For those who thought Mohammad Shafia and Tooba Yahyas–the animal paren…no, sorry, the egg and sperm donors of three poor girls and their co-mother whom they killed–along with their monster son, Hamed, were the ugliest couple in Canada, their evil is surpassed by the sick, sick, sick couple of John Michael Siscoe and his girlfriend, whose HUSBAND they tortured in the most disgusting manner possible for three months! And the female savage had better not get any lenience because she is a woman or because she was not the leader of this disgusting duo. No, she and her boyfriend, along with Shafia, Yahyas and Hamed are all evil and Arguments for the Death Penalty. The COMMENTS section below contains each horrific story from The Star.
‘We are not murderers’ Tooba Yahya tells Shafia murder trial court (By Rosie DiManno, Star Columnist)
KINGSTON, ONT.— One juror puffs out his cheeks like a blowfish and stares at his feet. Another purses his lower lip and exhales upwards whilst scrutinizing the ceiling. A third has slid down low into her seat, chin sagging onto her chest, eyelids drooping.
It is the fifth day of Tooba Yahya on the stand and the jury is clearly exhausted. Their faces are slack, skin taking on the hue of courthouse pallor.
Quarrelsome defence lawyers who’d been popping up and down with objections Friday morning have been chastened into scowling silence by Justice Robert Maranger: “One thing I’d like? If I rule on something – bang – it’s over.’’
Then, as the droning prosecutor’s voice suddenly takes on a tone of drama, the jury bestirs itself into alertness.
In the 23rd hour of Tooba’s cumulative testimony – exclusive of breaks and overnight recesses – here it is, the nut paragraph, the crux of the quadruple murder case against Tooba, her husband Mohammad Shafia and their son Hamed, in what the crown alleges was an Afghan “honour killing’’ of three teenage sisters and their co-mother, their bodies discovered June 30, 2009, in a Nissan Sentra submerged in the Kingston Mills Locks.
Crown attorney Gerard Laarhuis draws a deep breath.
“I’m putting to you that one of you drove the Nissan to that place with the bodies inside and drove it to the edge of the canal wall and that the plan was that someone would drive it up to the canal wall. You needed a place where the car would drop straight down and be under the water.
“It couldn’t be a place where the car would get caught driving into a lake or something like that. It had to fall and go right under the water, and that in part was why you left the Pontiac Montana at home and bought a new car just one day before this trip. You wanted a car that was lower and cheaper. Do you agree with that?’’
Tooba: “No, not. Never.’’
Laarhuis resumes his narrative.
“You took this lower and cheaper Nissan, you or Hamed or Shafia, with the bodies inside and somebody drop it to the other side (of the Locks) and somebody positioned it on that plateau at the edge of Lock No. 1, where the Nissan went in. And somebody left the car running, this was part of the plan, roll down the window, put the gear shift in neutral, aim the wheels of the car so that it would go between the two crabs (lock winches), with the bodies inside, the seats reclined, the headlights off, the dome light off, the wipers off, got out of the car, closed the door, reached through the open window, put the car from neutral into (first) gear, thinking that on its own power the Nissan would go into the water.
“What none of you expected, what was not part of the plan, was that the Nissan, would get hung up. Do you agree with that?’’
Tooba: “Never, no.’’
Laarhuis: “When the Nissan got hung up there was an emergency because now you had bodies inside of a car, hung up on the edge of a canal and you and Hamed, or you and Shafia, were in the Lexus, positioning it behind the Nissan. There wasn’t enough room so you had to do it at an angle, which is what caused the Nissan to rotate as it was pushed in…and that’s what caused the damage to the headlight of the Lexus, that’s what rubbed the “S” and the “E’’ off of the back of the Nissan, two pieces that Hamed for whatever reason didn’t pick up. Do you agree with that?’’
Tooba, her voice cracking and tears starting to flow: “No, sir. We are not murderers. We were a very sincere and collected family. This crime, we will never do such a crime. Don’t ever tell me such a thing. I am a mother. If you are a mother then you could have known that what’s the heart of a mother for a child…
“Don’t ever tell me that I killed my children, never.’’
But Laarhuis, after hours and hours of taking Tooba methodically through previous statements she’d made to police, emphasizing all the discrepancies, recounting the forensic evidence which put both family vehicles involved – the Nissan and the Lexus SUV – at the scene that night, and most especially damning the witness with her own earlier words of crucial admission, what she now insists were lies, lies, lies – had just done exactly that.
Tooba, Shafia and Hamed killed Zainab, Sahar, Geeti and Rona Amir Mohammad, declared Laarhuis.
He does not know and cannot say exactly how or when the women died, if they were already deceased when the Nissan was pushed into the canal. But Tooba drove that vehicle to the locks with the soon-to-be victims inside it, continued Laarhuis, and then waited for Shafia and Hamed to return from renting motel rooms nearby.
