Original subtitles

[suspenseful music]

So called honor killings are an archaic

form of vigilante justice.

[tense music]

These killings often target women who have defied

their husband or father's moral code or religious beliefs.

They only used to occur

in certain Middle Eastern nations,

but today, honor killings happen in the United States,

even in big cities like Houston, Texas.

While the man behind the killings in this case

wants you to think that he was driven by honor,

what he's really driven by is power and control.

I've never worked on an honor killing case before,

but when friends of mine were appointed

special prosecutors in this case,

I knew a lot of pressure was on them

to prove to a jury that this was really

not about religion at all.

[tense music]

If his rules are not followed, you will die.

It's as simple as that.

This isn't an attack on the Muslim religion.

This is one man, and one family's, extremist views.

[theme music]

[tense music]

RICHARD BOLTON: Around midnight, my phone rings.

It's the desk officer, informing me we got a case.

It's in the Sugar Hill Galleria area of Houston.

[police radio static]

When I pull into the driveway, I'm met by the patrol officer

that was a primary unit on the call.

He found this car running,

with the tires spinning on the pavement.

And at that time, he saw the victim

laying across the front seat,

slumped over the console.

It's a woman who's deceased.

She was shot in the head.

We called the Medical Examiner's office.

They took possession of the victim.

♪♪♪

We were able to then collect evidence in and out.

Inside the car, there was part of a bullet fragment

recovered on the ground.

There's a cell phone in the car,

and a purse in the front passenger seat.

♪♪♪

In her purse, we found her wallet

with her driver's license.

It revealed her name was Gelareh Bagherzadeh.

You know, she was approximately 30 years of age,

and she lived in the community right there in the townhomes.

Being responsible for the witness interviews

of this investigation,

I knocked on several doors.

And a man who lived the adjacent building over,

he could see out of his bedroom window.

He saw a silver or a light blue Camry

or a Honda Accord fleeing from the scene.

[tires screech]

KELLY SIEGLER: But the witness doesn't get the license plate.

He also had no idea what the driver looked like.

[tense music]

We go back, and we're still going over the scene.

And then we meet with Robeen Bandar.

♪♪♪

We were told that he was on the phone

with Gelareh at the time of her murder.

♪♪♪

He was talking to her as she was driving home,

and then he heard something.

♪♪♪

The line was still open, but there's nothing there.

He's calling her name, you know, Gelareh doesn't respond,

and he heard, like, a thud.

And he was concerned that she may have been

involved in a car accident.

He drives to the townhome community where Gelareh

and her parents live,

and he sees the police cars.

[suspenseful music]

Robeen appeared to be upset,

concerned, didn't know what happened.

We explained to him that she's been shot.

Gelareh was murdered.

[ominous music]

After we concluded our scene investigation

and the vehicle was removed,

we walked to Gelareh's parents' house

to make death notification.

It was very emotional.

Her mom just broke down, tears running down her face.

Heartbreaking, you know,

for somebody to have to go through that.

[somber music]

When Robeen Bandar shows up at the crime scene,

he had been on the phone with her.

So they had to take a good hard look

at him to see if they have a motive, if they're upset,

if he plays any part in all this.

Robeen, he tells us that several years ago

he and Gelareh had dated shortly,

and now they were just good friends.

He says that she was driving home,

probably a 40, 45 minute drive,

and they were on the phone the entire time.

Gelareh told him that she had been at Cory's,

her boyfriend's house.

And so we needed to talk to Cory,

because he is one of the last persons that saw Gelareh alive.

[suspenseful music]

The next day, Cory came to the homicide division.

♪♪♪

We learned that Gelareh met Cory while she was at school.

Well, the night this murder occurred,

Cory said he didn't know Gelareh was coming over that evening.

That there was a knock at the door.

When he answered the door, Gelareh said,

"I just wanted to surprise you."

So he said they just hung out for a couple hours,

and then she drove home.

♪♪♪

We polygraphed Cory Beavers,

but we think he's telling us the truth.

The initial impression by the police department

is that these people are believable,

and that they're not involved in the murder of Gelareh.

But it's not a waste of time,

because the more people you can talk to

to get a feel for what's going on in the victim's life,

the better your investigation is going to proceed.

