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The Whole Truth About the Tair Rada Murder

Doing justice

Re-opening the case

Punishing killer

I joined the group in 2011,

"The Whole Truth About Tair's Murder" Facebook group.

There were a few hundred of us.

Over time, the group grew.

We now number over 200,000.

What we have in common is that we want justice for a man

FACEBOOK GROUP ADMIN NIR YESOD

who clearly didn't do anything wrong.

I'm here to speak on Roman's behalf and to cry out his innocence.

It's a kind of social protest.

There's no reason on earth we'd rally around a murderer.

We don't know him at all.

Yet, here we are, a whole group of us, saying we don't believe

what the Supreme Court ruled

and we want the truth.

"One thing I don't understand,

the murderer should have left a trail of blood.

So how come there wasn't any?"

"I saw a document stating that blood was found outside the school."

"Send it to me."

Somehow I was sucked into it.

I'm so far into it, I can't sleep.

And when I do sleep, I still think about it.

People get tired of being with me, they don't want to hear about it.

It worries my family

that I hang around with people I shouldn't hang around with.

"I recommend Haim Sadovsky's book."

Then I got hold of Haim Sadovsky's book.

I've read it several times,

and it raised more questions.

It makes no sense that a girl is murdered in a school

and nobody knows about it.

"Never doubt the power of a small group to change things.

Actually, it's the only thing that's ever worked."

The day Tair was murdered, I was at a hotel up north.

I gave a lecture there, and when I drove back,

it was midnight.

PRIVATE EYE HAIM SADOVSKY

I heard the news on the radio.

They said they found a 13-year-old girl in a school bathroom.

The murder of a 13-year-old girl in the Golan Heights.

Her body, which showed signs of violence, was found in a school in Katzrin.

It was like a punch in the stomach because my daughter is her age.

I have a daughter who's a few months older than Tair.

I called Ilana the next day.

He introduced himself as Haim Sadeh, a private investigator.

TAIR'S MOTHER ILANA RADA

He said I should wait and he'd bring us Tair's murderers.

She said, "Don't leave until you find the murderers."

This was a commitment I hadn't thought about,

I wasn't prepared for it, but that's what happened.

I got a call from attorney Spiegel. He said,

"I want to show you photos from the murder scene."

I looked at them over and over again.

I was at the office for a few hours. I only got home in the evening, horrified.

I found myself empathizing completely

with the victim, the girl.

I felt it was my mission to reveal the truth.

I had a box of evidence that belonged to Tair at home,

and I learned everything there was to know about her.

I'm absolutely sure, not only that Zadonov didn't do it,

but it wasn't just some arbitrary murder either.

It's deeper than that.

Tair came into our lives when our two sons were already quite big.

She was... a bundle of joy.

Her mother was so glad after having two boys.

We have a lot of home movies from her birthday parties.

Since the murder, I can't bring myself to watch them.

Gently. Three,

four, five,

six, seven, eight!

She swept everyone away.

Since she was a baby, everyone wanted

to take care of her, to do things for her.

Lots of luck in school and fun in life,

and I hope you marry me.

- Okay? - Okay.

Tair was spunky. She was nobody's fool.

The queen of the class.

The girls did as she said.

Maybe Tair's temperament

and the fact that she was involved and talented

made someone jealous.

I was very involved in Tair's life, you could even say obsessed.

I remember after the mourning period, a group of kids from her class came over,

and I noticed something strange.

Two girls broke away from the group and whispered on the side.

Bit by bit,

you start to put the pieces together.

This puzzle led me to the conclusion...

that something in Tair's immediate environment had imploded.

What drew my attention to the fact that kids did it,

people who Tair knew intimately,

the first thing was Ilana.

She gave me their names.

I checked their names, then I looked at

what they said in their testimonies and it didn't make sense.

Just before she died, Tair had theater class.

According to the testimonies, she was there but sat aside

and she looked sad.

The teacher asked her why she was sitting in the corner.

She said, "Because I'm afraid of death."

Some kids saw Tair go upstairs.

