IRVING, Texas — Yaser Abdel Said took his teenage daughters for something to eat in his taxi cab on New Year’s Day 2008, in Irving, Texas. The girls ended up dead, the victims of alleged “honor killings” at the hands of their father.
The Egyptian-born Said, who has been on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List since 2014, was captured Wednesday about 35 miles away in the tiny city of Justin. He was booked into the Dallas County Jail on capital murder charges in the deaths of Amina Yaser Said, 18, and 17-year-old Sarah Yaser Said.
He also faces federal charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution in the case, which for more than a decade has garnered national attention. A documentary about the killings titled “The Price of Honor” was released in 2016.
“The FBI-led Dallas Violent Crimes Task Force has worked tirelessly to find Yaser Abdel Said,” Matthew DeSarno, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas field office, said in a statement. “These experienced investigators never gave up on their quest to find him and pledged to never forget the young victims in this case.
“His capture and arrest bring us one step closer to justice for Amina and Sarah.”
Two of Said’s relatives have been arrested and charged with helping him to avoid capture. His son, Islam Said, 32, and his brother, Yassein Said, 59, are each charged with harboring a fugitive.
Federal agents are still looking for anyone else who might have helped Yaser Said hide over the past 12 years.
The girls’ mother, Patricia Owens, told the Dallas Morning News on Wednesday that she had no idea where her former husband had been hiding. She also disputed allegations that the girls were victims of “honor killings,” apparently contradicting her initial statements to police.
“My daughters were loving, caring, smart, loved everybody, would help anybody,” Owens told the newspaper. “They were two of the most awesome kids in the world, and they did not deserve what happened to them.”
Islam Said has also in the past disputed the claims regarding his sisters’ deaths.
“It’s something else,” Islam Said said, according to the News. “Religion has nothing to do with it.”
Yaser Said is Muslim, while the siblings’ mother, who was just 15 when she married the then-29-year-old Said, was raised Southern Baptist.
A brutal double killing
Irving police Chief Jeff Spivey said during a news conference Wednesday that dispatchers received a 911 call around 7:30 p.m. on New Year’s Day 2008 from a woman in obvious distress at an unknown location.
According to The Associated Press, the caller was 17-year-old Sarah Said.
“Help me, I’m dying,” the crying teen shouted in the call, obtained by Crime Watch Daily. “Oh my God, not again! It’s not over! Stop it!”
Sarah Said also identified her father as her assailant, saying he’d shot her, before her words became unintelligible and trailed off.
Court records show that officers spent about an hour trying to find the injured teen, tracking the call to within a half-mile of her location.
Eventually, dispatchers received a second call from a man who found both sisters bleeding in their father’s cab outside the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving.
One sister was seated in the front passenger seat, the other in the back seat.
“They don’t look alive,” the passerby told dispatchers, according to the AP.
Both teens were dead when police arrived. Shell casings were found in the cab with their bodies, and both sisters had been shot multiple times.
“This was the beginning of the murder investigation of Amina and Sarah Said,” Spivey said Wednesday.
Yaser Said quickly became a suspect in their killings after detectives contacted the registered owner of the cab and learned that Said had been driving it for the past 10 days, according to a 2008 affidavit for Said’s arrest.
Read the arrest affidavit below.
Yaser Abdel Said Criminal Complaint by National Content Desk on Scribd
“The wife of the defendant was contacted, who advised that the defendant has threatened her and her two children (Amina and Sarah) in the past,” the affidavit states. “The most recent time was just prior to Christmas, when the defendant threatened to kill the entire family.”
Patricia Said told police her husband had threatened “bodily harm” against Sarah Said for dating a non-Muslim boy, the AP reported. The terrified mother had fled with the girls in the week before the killings because she was “in great fear for her life,” police said.
The day of the shooting, Yaser Said picked up his estranged daughters “to talk with them,” their mother told police. The girls never returned home.
“Said persuaded his estranged daughters … to visit him. He said he was going to take them to get something to eat,” FBI officials said in 2014, when Yaser Said was added to the agency’s most-wanted list. “Instead, he allegedly drove them in his taxi cab to a remote location and used a handgun to murder them.”
Police surrounded the family’s Lewisville home the next day, firing tear gas into the house before entering. The house was empty and Yaser Said was gone.
A $100,000 reward was offered for information leading to the fugitive’s arrest. The case was also featured in local, statewide and national media, including a segment on America’s Most Wanted.