[suspenseful music]

[somber music]

SETH ESLAMI: I remember it was early in the morning

when I got a call.

I was in shock.

Who would have done something like this to her?

You know, you can't find anyone more likable than her.

Gelareh was always the life of every party.

Gelareh was born in Paris, and grew up in Tehran, Iran.

♪♪♪

She was a force, passionate, lively, outspoken.

Back in the day, there was a movement.

This was right after an election in Iran,

which was taken away,

or at least that's how people felt.

It was a one-party regime, which told everybody

what to do, and how to live their life.

So there were mass protests in Iran,

and we just showed our support in Houston.

We worked together, planning events,

hosting events, talked to the media.

Our goal was to be the sound of the Iranian people,

so people in United States will be aware of what is happening.

She was the one who would be there first, and leave the last.

Gelareh was the forefront of every event.

♪♪♪

ESLAMI: I think every person that was there knew her,

because she was very involved.

People from her church, her school.

It was just such an emotional moment.

♪♪♪

[suspenseful music]

SIEGLER: After five more months of investigation,

HPD is still searching for Gelareh's killer.

And then on November 12th, 2012, a shocking 9-1-1 call is made.

♪♪♪

[woman screaming]

[woman sobbing]

The caller is a frantic young woman named Nesreen Irsan.

The victim is 28-year-old Coty Beavers, who's her husband.

And to their surprise, law enforcement discovers

he also happens to be the twin brother...

Of Gelareh's boyfriend, Cory.

[gunshot booming]

I met with Nesreen,

and I'll never forget what she said to me.

She knew this was gonna happen.

When we popped the vent off, there was these GPS devices.

One of them showed the date of Coty Beavers' murder.

♪♪♪

[Nesreen screaming]

I get a call about a body that's been found inside an apartment.

When I arrived at Legacy Park Apartments,

Crime Scene Unit was there.

They had the area taped off,

and I was briefed by patrol of what they had so far.

[tense music]

I'm told that there's a female,

Nesreen Irsan, that came home from work

and found her husband shot to death inside her apartment.

His name was Coty Beavers.

I did not see forced entry.

And I go in.

[static hiss]

The victim was laying partially facedown

inside the living area.

There looked like there had been a fight.

Body looked like it had several strikes,

indicating multiple shots.

♪♪♪

There was an AK-47 rifle

that was leaning against the wall where the victim was found.

One of his arms was actually reaching toward that Weapon.

♪♪♪

I didn't really see anything that appeared to be missing.

There was expensive items there, so it rules out robbery.

It appeared to be a small caliber gun

from multiple shots on the victim's body,

but we didn't find any shell casings.

♪♪♪

Any time a victim is found by his spouse,

you're always going to start with, you know, the spouse.

And I met with Nesreen in my vehicle,

and I'll never forget what she said to me.

She told me, Sergeant Dousay,

I have a lot to tell you if you're willing to listen to me.

[somber music]

And I said, "We're gonna go to our office."

And that's where we went.

And then we sat and talked.

Nesreen told me that her and her husband, Coty,

had met at school, and they had been married

a short time before Coty was killed.

She told me that they were afraid

that this was gonna happen,

and that she was quite sure...

that her father, Ali Irsan, murdered Coty Beavers.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

JAMES DOUSAY: Nesreen explained to me that her father was a very

devout Muslim from Jordan.

Irsan had 12 kids from two people.

He was very controlling, wanted to control her

and any of her siblings' movement,

wouldn't let her date,

wouldn't let her go out with other people.

And she and her siblings,

as well as his second wife, Shmou,

had been beaten and abused regularly by Ali Irsan.

[somber music]

But Ali let Nesreen go to school at MD Anderson,

and she got Americanised.

She met Gelareh,and she also met Cory Beavers,

who introduced her to Coty Beavers.

And they fell in love.

- What is this? - All right! I know...

CORY BEAVERS: Gelareh, you have to wait.

DOUSAY: At that time, Nesreen stopped being

concerned about her father.

She was seeking to live her life.

She was seeking to not be held captive

in the ways that Ali Irsan

was trying to force her to live against her will.