“They were asleep in the car while you were waiting, except (perhaps) for Zainab.
“The girls were sitting calmly. They had no reason to expect anything bad might happen. They were with their mother.
“I’m putting to you that that reason you ran to the Lexus is that you knew – when (Shafia and Hamed) returned, that was going to be the end and the Nissan was going into the water. You knew you had to get out of the Nissan and that’s why you ran to the Lexus.’’
Tooba had told an RCMP inspector, during a six-hour interview on the night of her arrest, July 21, 2009, that she was standing on the grass with Hamed and Shafia had taken over the wheel of the Lexus when the other car went into the canal, though she’d heard only a “splash,” never actually witnessed the plunge and remained thereafter befuddled by what had happened. That admission was recanted the following day.
The inspector had harangued her, Tooba continued to insist, forced her into inventing a fabricated scenario just to bring the interrogation to an end. She was spent, sick, grieving. “What else should I have said? Should I have put my head on his shoulder or his lap? I was his prisoner.
“Tomorrow will be one week that I am here and you are asking me the same questions a hundred times. I am in the same position now.’’
Laarhuis barely took any notice of Tooba’s protests and forged on.
The victims hadn’t been wearing seatbelts, he reminded Tooba. She retorted: “I was not an airplane stewardess in order to go and buckle everyone.’’
Laarhuis, relentless: “They were resting calmly and comfortably while you were with them. When you left them, they had no injuries to the top of their heads.’’ A pathologist has testified that all but Sahar had bruising on their craniums. “You have no explanation what happened to them.’’
Tooba: “No, none.’’
The cross-examination continues Monday.
Man tortured in a closet raises disturbing questions (Jayme Poisson and Liam Casey Staff Reporters)
Man tortured in a closet raises disturbing questions
Published On Fri Jan 13 2012
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An artist’s depiction of John Michael Siscoe in court, with the Crown attorney and the victim’s wife, whose name and appearance are not being published to protect the victim.
An artist’s depiction of John Michael Siscoe in court, with the Crown attorney and the victim’s wife, whose name and appearance are not being published to protect the victim.
Jayme Poisson and Liam Casey Staff Reporters
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Man tortured in a closet raises disturbing questions
PHOTOS: Inside apartment of torture
Crime hushed so effectively not even neighbours knew
Man brutally tortured by his wife and her boyfriend in Toronto apartment
How does a human being unleash such horrific abuse on another? And why does a person tortured mercilessly not ask for help when given the opportunity?
These are some of the questions raised after details of one of Toronto’s most barbaric crimes were revealed Friday: One man confined to a closet and physically, sexually and psychologically abused over the course of the three months.
Gregg McCrary, a retired FBI psychological profiler, said John Michael Siscoe — the man responsible for the abuse — reminded him of notorious serial killer Paul Bernardo, a case he worked on. Sadism is a continuum, he said, and Siscoe, 40, is at the far end of the spectrum. Like Bernardo, both are pathological narcissists with a god complex.
“They both treated people like animals — even worse than animals. They controlled their victims, and their emotions eventually became flat,” said McCrary, adding that you could see in the detailed account a progression from violent outbursts to methodically unrepentant torture.
Cartilage was ripped from the victim’s ears with a pair of pliers. Pins were pierced through his lips, sealing his mouth. Lighter fluid poured on his skin and then set on fire.
“There is no pill to take for this, and we don’t know how to fix them,” McCrary said of serial killers. He believes Siscoe had all the characteristics to become one.
“These people must be separated from us. Their hard-wiring is just wrong and cannot be fixed.”
While none of the experts quoted in this article has personally assessed anyone involved in this case, they offered some insights into the horrific abuse that began around Oct. 31, 2009.
Siscoe had been living with the victim and his wife for some time, and had fostered a sexual relationship with the woman — she, pregnant with Siscoe’s child, watched some of the abuse and was in the apartment at other times. (Her name cannot be revealed because of a publication ban protecting any details that could identify the victim.)
The victim was forced to write out house rules dictated by Siscoe and the victim’s wife, such as “Do what it takes to not be stupid.”
McCrary said this non-violent interaction spoke to Siscoe’s need to control as well as the victim’s submission.
Dr. David Bernstein, a leading American expert on psychopathy, said it seems “highly likely” that Siscoe is a psychopath. The torture became increasingly brutal and there was no empathy for the victim. Instead, the perpetrator hijacked his victim’s life.
“He used more control than he had to. He went way beyond what he needed to control the situation,” said Bernstein. “There’s no doubt he took pleasure in this.”
On one occasion, Siscoe ordered his victim to emerge from the closet so he could show an area resident who had come to visit the apartment. “He’s proud of the power he shared over his victim and he showed it off,” added Bernstein.