Everyone was in class without Tair. Didn't they find it strange?

Nobody thought something was wrong?

You saw Tair's backpack.

If you saw her backpack in class

next to one of your chairs, wouldn't you say,

"Tair forgot her backpack, I'll take it to her."?

These are things that...

left me uneasy,

because that wasn't how people acted around Tair.

The newspapers report that five of Tair's closest friends

testified to the police that a few days before the murder

an anonymous young man harassed her.

There was supposedly some guy, Avi from Tiberias, 18 years old,

who called Tair or sent her text messages.

A month earlier, Avi from Tiberias threatened Tair

that if she wouldn't be his girlfriend he'd kill her.

He told her, "I'm in Katzrin. Will you come see me?"

She answered, "I don't want to," and hung up.

About a day later the same guy sent her a message,

"If you won't be with me, I'll kill you."

The police investigated. It never happened.

So how come all these teenagers were telling the same story?

Where did that come from?

It looks like they coordinated testimonies.

When we examine the time frames of all the kids who were sitting outside with her

we see that at about 1:20 p.m,

Tair got up, supposedly, to get a drink of water.

Then we have time frames from girls who went to the bathroom

while she was allegedly there.

We know of six girls who went into the bathroom and came out

between 1:20 p.m. and 2:05 p.m.

We know of a few other girls whom the police didn't question.

So we have 10 or 11 girls

coming in and out of the bathroom during class.

None of them saw the others, none of them saw the murder,

none of them saw the cleanup job that took place after the murder

and none of them heard a thing.

These things need to be investigated.

Now, there's an amazing thing, in the pathology report the coroner writes

that he found at least seven different points of bleeding on Tair's skull,

meaning she was hit in the back of her head seven times.

The prosecution's claim that those bruises

were caused by falling against the toilet seems odd to me

HEAD OF PATHOLOGY INSTITUTE DR. CHEN KUGEL

since I don't think seven points of bleeding

can be caused by one fall,

certainly not when they're on slightly different planes.

I think they're the result of direct blows or someone smashing her head,

definitely not from repeated falls.

The blows are on top, which means someone stood behind her and hit her.

There were at least two attackers.

And the fact that a knife was used against this little girl

who was shorter than 4 feet 9 inches.

An adult wouldn't need a knife.

An adult could slap her and she'd collapse.

An adult wouldn't need a bloodbath with seven blows to the head.

It was someone around her age.

Tomorrow marks a week since the murder of 13-year-old Tair from Katzrin

and the police are still looking for clues.

By the weekend, the police will determine if the murderer came from the school.

The first week, right after the murder, the angle of investigation was clear.

The police released it to the press.

"Youths are involved in the murder."

Dozens of teenagers were investigated, or rather, questioned.

Not one was arrested and interrogated under warning.

Not one gave biological evidence.

No fingerprints, no shoe prints, no hair, no DNA.

No one gave anything.

Just four or five days later, they took a different angle.

Maybe because it's kids and the town's reputation was at risk,

too many people applied pressure.

And the question of the kids' involvement wasn't investigated.

They try to show how green and beautiful and flourishing Katzrin is,

but they hide and bury all the real problems.

The fact is there were knives,

it's typical of that age, not only in Katzrin.

There were incidents of violence and vandalism in the school.

Like torching a teacher's office and her car.

We woke up, and through the window, we saw our car in flames.

Students from our school torched our car.

Suddenly there was talk of a rape in the school.

These things didn't surface, they were just rumors.

And only when the murder happened...

the smokescreen fell away.

Try to imagine Tair going into the bathroom

and suddenly seeing someone holding a knife on her.

She looks back, and all of a sudden, the door slams shut behind her

and Tair tries to ward the attacker off,

and we see the wounds on her fingers.

And the blows to the head

from where she was hit from behind while trying to defend herself.

There were two people there. And we see all the hair lying around.

It was a life and death struggle, and since there's hair in her hands,

it's very likely that it's the hair of one of the attackers.

And we see the toilet paper with the hair and blood that was thrown into the toilet.