♪♪♪

Ali Irsan found out about Nesreen seeing Coty Beavers,

and he showed up at her school.

He caught her, and then she was taken home.

And then not allowed to leave. He kept her hostage.

But Irsan would make trips out of the country.

He left, and went to Jordan.

While he did, Nesreen ended up

climbing out of a bathroom window.

[suspenseful music]

She ran away to live with Coty Beavers.

[airplane roars]

Ali Irsan returned from Jordan, and now he's looking for her.

[tense music]

Coty and Nesreen secretly got married,

and found an apartment

at Legacy Park Apartments in Houston.

♪♪♪

But Nesreen knew that her father was stalking them.

♪♪♪

They described seeing Ali Irsan's silver van

at Legacy Park Apartments.

You know, and that it would slow down, and be outside watching.

And so they would take precautions to park away

from their apartment.

And they bought an AK-47 rifle

because they were afraid of her father.

Her and her husband Coty had a daily routine,

and she would get up and leave the house by six a.m.

DOUSAY: And then Nesreen explained to me

that she believed her father was also responsible

for Gelareh's murder.

[tense music]

Nesreen tells the investigators

that after she and Coty got married,

her dad contacted Gelareh to try and find out where she was,

but she would not give them any information.

She told him that he needed to leave Nesreen alone

because she was doing the right thing.

And this made him furious.

And he said, "I will get you."

Three nights later is when she was murdered.

♪♪♪

It is a unique thing for a person to be telling you

that she knows that her father was responsible

for not only the death of her husband,

but also her best friend, because they dishonored him,

in his mind.

♪♪♪

I learned that Detective Richard Bolton

was the lead investigator in Gelareh's murder.

Sergeant Dousay tells me,

"I got a guy that's been murdered.

"His name is Coty Beavers. His twin brother is Cory Beavers."

Well, then, click.

We know Cory Beavers.

♪♪♪

That's when we all come together.

The FBI, the Houston Police Department,

the Harris County Sheriff's Department,

and because the Irsans live in Montgomery county,

the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department,

eight, 12 people working this whole case.

♪♪♪

When the information came out in the press

that Coty and Gelareh's murders might be connected,

the sheriff's department, and the police department,

just feel that sense of urgency, because everybody

wants to figure out what is the connection?

It's somebody that knows them, who wants them both dead.

So, who is it?

[tense music]

We reach out to Ali Irsan, and he agrees to meet with us.

We asked him if he knew Coty Beavers,

and he denied that he'd ever met him.

He said no, we don't know nothing about it.

You know, we asked them where they were at, at the time.

"Well, we were probably at home. We don't know."

Ali Irsan tried to come across as the caring father,

just concerned about his daughter.

But I've interviewed a lot of people,

and his interview was deceptive.

When I say the deception was there,

he was showing signs.

He had to step out several times to go smoke.

He would repeat our questions to us.

But ultimately, we didn't have evidence

we need to file murder charges on him.

DOUSAY: My next step is I wanted a search warrant.

I wanted to learn about him.

I wanted to get into Ali Irsan's world.

[tense music]

We talked to Nesreen again,

and she went through everything about her father.

♪♪♪

They learned that Ali immigrated to the United States in 1979,

and he married an American girl who was only 17 years old,

getting her G.E.D. at the time, named Robin Dahl.

Robin Dahl later gave birth to four daughters,

named Nasemah, Nadia, Nesreen, and Nada.

In 1994, Irsan traveled to Jordan to find a new wife.

And he returned with a teenage girl named Shmou.

SIEGLER: Soon after Irsan returned with his new wife,

his other wife, Robin, left him.

She left behind the four children she had had

with Ali Irsan, with him.

And he continued on to start a second family with Shmou,

and they had eight more children.

And they all lived together on a compound

outside of Houston in Conroe, Texas.

Nesreen told us this unbelievable story

of how her father was, was this serial fraudster

who had defrauded airlines,

doing fraudulent lost baggage claims,

public assistance agencies,

food stamps, Social Security, identity theft.

It just went on, and on, and on.

Ali Irsan and his wife Shmou,

they played the system, is what Nesreen described.

[sirens wail]

So we executed the search warrant for Ali's property.

