginally intact,

which then commands a higher dowery. a girl who has been violated does not command a dowery. in fact, may not be able to find a husband. >> tina's death may have been part of an old tradition -- the honor killing. >> she stained the family's honor. and blood, zein would say, blood must cleanse blood. >> in societies where honor killings are common, it is generally a killing done by a male member of a family, presumably to avenge a dishonor on the honor of the female member of the family. she had a black boyfriend. this was enough to cause the anger of her family and her father to arise to the boiling point, where indeed he felt the family had been so shamed by her indiscretion that the only way to avenge it was to kill her.

>> prosecutors were convinced she had been murdered in cold blood by her own parents. but they knew a conviction would be difficult. it would be the isas' story of self-defense against the opinion of the medical examiner. but soon, investigators got an unexpected break. the fbi admitted they had wire tapped the isas' home because of zein's suspected ties to known terrorists. >> wiretaps were put in under the foreign intelligence surveillance act, known as fisa. fisa allows the fbi to tap you, wiretaps, that run reel to reel, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. >> isa was not considered important enough to monitor these wiretaps 24 hours a day, so the fbi wasn't sure what was

on them. and they would need to be translated since the isas spoke arabic. fortunately, the fbi used the best listening devices available. >> they're top of the line. they can pick up a whisper at 50 feet, some of these things, if they're placed properly. >> placement of any listening device is crucial. after breaking into the isa apartment, agents did not have much time to plant the bug. they needed not only a place to hide the device, but also a power source. a battery-operated device is the easiest to plant. but with a long-term surveillance, the battery would need to be replaced periodically. >> get in there once, you are lucky. get in there twice, you are even luckier. and the third time, you tend to get caught. >> the fbi had been able to connect the devices to electric inside isa's apartment. and prosecutors learned that the

wiretaps clearly picked up the altercation between tina and her parents. but the fbi was concerned about releasing the tapes for a public trial, fearing they would compromise their electronic surveillance of other suspected terrorists. ultimately, the attorney general of the united states at the time, richard thornburg, decided to release them. >> it was the most chilling, cold-blooded, horrifying thing i had ever heard, or ever probably will hear. >> you don't have to have it translated. you didn't have to turn the volume up. in fact, at several times, you want to turn the volume down. >> but would the tape reveal whether tina isa was killed in self-defense or murdered in cold blood? ohhhhh...

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prosecutors now had something almost unheard of in the history of american justice, an audio recording of the events before, during, and after tina isa's death. several weeks before the murder, the fbi surveillance recorded this telephone conversation between zein and his relative in which they discussed ways to

make tina's death look like an accident. >> translator: as you have said, she threatened me and i killed her. >> translator: she threatened me and i will put the knife in her hand after she falls. leave the story to me. >> five hours before tina's death, zein called his daughter from a previous marriage. >> translator: one can fight the whole world. but who wants to fight an enemy in your own house? >> translator: when the news comes to me, i will put on my best dress and go out. my worries will be gone forever. >> in the middle east, shame is something which is felt collectively by a family. it is the discovery of the act. you have done something bad, the community knows about it, your entire family is shamed. >> the tapes reveal the isas were angry tina took a job at a fast-food restaurant without their approval and they were also upset she continued to date

her boyfriend. when tina arrived home, this was the welcome from her mother. >> that's gonna be the last time she is ever going to leave that apartment. >> zein and maria confronted tina about her boyfriend. >> the argument escalates. the evidence suggests, zein went into the kitchen and grabbed a knife. tina then screams, pleading with her mother to help. >> tina, pleading, "mother, please help me.

mother, can't you make him stop"? >> and then he said, "die my daughter, die," when she was dying. >> maria held tina while zein stabbed her to death. >> and the telltale sign was the mother's response. what help? no. shut up. >> nowhere on the tape did tina demand $5,000. and there was no reference to tina having a knife. the tape also reveals the isas waited for close to 30 minutes to call police after the murder. zein and maria isa were both charged with first-degree murder. authorities speculated that the isas were afraid of what tina might reveal to others had there

been a permanent rift in the family. >> this indictment alleges there were other reasons because of her knowledge of their terrorist activity. >> and her plans to talk about those activities? >> their concerns that she might talk about it. >> ellen harris wrote a book about this case called "guarding the secrets." >> the prosecution offered zein a deal, that if he pled guilty to murder in the first degree, they would go lighter on maria. and he refused to do so. so he had no interest in saving his own wife. >> after hearing the tapes and the medical examiner's report, the jury found zein and maria isa guilty. they were both sentenced to death. zein died in prison of natural causes in 1998, before his

execution could be carried out. maria's death sentence was later reversed on a technicality. but she will spend the rest of her life in prison without parole. had it not been for zein isa's suspected ties to terrorism, the prosecutor's theory about what happened to tina isa would have been just that. but the audio tape proved what many jurists would have found difficult to accept -- >> you can hear in her voice, her parents were murdering her. there's not a whole lot you can say. it's, as i said, earlier the most horrifying thing i ever hope to hear. and -- it's just-- it's incomprehensible. >> the medical examiner did not hear the audiotape until some time after the trial.

but he wasn't surprised by what it revealed. >> i was able to parallel the information that was provided on the tapes with information that i simply saw with my own eyes looking at the dead body on the morning that i did the autopsy. as far as i am concerned, her death is intentional homicide. for almost 20 years a young woman was believed to be missing in the dense colorado mountains. but 12 small pine needles and a clump of hair suggested that investigators narrow their search to an area 9,000 feet above sea level. this is how forensic plant ecology helped solve a very cold case. >> after graduating from college, 25-year-old michelle wallace de