There's no trace of that in Roman's testimony, confession or reenactment.

People came in and out and nobody saw anything?

It's very likely that word got around school

that they were going to teach Tair a lesson.

And it's likely that kids came to watch because that's how kids are.

I'm not saying they all took part, but it's very likely that they know.

There's one girl whom Ilana suspected from the start.

They were both outstanding students, Tair and this girl.

They were both excellent dancers.

Their paths crossed at many points.

The girls were enemies for years and their parents became enemies, too.

I threatened Tair that if she made friends with that girl

or hung out with her, I'd punish her.

Ilana told me that Tair was afraid to go to school

and start the new school year because of this girl.

This girl left Katzrin after the murder and came back a few days later.

She was visiting her sister on a kibbutz at the center of Israel.

We know that in most stabbings,

the attacker gets cut. Why? Because the blood is slippery.

Maybe she cut herself

and went to the kibbutz to recover. I don't know.

I do know that the police took a testimony from her.

"Do you know of any kid who left Katzrin after the murder?"

She says no.

She herself left.

She said she didn't know, and that was that.

Sadovsky: "Does anyone here think Tair's friends are above suspicion?

If so, please tell me why."

"I suspect some of the girls who were in the bathroom,

they knew.

Some perpetrated the murder, some watched,

and others came later to see what happened."

"Her friends killed her! They must be exposed!"

I was in the army at the time when my cousin sent me a link and said,

"Look, Nofar, they're talking about you and your father."

I log on and see a group "Who Murdered Tair Rada,"

and I saw that the people there

were sure that Lilush and I were involved.

"Wanted - Nofar Ben David! For concealing essential information."

"Nofar is the murderer, mark my words. Her and another girl."

I believed that Nofar was involved in the murder.

What I did at the time was look for evidence that it was Nofar.

I looked for photos of her from the past, as a little girl,

photos that prove she's left-handed.

Loads of messages from different people

I don't even know calling me a murderer.

They accused me of everything possible about the murder of my friend.

They wrote shocking things about me.

"Murderer," "You'll burn in Hell,"

"You'll never know peace after what you did."

"How did it feel, killing your friend?"

I went to Katzrin and met with people

to hear what they had to say about the family and about what happened.

I put together a typecast of a murderer.

I was on the case 24/7. I was bad.

They created a left-handed character on Facebook.

She left Katzrin after the murder.

Her father is a high-ranking officer who's protecting her.

They created another Nofar Ben David who's nothing like me.

I'm Nofar Ben David who lives in Katzrin, I didn't go anywhere.

I'm right-handed, not left-handed,

I've never been left-handed.

My father wasn't a big shot in the police.

They chose not to believe me, and there's no way to deal with it.

I tried to defend myself.

I wrote back to everyone who posted a message.

I said, "Let's talk, let me explain.

I'll answer any question, just ask.

Like, she was my friend.

Wake up, people. What's with you?"

But nobody would listen.

"I dreamt that Lee murdered Tair. I'm not lying!"

I was at work when I got a Facebook message.

I log on and see a picture. At first, I didn't know what it was.

Then I look and I realize it's...

Tair's neck. I started to tremble and...

I didn't get it.

I couldn't sleep...

for at least two weeks.

Someone put a printed letter in all the mailboxes in Katzrin saying,

"Nofar Ben David is the murderer.

Anyone who knows anything, please inform the police."

It reached the point where I didn't want to live that way.

I didn't want to be in a place where people think...

Wait a sec.

Since the very evening that Tair Rada was murdered

people pointed an accusing finger and said, "Kids did it.

I saw her at such-and-such a time

and that other one was also there."

Conspiracy theories

have haunted the affair since the first night.

Then the media steps in

and gives all sorts of characters

an opportunity to be interviewed and say the same things over and over,

and the people who suffer are some girls in Tair's class.

There was no serious claim in court

that those girls perpetrated the murder,

for good reason, in my opinion.