Siscoe himself was scheduled to undergo a psychological assessment at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health on Friday, according to court documents. The Crown prosecutor in the case intends to put forth an application to have him designated a dangerous offender, which could keep him behind bars for an indeterminate period.
Speaking of the victim, Bernstein said that over time he appeared to exhibit “learned helplessness” — a clinical term to explain a perceived complete loss of control.
“You try to stand up for yourself . . . and you get the crap beaten out of you, so eventually you stop standing up for yourself and you just submit,” he said, adding that there was something “childlike” about the victim’s behaviour.
Bernstein thinks there are also elements of Stockholm syndrome in this case, where the captive develops a bond with the captor, whom they come to rely on for survival.
He noted parallels in the case of Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped and repeatedly raped while kept prisoner for 18 years in California. There were occasions when Dugard either had the opportunity to escape or went along with lies concocted by her captor that she was his daughter.
Despite opportunities to leave or ask for help, the tortured victim in Toronto does not appear to have attempted either. On one occasion, he relayed Siscoe’s lie to hospital staff that his injuries were caused by a mugging.
When police rescued the victim, an officer found him huddled in a dark closet and asked him if the two people who lived in the apartment were responsible for his state, he replied: “I don’t want to get them in trouble.”
At the time, the victim had two collapsed lungs and several broken ribs; his body was covered with grotesque wounds and his head swollen to three times its normal size.
One very important component of this story, said Dr. Zachary Walsh, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, is that there should be no blame placed on the victim.
“I imagine he didn’t feel like there was a way out,” he said, adding that it seems the victim thought something worse would happen if he disobeyed his captors.
“We know how difficult it can be for people to get out of abusive relationships.”
Here’s an update on the torture case:
By Petti Fong Western Bureau, The Star
VANCOUVER — He says his name, his real name, almost defiantly, proud that this, at least, has not been taken from him.
Not the nickname he was called by his torturers over the months he was kept in captivity, sleeping in a tiny closet, beaten to the point where every time the blood splattered on the walls, he was surprised at the sight.
“I didn’t know I had any blood left,” he says. “I didn’t know there was any more way they could hurt me and cause me pain.”
He is a victim, he was tortured and he survived one of the most shocking crimes to be heard in a Toronto court.
He can name the man, John Michael Siscoe, who did this to him but he cannot name his other captor, his wife. A court ban protects his identity but in doing so, it also protects her. He wishes he could go public.
“What happened to me happened because it was behind closed doors and most people who knew or heard something didn’t speak up. Only a few people were willing to say something,” he says. “If they hadn’t, I would still be there, in that closet. Or I would be dead.”
The man described exclusively to the Star the three months in which he was brutally tortured, physically, sexually and psychologically.
His wife and Siscoe pleaded guilty in Ontario Superior Court last week to a series of charges, including endangering a life and sexual assault causing bodily harm, from Oct. 31, 2009, until police rescued the man from the one-bedroom west-end Toronto apartment on Jan. 19, 2010.
He spoke in the rec room of the apartment building where he now lives in a Vancouver suburb.
The complex includes three other buildings, adjoined by hallways and linked by shared weight rooms, laundry facilities and game rooms.
He is aware of the time to the minute when doors are automatically and systematically locked in the public spaces and which door locks behind him when he passes through to go outside for a smoke. That he has the access codes to unlock the doors is a point of pride for him.
There is a wariness now about people where before, his current girlfriend remembers, the man she knew was always friendly, always willing to help anyone, with nothing unkind to say about anyone. But now he trusts no one and while he’s still so angry at his wife and Siscoe that his hands clench reflexively when their names are brought up, he simply wants to move on.
“I just don’t want to know them anymore,” he says when asked whether he plans to divorce the woman he married in 2005 in their former hometown in B.C’s Fraser Valley.
They lived off the modest income he earned as a small engine mechanic and a disability allowance from the government.
But three years into their marriage, the man’s wife began an affair with Siscoe, allowing him to move into their apartment and relegating the man to a couch in his own home. In the fall of 2009, when his wife was pregnant with Siscoe’s baby, the three of them moved to Toronto and began living in a similar arrangement in a basement apartment.
A month after their move, the beatings began.
His girlfriend today, who first met him in 2004 at a Christian gathering, says when she saw him again after his return to the west coast in late January 2010, she hardly recognized him.
“Everything about him had changed, from the way he walked to the way he talks. He’s not that person I knew back then, he’s changed in almost every way,” she says.
His own mother didn’t recognize him. She walked by him three times at the airport when she went to pick him up after his release from hospital in Toronto.
“He was all shrunk up,” she says during an interview at her home about 45 minutes away from where her son now lives. She demonstrates, hunching her body into a curve, hands tucked low against her side. “This was the way he looked. Half his size. Afraid. I think he thought he would be hit again even though he was back home.”
