Posted on 07/30/2002 3:32:54 PM PDT by hellinahandcart
Domestic Violence Blamed For Triple Murder
Mother, Grandmother, Aunt Stabbed To Death
POSTED: 9:27 a.m. EDT July 30, 2002
UPDATED: 4:09 p.m. EDT July 30, 2002
JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- Two boys found their mother, grandmother and aunt stabbed to death Tuesday morning inside their home, the Hudson County prosecutor's office said.
The killings appear to stem from domestic violence, Prosecutor Edward J. DeFazio said.
"At this point it appears it is not a stranger-on-stranger event," DeFazio said. No arrest warrants have been issued, he said.
The husband of one of the women was found at his workplace soon after police were called about 7:30 a.m., said Daniel J. Gibney, chief of detectives in the prosecutor's office. Officers have been to the workplaces of the other husbands but had not located them by midday, he said.
The boys, ages 6 and 3, lived at the home with the six adults, Gibney said.
All the victims were found on the floor: one in a back bedroom, one in a front bedroom and another in a hallway, Gibney said. They were clothed.
There were no immediate signs of a break-in, and the contents of the home did not appear to be disturbed, he said.
Officers at the two-story home could be seen measuring and taking pictures of what appeared to be blood on a picture window.
Gibney could not offer a motive. "Its going to take some time," he said, because the other husbands still had not been interviewed.
The women were last seen alive Tuesday morning, said DeFazio, a longtime assistant county prosecutor who was sworn in as prosecutor on Monday after serving for a year and a half as a state Superior Court judge.
DeFazio succeeds Frederick Theemling, who was prosecutor for five years and has become a state Superior Court judge.
They released the names of the victims, but I wasn't able to catch enough to transcribe.
The family are Guyanese and the husband they can't yet locate is a Muslim. There was apparently a dispute between this husband and the wife (who had possibly converted?) regarding in which faith the two boys, and the two children on the way, would be raised. Whether this information was revealed by the surviving husbands or by neighbors was not made clear during the broadcast..
I have waited an hour for an update to appear on the website, but it hasn't happened yet; all the local news websites seem to be pretty far behind on this story. So the details are likely to change.
Jersey City Boys Discover Dead Bodies Of Mother, Grandmother, Aunt
(Jersey City-WABC, July 30, 2002) — Two young Jersey City boys made a gruesome discovery Tuesday morning, waking up to find their mother, grandmother and aunt murdered in their home. New Jersey Reporter Jeff Rossen has the story.
Sources close to the investigation told Eyewitness News Tuesday that it was a family member who went on a rampage, stabbing the three women to death. He was apparently angry over religion, and how the family was practicing.
Two young boys, five year-old Andrew and his three year-old brother slept through the murders. They were downstairs, the killings took place upstairs. Their mother, Sharon Yassim, their grandmother, Bernadette Seajatan, and their pregnant aunt, Marlyn Hassan were all killed.
Indrani Basdeu, Victim's Relative: "They were so nice, very kind people. Why did they have to come and do this? Taking two dauthers away, and the mother too?"
The two boys found the bodies of the three women when they woke up, at around 7:00 Tuesday morning. The two boys then went to a neighbor's house across the street, to try and get help.
Asifa Bedun, Neighbor: "'My mommy's dead. Please call 9-1-1.'"
Police sources told Eyewitness News that the murders stemmed from a fight between family members over religion. Marlyn was brought up Hindu, but converted to Islam when she was married.
Because she was pregnant, she could not pray as much. Our sources say that her husband was angry about that, concerned about how they raised their children.
Alem, Marlyn husband, is missing, and police are searching for him.
Late Tuesday, a family member confirmed that there was tension between the couple over religion.
Baldeo Seajatan, Victim's Husband: "She didn't complain to me, so I didn't have no right to interfere."
Jeff Rossen, Eyewitness News: "But were you aware of problems between them?"
Seajatan: "The only problems were how to raise the children."
In a relatively quiet section of Jersey City, a bloody hand print on the window marks the house where the murders occurred.
Madeline Lombardi, Neighbor: "I'm sick. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to think. Because we never had things like this happening around here. Never."
Prosecutors confirm that they are searching for the missing man, Alem Hassan. He has not been named a suspect, but police are looking to talk with him in connection with the vicious crime.
Last Updated: Jul 30, 2002
And I could have sworn I heard "Guyanese", but that doesn't appear anywhere in the update.
Oh well. At least I am not responsible for "Marlyn husband" (yeesh!); that's straight off the website.
I hope the three-year-old is too young to remember any of this.
Meanwhile there's a very dangerous man loose in New Jersey.
But here are two articles from New Jersey sources this morning.
Mother, 2 daughters slain in home; religious issues are a possible motive in Jersey City tragedy
BLOODBATH(Yes, I know, but it's still a better title than the one I was stuck with for this thread :-/)
I heard on WABC Radio News about 1/2 hour ago they cought one of the guys on a bus as it was about to enter Canada. Was he the one (the last one)?
wnbc.com - News - Husband Arrested In Murder Of Wife, In-Laws
Alim Hassan, 31, was taken off the bus after authorities received an anonymous phone call Tuesday evening. The caller warned that a man who had stabbed the three women to death in their Jersey City home earlier in the day was headed to Toronto from New York City, said Prosecutor Edward J. DeFazio.
Hassan was turned over first to U.S. immigration officials, then to police in Buffalo, where he appeared in New York state court Wednesday morning, DeFazio said.
Bernadette Seajatan, 49, and her daughters, Sharon Yassim, 30, and Marlyn Hassan, 29, who was married to the defendant, were found dead in the home they shared with their husbands and Yassim's two sons.
The two boys, ages 3 and 6, discovered the bloody bodies of their mother, aunt and grandmother, after the three men had left the house Tuesday morning.
The family is from Guyana, on the northern coast of South America, and the defendant is not a U.S. citizen, DeFazio said.
After receiving the tip, the mounties called Jersey City police to confirmed that the crime had occurred, then notified Canadian customs officials, who also alerted their U.S. counterparts, DeFazio said.
"Needless to say, we appreciate the cooperation of all the law enforcement involved," he said.
Meanwhile, investigators already suspected that the crime was domestic in nature and had gone to interview relatives of the defendant in a Pennsylvania suburb of Philadelphia, where they found the vehicle Hassan had driven from Jersey City.
Apparently, Hassan then made his way to New York, where he boarded the bus at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, DeFazio said.
"So we knew that he wasn't in the car, and we at that point were under the assumption that he was taking public transportation. And the anonymous caller told us he was headed for Toronto," DeFazio said.
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