We wanted to get to where we could file charges

on Ali Irsan and his wife, Shmou, for fraud,

and get them in custody, get 'em separated

to where we could talk with them,

and possibly even work them against each other.

[suspenseful music]

We recover almost 200 credit cards.

Some were in Ali's name, and the rest of them

in other family members' names.

We were able to get enough information

on the fraud case to where we could file charges.

[tense music]

Once we're able to get Irsan in custody

for the financial crimes,

now we're at a race against time

because he's only going to be in custody

for a certain amount of time on a financial crime.

And we're still trying to find the evidence we need

to file capital murder charges on him.

We tried to interview Ali Irsan,

but he would start, you know, grabbing his chest.

He's faking a heart attack

to keep from being interviewed, and that happened several times.

After Ali Irsan refuses to answer any more questions,

investigators decide to listen to all of his jail calls.

One of the calls that we recovered

is him speaking with his son, Nasim.

The investigators begin to wonder

if Ali Irsan's son, Nasim, is possibly involved

in the murders.

We thought that maybe this is Nasim Irsan

getting as close as you possibly can to confessing

to murdering people without saying their names,

or saying, "I pulled the trigger."

We didn't have enough evidence

to file capital murder charges on them.

But in the evidence from the search warrant,

there's an envelope that had been found in the glove box

of Ali Irsan's van.

And written, in handwriting,

is the license plate of Gelareh's vehicle.

♪♪♪

SIEGLER: This leads the investigators to do a search

for any traffic stops in the area

on the night of Gelareh's murder.

SIEGLER: And they find a traffic stop

where Ali Irsan is speeding, in the area,

on the very night of Gelareh's murder.

Well, lo and behold.

From the time our 9-1-1 call for Gelareh's murder

to that stop was, like, 40-something minutes.

The time of Gelareh's murder compared to the timing

on that traffic stop,

that would have added up to the amount of time

it would have taken them to get to that point.

And they were in the same kind of car that a witness

described seeing speeding away from the murder.

♪♪♪

At that time we had surveillance on the Irsan family,

on their movement, we learned about their vehicles,

we learned everything that we could about them.

GARY DICKENS: With the FBI's resources,

we have some aerial surveillance of Ali's sons hiding something

in what appears to be a secret compartment

on top of the roof.

There was a vent on Ali's house.

It's like the eave of your house.

Based off this surveillance,

we got another search warrant, we went back to Ali's house,

and we're up on top of the roof,

looking for this hidden compartment.

You could tell that the vent had been tampered with.

♪♪♪

When we popped the vent off, there was these GPS devices

that had been placed up inside that eave of the house.

You know, the ones that you used to sit on your dashboard

when you drive around.

Those GPS units were submitted

to the FBI forensic laboratory where they were processed.

One of them showed the date of Coty Beavers' murder.

♪♪♪

The location that it went to was Legacy Park Apartments.

The Legacy Park Apartments is where Coty and Nesreen

were living when he was murdered.

Now, Ali Irsan can be directly linked

to the capital murders of both Gelareh and Coty.

So, friends of mine were appointed

Special Prosecutors of the case.

Ali Irsan was charged with capital murder

of Gelareh Bagherzadeh, and Coty Beavers

and his son Nasim, and Shmou, Ali Irsan's second wife,

were charged with the murder of Gelareh Bagherazdeh.

[tense music]

As we were getting closer to trial,

we were missing a first account.

Some eyewitness that could say, "I saw Ali Irsan with a gun."

Shmou, we felt, had all that evidence.

Shmou had time away from Ali Irsan,

that she'd been sitting in jail for quite a long period of time.

♪♪♪

Some part of his control over her had been broken,

and she knew she had to tell the story.

So we approached her attorney,

and asked if she wanted to cooperate.

They said yes.

And at that point, Shmou was forthcoming.

JON STEPHENSON: The defense was Allen Tanner, and Rudy Duarte.

Very talented and very thorough. Definitely formidable opponents.

[suspenseful music]

We felt the defense would definitely play

on the cultural, religious tenet,

and the fact that the case was very circumstantial.

Pretty sure the fallback defense

is picking apart the prosecutor's case

piece-by-piece, witness-by-witness,

and arguing reasonable doubt.