John Walsh, who created and hosted the long-running America’s Most Wanted, tweeted his relief Wednesday upon learning of Said’s capture.
“After 12 years on the run, Yasir Abdel Said, has been captured and is now in police custody after brutally murdering his two teenage daughters,” Walsh tweeted. “I profiled Yasir on both AMW and In Pursuit on @DiscoveryID and glad to see him finally face justice.”
Allegations of abuse and disturbing home videos
The News reported that the 2008 double homicide was not the first time Yaser Said allegedly showed a propensity for violence. In 1998, his daughters accused him of sexually abusing them.
Owens, then still married to Said, swore in an affidavit that the allegations were true, the newspaper said.
The girls later recanted their statements and the charges against Yaser Said were dropped.
The violence and threats of harm continued, according to friends of the sisters. One friend told the News that Sarah Said once told her their father threatened to “put a bullet through Amina (Said’s) head” when he learned she had a boyfriend.
Amina Said showed up at Lewisville High School with welts on her body, a friend told the newspaper. The teen also claimed her father had kicked her in the head when he found notes from a boy in her belongings.
Joseph Moreno, Amina Said’s boyfriend, told Crime Watch Daily in 2017 that they loved one another.
“We both felt like what we had was very real and it was very much worth fighting for,” Moreno said in an interview. “And to her, it was worth dying for.”
Crime Watch Daily obtained disturbing home video footage shot by Yaser Said that appears to show his obsessive need to control his daughters. The footage was first uncovered during production of the 2016 documentary on the sisters’ killings.
The footage shows Yaser Said recording his daughters as they lay in their beds.
“This is illegal,” Amina Said says in a portion of the footage. “Do I videotape you when you’re sleeping?”
In another snippet, he closes in on Amina Said’s blue eyes.
“Wow, look at those eyes,” he is heard saying. “I got my eye on you.”
A third snippet shows him watching Sarah Said from outside her workplace, which appears to be a fast food restaurant.
“She smiled to the customer,” he says.
“Baba, she had to. (It’s) part of her job,” Amira Said is heard telling him.
“She’s in trouble,” Yaser Said responds.
In yet another clip, Amina Said is seen playing with a handgun, at one point aiming it jokingly at her father behind the camera. It is unclear if the gun is the same one Yaser Said is accused of using to kill the girl and her sister.
Owens told the News in 2011, two years after her divorce from Said became final, that he would often complain that the girls were becoming Westernized.
“He would say things like, ‘They’re becoming too American,’” Owens said at the time.
It was not clear why Owens is now contradicting her alleged statements to police immediately after her daughters’ killings.
“I don’t think it was love,” Owens told Crime Watch Daily in 2017, when discussing her marriage. “I think it was just, we were so poor. I just wanted to get out of that house.
“You know, he promised everything.”
Said, who had ties in Texas, New York City, Virginia, Canada and Egypt, was believed to be seeking shelter in Egyptian-affiliated communities, the FBI said.
“He frequents Denny’s and IHOP restaurant’; smokes Marlboro Lights 100s cigarettes and loves dogs, especially tan- and black-colored German Shepherds. He may work as a taxi driver,” a 2014 FBI bulletin said.
DeSarno said Wednesday that it was not a tip from the public that finally led agents to Said’s location in Justin.
“What led us there was good old-fashioned, aggressive police work,” DeSarno said.
His son and his brother were captured in Euless, about 10 miles west of Irving, the FBI agent said.
Yaser Said was calm when he was taken into custody, DeSarno said.
“He was compliant and quiet,” the agent said.
When questioned about the alleged “honor killing” motive for the double homicide, Spivey said he didn’t know how anyone could use the terms honor and killing in the same sentence.
“This man brutally murdered — shot to death — his two daughters in his taxi cab. What led him to do that, I think at this point, to us, is irrelevant,” Spivey said. “The fact that he murdered his two daughters, the fact that he’s been on the run for 12 years and the fact that tonight his flight from justice ended and justice for Amina and Sarah begins. That’s what is most important to us.”
Both Spivey and DeSarno talked about the drive of the investigators who have spent the past 12 years looking for the alleged killer. One FBI agent repeatedly put off her retirement over the past decade to continue working on the case.
Spivey said his officers, the faces and names of whom have changed somewhat over the years, never gave up or lost faith that Yaser Said would be caught.
“This is a good day for law enforcement,” he said. “This is one of the days that make this difficult job really pay off.”