His mother doesn’t want to know the details of what her son endured and his girlfriend says she listens when he wants to talk about it, which is rarely.
Only recently has he been able to sleep without an overhead light on but still insists on a light being visible somewhere, whether as a night light or in a hallway. When he’s in the shower he wants his girlfriend in the couple’s tiny bathroom with him for security.
According to the agreed statement of facts presented in court, the man was forced to sit naked in a bathtub while Siscoe poured lighter fluid on his body, then set him on fire. Siscoe also used hairspray, aftershave and rubbing alcohol as accelerants.
“Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about,” Siscoe would tell the victim. His wife would shout “Shut up” when he screamed loudly, worried police or social services would come and take the unborn baby away if anyone learned about the abuse.
The tiny closet he was forced to sleep in was so dark that pitch darkness still makes him scream. But he has made progress.
Just last month, he turned off the lights in a room, did a mock scream and then quickly turned the lights back on.
“I even laughed about it. But I can still feel that I get totally freaked out when someone accidentally turns off the light,” he says. “I’ll try it again sometime. I know I won’t be able to do it ever in the washroom.”
He had quit drinking in 2004 but began again during the three months he was in captivity, the better to cope with the pain of being sliced with razor blades and pierced with pins through his lips to seal his mouth.
Oozing wounds were cauterized with hot knives or sewn with a needle and thread. Cartilage was ripped from his ears with a pair of pliers.
He believes at least once, drugs were mixed in with his soup to keep him from screaming in pain. This was after he was kicked with steel-toed boots, which were later recovered by the police with blood stains on them.
He says he has not consumed any alcohol since being rescued.
It was the agonizing pain and the desperate attempts to do whatever he had to do to keep from getting beaten again that has left him fuzzy about the time he was in the apartment. He was forced to fill out forms with headers such as “To do what it takes to not be stupid” and “To do what I have to do to stay alive.” He endured more beatings when his captors put an X next to boxes along the side to indicate he hadn’t done the right thing.
“They looked for any reason to start again. It felt like it never ended,” he says. He knows now, thinking about the measurements objectively, that Siscoe wasn’t much bigger than he was, but the victim, who says he was always “a lover not a fighter,” felt physically threatened by the other man who knew martial arts.
Yet despite the pain inflicted on him, there was something else that he never anticipated: humiliation.
Once, he vaguely remembers someone else coming to the apartment, a woman, and he was called out of the closet by Siscoe.
“Embarrassed,” he says when asked what it was like to emerge from a closet wearing only a towel and being paraded in front of a stranger in the apartment. “Embarrassed and just felt humiliated, like nothing. Even then, I thought, it was like this was a movie. A movie that couldn’t be real.”
Asked if he thought about asking her for help, the man looks uncertain. “I couldn’t ask anyone for help. I prayed someone would come and find me but I didn’t know if that would change anything.”
The woman reported that she saw the victim with his skin so purple and black from the beatings that she didn’t know his race. She grabbed her daughter and left and he went back into the closet.
If she could leave, why couldn’t he? Again, the victim thinks about this for a second. The bruises are gone but the scars remain all over his body, white healed marks so numerous they have become part of the texture of his skin, on his arms and legs and the rest of his torso.
“John said if I left, he would find me and kill me. If he couldn’t find me, he would go find my parents and do to them what he was doing to me,” he says. “Those were his words. That what he was doing to me, he would do to them. I couldn’t do that to them. They wouldn’t survive.”
A week later, the woman who had been in the apartment and another man from a nearby bar who had also suspected something walked into a police station to report the abuse. The police officer who opened the closet door told the man he was safe. The first words out of the victim’s mouth were: “I don’t want to get them in trouble.”
He says now that his first thoughts were different. A phrase he kept repeating over and over in his mind but couldn’t say out loud. “Thank you.”
The clearest memory he has about what happened after he was brought out of the apartment and taken to the hospital is eating ice cream, he says. A lot of ice cream and he could feel it dribble from his broken mouth but it didn’t matter because there was no one to punish him for making a mess.
Then he fell asleep again and when he woke up, he was still in the hospital. His eyes traced an IV line connected from his body to the ground to a machine and from that to another tube over the hospital bed where he saw a bag of blood pumping and moving as if it was living thing.
“That’s when I knew I was safe. I was hooked up to something and I was alive.”
Hey welcome back. Sorry to put this here but your blog has followed this criminal Maleki-Raei family. Remember Maryam Torabipour got caught for murder?
Her Uncle, whom lived at her residence when in Canada, was arrested:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/txe/News/2011/edtx-amini-111711.html
he is a close “personal” friend of the York Regional Police.
Thank you and thank you for the link, which I will post in a new blog.