I want the jury to understand that Ali Irsan was responsible,

because we all believe Ali Irsan's a dangerous guy.

We thought that if he were to get out,

he would probably retaliate against every person involved.

[tense music]

SIEGLER: Four years after Ali Irsan is arrested,

he goes on trial for the capital murders of Gelareh and Coty.

The Harris county courthouse was still closed

from damage from Hurricane Harvey,

so they tried the case at the federal courthouse.

Because the federal courtroom was so small,

they only allowed the cameras in for the first day.

♪♪♪

This isn't an attack on the Muslim religion.

This is one man, and one family's,

extremist views that were taken to the extreme.

In the past, I handled two cases involving religion.

Defendants named Bhogeshwernand Sharma,

and also Pastor James Eugene Tucker.

In those cases, you try to walk the line

of not belittling or demeaning anybody's religion,

while making the point that what this is really about

is one man's control or power.

He wanted to kill all of those involved in bringing

shame and dishonor, in his mind, to his family.

We wanted the jury to understand

the evidence was pretty overwhelming,

like the GPS devices that Ali and Shmou had on their car

really laid out an unbelievable number of trips

to these locations that the only explanation for them

being there is to stalk and kill these people.

♪♪♪

She's going to tell you she was kidnapped.

She's going to tell you she was handcuffed

and beaten by her mother, Shmou.

She's going to tell you all sorts of things,

and I don't believe 'em.

And it's up to you to decide. If you believe her.

There is a lot of testimonial evidence.

And so the Defense strategy was to discredit those folks,

and to point the finger in other directions, if they could.

Listen to what they have to say, and weigh it out,

and see if you think they are telling the truth,

or if they are lying.

One of the most powerful and important witnesses

in this case is Nesreen.

Nesreen's testimony is very important to explaining

the mentality of her father, and growing up with that man.

♪♪♪

You can see the fear in her

as she's walking in the courtroom to take the stand.

She said that Ali definitely ruled with an iron fist

when someone disobeyed or did something he didn't approve of.

The beatings were severe.

And she said that where the Irsan family lived,

it was a compound where he controlled who came in,

who left, and what happened while they were there.

♪♪♪

SIEGLER: It's the defense lawyer's turn

to cross examine Nesreen.

Their goal is to try and poke holes in her story,

to poke holes in her credibility,

while making her father seem a little more sympathetic.

JON STEPHENSON: Allen Tanner is cross-examining Nesreen.

He's doing a great job of bringing out, hey,

he wasn't all bad. He did some good things.

He, for instance, gave y'all pets.

You remember this? And she agrees. Yes.

He gave us a pet.

And you remember at one point he bought you a monkey?

A pet monkey? Yes, I remember that.

And then he killed it.

[tense music]

I thought, well, that didn't go the way they planned.

♪♪♪

There's only one person who can give an inside account

of both of the murders of Gelareh and Coty.

Ali Irsan's second wife, Shmou.

Shmou was with him each time, and knew what was happening.

The planning, the plotting, the thought process,

the facts of the brutal murders.

She did not want to testify in front of him.

She was still scared of him.

And she was scared, actually, of her own sons.

I had asked her to please look at me,

and not look at him, to try and alleviate some of the fear.

♪♪♪

She laid out when Ali decided it was the night

that Gelareh was going to die,

they saw Gelareh leave the Beavers' address,

and they followed her.

She went back there to turn around.

They blocked her in.

Nasim's the one that went up there and shot her.

[gunshots boom]

MARIE PRIMM: Shmou laid out the morning of Coty's death.

She said they knew at that time from making various runs

that Coty didn't lock the apartment

when he walked Nesreen down to her car.

And so she detailed they were waiting for them

to leave the apartment, going upstairs,

and laying in wait for Coty to come back.

Just her matter-of-fact demeanor, and laying it all out.

It was shocking.

♪♪♪

The Defense's position was she was just lying,

and she was trying to get revenge.

She got a deal, and so she was just going to say or do

whatever to benefit herself.

The problem with the Defense's line of attack

was it wasn't just Shmou's word that we had.

We have the GPS.

So there was objective evidence to back up what she was saying.