And I think it's very unfortunate,

there isn't a shred of evidence that points to these girls

that would justify investigating them as suspects,

but spilling their blood as if they're guilty of murder,

that people will do without thinking twice.

I have new messages.

Here, someone just sent me this.

"I know you're involved in Tair's murder.

The corrupt police is protecting you, and they framed Roman.

Confess now, for your conscience's sake.

Because of you and your 'friends'

an innocent man is in jail."

"Confess already, you slut.

How can you live with yourself, you bitch?

God will make you pay, you whore.

In Hell, Tair will stab you so many times all over your body

while she's in Heaven, you whore."

How's that?

As humans, we have a tendency to make up a story and then believe it.

And that's what happened to me at first, I believed the girls were involved.

As you read the material, you realize there's truth in everything

but the truth is so...

you can interpret it however you like.

The first time I spoke to Lee,

I said, "No way does she know anything.

She's so sweet. This is crazy."

Then I started to fire off questions.

How can it be that girls were there

at the time of the murder and nobody heard anything?

Because it wasn't just a murder, Tair was slaughtered.

The day after the murder, I sat in my room and reconstructed the whole previous day.

When I found out it happened in the bathroom, I remembered we were there.

During the 7th period, I had to go to the bathroom

and another girl was there whom I'd never seen before or after.

She looked very strange to me.

She had curly hair and she wore army pants or jeans.

Something loose, not tight. And a school shirt.

I went into the bathroom and...

I looked for a free stall and she was looking at me through the mirror

and while I was in the stall, I heard her leaving.

After I testified about this girl,

nobody asked me to describe her for a composite sketch.

They didn't try to figure out who she was.

And I told the policeman that.

At around 1:30-1:40 p.m., Sapir and I went into the bathroom.

The first stall was open and the next three were closed,

but I didn't want to go in because it stank.

I knocked on the stall doors and nobody answered.

Then I heard the sound of paper being pulled.

I asked, "Who's there?" Nobody answered.

Then, as I was about to turn the handle, some girl said, "Occupied."

When they caught Roman, they interrogated us again,

and the detective asked me, "What kind of voice did you hear?"

I said, "I don't know, a girl's voice."

"A girl or a man?"

"Maybe I misheard?

I don't know, maybe it was a man."

He said, "A man?" I said, "Yeah, maybe."

I guess he wrote that it was a man's voice.

He led me to say it, that's all I can say.

For the past two years, I decided to shut my door,

to shut my windows, to stay at home

and shut out everything else.

My soul is wounded. The ability to think clearly

grows weaker.

The other day a friend asked me, "Are you taking sleeping pills?"

I said, "Yes, to stop my mind from thinking."

Because we know we'll never get Tair back,

but we have to know the truth.

"I just couldn't take all of this injustice you're causing to the girls anymore."

When things in the Facebook group got crazy,

I logged on and saw that someone was defending us.

"I think this is nonsense. Kids jumping to conclusions."

He had a phony profile, I didn't know who he was,

but I sent him a message thanking him because he didn't have to.

"Thanks for trying, really."

"No problem. You deserve an apology."

He kept apologizing for all the wrong he did us.

I told him it wasn't because of him, but he felt

a need to apologize for what he did and...

I didn't get it until he told the whole story.

"I'm just a coward who kept his mouth shut."

At first I didn't believe him, but what he said perfectly matched our testimonies.

"I'm stunned. You aren't lying?"

I was mad, because if this is true, why wait seven years?

Many people ask me, "So if it isn't Roman, who is it?"

And I have to say that I actually have a good answer.

In April 2012,

I get a call one evening from my client

who wants to see me urgently.

When he gets to my office, he tells me a story

according to which the murderer in jail isn't really the murderer.

He tells us a hair-raising story.

It sounds totally absurd, but...

I won't mince words, I believe A.H.

He says that his girlfriend at the time

told him that she caused Tair Rada's death.

A.K's EX-BOYFRIEND A.H.

She took me to...

the other room in our house.

She showed me a bag,

she showed me the clothes she was wearing,

the wig, the knife.

Everything was...

soaked in blood.