[tense music]

The State rested their case,

and then the Defense called Ali Irsan to the stand.

You gotta believe that his lawyers advised him

not to do that, but they probably knew

no one's ever been able to tell Ali Irsan what to do.

♪♪♪

He presents himself as an adoring father

that wanted his children to make good decisions

that would go along with the Muslim faith,

and that he was not happy about what Nesreen had done,

but he certainly would never have harmed her.

He's trying to say that Nesreen,

she's the reason he's here, she is making a lot of this up,

and that she's the dangerous one.

We're fearful that the jury's gonna think

Ali Irsan is an affable older gentleman,

patriarch of his family, loves his children.

That is what he wants to portray to the jury.

But I know Ali Irsan is about power and control.

Most of the times when you're cross-examining a witness,

you're asking questions such as a yes or no,

you're not really allowing them to expand on their answers.

I knew Ali was never going to do that,

but I knew how important it was to maintain my composure,

and just continually ask my questions until I got an answer.

Not what he wanted to tell the jury,

but an answer to my question.

♪♪♪

It was justice that a woman got to cross-examine Ali Irsan.

Ali does not think much of women.

He certainly does not think that they should be

allowed to question him.

He did let his irritation for the way I was conducting

my cross-examination be known to the jury.

He is staring daggers at Marie Primm,

and he's got two pencils in his hand.

PRIMM: He looked at me, and angrily busted the pencils.

And it scared the jury, for my safety.

I thought, who better to convince the jury

of what kind of person you are, than yourself?

And you just did it.

[tense music]

PRIMM: In my closing statement in the murder

of Gelareh Bagherzadeh and Coty Beavers,

I want the jury to know there is not a tenet

of the Islam faith that told Ali Irsan

to commit these acts of cruelty.

The decision should not be a conviction of the Islam faith.

It's a judgment on Ali Irsan.

♪♪♪

The prosecutors had to walk a fine line

since religion is so involved with all this.

But really, when it comes down to it,

this was never about religion or God.

It was about the power, and control,

and arrogance of one man.

And they did a beautiful job explaining that to the jury.

[tense music builds]

I don't think the jury was out an hour,

and they found him guilty.

♪♪♪

DICKENS: It was a long time coming.

A testament to all of the hard work put in

by the prosecutors, and all the investigators

that worked on this case.

I think it brought more relief to the community.

They just wanted justice.

[somber music]

Mr. Irsan, we believed, was the most culpable of the crimes,

therefore deserved the most punishment.

In the punishment phase of the trial,

the jury has to consider two factors.

The first is, is Ali Irsan going to be

a future threat to society?

The second consideration is, are there any mitigating

factors in this man's entire life that because of that,

life is more deserving than the death penalty?

[tense music]

We brought Ali's first wife, Robin,

who was Nesreen's mother, to testify.

The State is allowed to bring in any witness

from any point in Ali Irsan's life

to further describe what kind of a man he is.

STEPHENSON: Robin testified about how they had met.

STEPHENSON: He essentially rapes her, and turns it into

a forced relationship.

She had four children with him.

STEPHENSON: Robin testified that he had abused her,

threatened her with weapons, and tried to kill her.

♪♪♪

STEPHENSON: Next, in the punishment phase,

we called Nesreen back on the stand.

Nesreen says Coty Beavers is not the first son-in-law

Ali Irsan killed.

He killed his first son-in-law back in 1999.

♪♪♪

Nesreen says she had an older sister named Nasemah.

And Nasemah was living at home,

and had met a friend of Ali's,

and she kind of liked him.

He had approached Ali,

and asked for her hand in marriage.

And Irsan would've said no.

Irsan was a Sunni Muslim,

and this friend was a Shiite Muslim,

and there's no way he was going to let him marry his daughter.

Ali Irsan went to Jordan. They eloped to Dallas.

They got married.

So when Irsan returned home,

and he called him, and he says,

"Come over, let's talk about it."

Nesreen was 14 at the time. She was in the house.

He made all the family get in the back room.

So Nesreen could hear what was going on, but she couldn't see.

And she said she heard a loud shot from a shotgun...

[shotgun booms]

...and then she heard two smaller shots,

like from a smaller caliber weapon.

[gunfire booms]

Ali Irsan called Montgomery County Sheriff's Office

and said, "He pulled a gun on me.

"I had to defend myself."

[tense music]

The police at the time didn't do much investigation into it.

There was a gun there that fit the story

that Ali had given them.

Ali Irsan knows what he's doing

when he's talking to law enforcement.

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office

took Ali Irsan at his word, self-defense.

It was never presented to a grand jury.

And Ali got cleared in that.

For the trial, we put together the crime scene evidence

from that case that wasn't looked at back in 1999.

The way it's described to the police,

The victim's angry, and Ali just shoots him,

and he falls where he is.

But crime scene photos demonstrate

that the victim had been in a different position

for a long period of time.

You could see the blood going down, and then turning.

The scene had been adjusted.

This was important in terms of it, again,

played into the theme of, you're going against my wishes,

you're dishonoring me, you're dishonoring the family,

you're dishonoring the religion.

And Ali Irsan's not going to let that slide.

[tense music]

In the punishment phase of the trial,

the Defense has a hard battle,

but they try to humanize Ali Irsan as much as they can.

♪♪♪

What the Defense has to do is try to give the jury

something that they can feel

is mitigating on behalf of Mr. Irsan.

They want the jury to have a reason

not to sentence him to death.

♪♪♪

And they do that by flying in

some relatives of his from Jordan,

and also by putting Ali Irsan's grown sons on the witness stand.

♪♪♪

STEPHENSON: A couple of his sons testified

about what a great guy he was.

But I can see that the jury...

understands that's not the way that the evidence played out.

Clearly, he was abusive.

♪♪♪

What stood out in my mind

was how brainwashed these boys were.

That almost made me sad.

♪♪♪

REPORTER: Isan's response was calm

as the judge read the sentence.

Death by execution.

In the words of Coty Beavers' mother,

her son's murder, and that of Gelareh Bagherzadeh,

were the acts of an evil coward,

and the verdict a victory.

That's a strange feeling to get a verdict

where they sentence a person to death.

It's a pretty powerful,

and emotional thing for everybody.

Ali's sentence was important in terms of the other defendants

having the opportunity to see what was potentially coming.

It led to Nasim pleading guilty.

He got 40 years, and Shmou got a deal

for her testimony.

Prior to the trial,

Ali Irsan's wife, Shmou, pled to a lesser offense

of felony kidnapping,

for that time when they held Nesreen captive at the house.

She's expected to be eligible for parole in 2026.

To have to walk into the courtroom and testify

against that monster while he's glaring at her,

took some courage.

And I think that everybody appreciates

that she's a victim in this case also.

[somber music]

I was left with a lot of admiration for Nasreen Irsan,

and for Robin Dahl, his first wife.

Those are probably the strongest women

that I've ever met in my entire life.

To be able to stand up to a man

that you know has no problem killing somebody,

they refused to be ruled by his cruelty.

And to me, that's amazing.

Coty Beavers and Gelareh Bagherzadeh

never would have imagined that this could happen to them.

Human nature says, well, I mean, it doesn't matter

who you are friends with or who you fall in love with.

It's just, that's the way it is.

But there are some people that it cuts

against their beliefs enough

that it's worth killing somebody.

♪♪♪

SIEGLER: These prosecutors did a phenomenal job.

They had a lot to deal with politically

and religiously, and they handled all that.

If anybody deserved the death penalty, Ali Irsan did.

♪♪♪

Coty Beavers' mother and the family got to stand there

and watch him being walked out on his way to death row.

And she hugged my neck, and she thanked me,

and it was a-- like, fulfillment,

you know, it's, like, a lot of work.

But we got there.

♪♪♪

It was sad to see a young couple,

how happy they were, how happy she was,

and how her life was changed.

They took her husband, her love.

- This one? - CORY: This one,

has survived the ends of the world.

ESLAMI: There are always bad people doing bad things.

And then there are people like Gelareh.

♪♪♪

Gelareh could have changed the world.

She could definitely have an impact.

♪♪♪

She was full of life.

I think Gelareh was very brave.

She always did what she thought was the right thing to do.

♪♪♪