Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
The said sisters apparently became the innocent victims of a tragic cultur clash. the fatal collision of the old -world tradition of arranged marriage.And the ill-fated young love of modern -day romeo and juliet.
Xoel Pamos ,co director” The Price of Honor”
Xoel :it was really hard to understand that a father would put their daughters throught something like that . who doe´s that?
Amina and sarah.
Amina and her little sister sarah ,always seemd like much loved andwell-adjusted girls with san older brother named Isam.
Yaser ,Amina , Patricia ,sarah and big brother Islam.
Sarah was more of the tomboy,really reserved,Amina was more of a social butterlfy she was very outspoken ,she was very tomboy too,but she also had that pretty cheek side to her.
The two girls grew up together as best friends and playmates with the same interests. as most other children .
Sarah and Amina were well-mannered pretty smart and popular at school where they were diligent model students.
Joseph : they had plans for themselves .both amina and sarah ,definitly had future plans .sarah didn´t really talk too much ,she was very academic that´s all she really talked about.she always talking about school.
Amina also had high academic ambitions .
Kresha Hull, sister´s friend
Kresha :she wanted to go to college. i cant recall which doctor , but she wanted to be a doktor.
But they also realized from an early age ,that. that they´d been born.
into a strained and troubled union of two very diffrent world.
Patricia Owens.
Growing up american in bedford Texas near dallas ,the home of their southern baptist mother patricia.but raised in the traditions old Egypt, the homeland of their muslim father Yaser.
patricia was only 15 when she married yaser 29.
Jill Abplanalp,sister´s great aunt.
Jill: i couldn´t believe it,i was like. your´ kidding.
Connie: when i found out she was getting married,i had a little tantrum you knoe, i told h er well you´re ruin your life.your to young
But even though she was legally underage patricia wasn´t too young by yaser´s standards and she and her father eventually agreed to the marriage.
Yaser and Patricia.
Patricia: i don´t think it was love , i think it was just …we were so poor , i just wanted to get out of the house. you know , he like promised everything ..you know ,your life is gonna be better.
Jill: he had a lo of land he ,had a litte bit of stuff in Egypt.
connie: Yaser convinced my dad ,that he loved my sister and that his family had lot of money and they could take care of my sister and treat her with rsepect.
and for a short while.he did.
Yaser Said
patricia: at first it was good.he was loving,six or seven months maybe a year.then i started going downhill.
Yaser, a taxi driver reportedly wasn´t living up to his promises.
Jill: patricia she worked all the time. she´d worked most of the time .
And yaser revealing himself. to be a tyrant.
patricia: he just like ..started wanting to have more control.did not want me to have anything to do with my family.those americans…and the who´s isn´t very good.
Jill: we were americans and we´re were trash him.
Yaser wasn´t fond of anything american including his own wife eventually .
patricia: yaser would say ,”it was a mistake and then that he married an american.
patricia says he also became physically abusive.
patricia: he cut me on my leg because i wouldn´t have intercourse with him.
patricia said ,she caught yaser cheating on her too
patricia: he had six affairs …what i know of .
He also had her pose for sick pictures like these.him with a knife at her throat
Patricia and Yaser.
But patricia put up with it, and it´s alleged ,yaser would not only continye to abuse patricia ,but also their daughters Amina and sarah. in the worse way possible.
Jill :they told their grandmother.patricias mother. that yaser hade been messing with them.
Yaser said rolls the camera as daughter Amina eerliy points his gun at him .
Amina eerly points his gun at him .
perhaps the very same weapon he would allegedly soon use to shoot
Amina and her sister sarah to death in the taxi.
and maybe also the same gun their aunt Jill says Yaser used to terrify intimidate and threaten the teenagers when he would fly into wild fits of rage.
Jill: he would wake the girls up in the middle of the night waving the gun threatening them to do what he says or he would kill them .
Amina reportedly told friends and family her father also physically abused them.just as he allegededly their mother patricia.
Jill:he used to beat the girls.
Amina sent emails to friends detailing what her father did to her. claiming:
joseph: she would tell me more and more.just the horror stories about him basically.
but non more sickening than the allegation that yaser abused his daughters in the worst way imaginable.When Amina was just nine and sarah eight.
Jill: they told their grandmother,patricias mother,that Yaser had been messing with them.sexually abussing.
mom patricia moved out with the kids and reported the incident to the police.
Jill: they talked to Amina, they talked sarah.
the girls actually acused their father of raping them in the police report.
Jill believed the girls. but then …..
Amina and Sarah suddenly recanted their story .
Det.E.Curtis: and that was investigated by the hill county sheriff´s office and the charges were later dropped by t hem.
But the kids ,aunt Jill claims Amina told the family memberse that her mom and dad forced them to say they´d mad it up.
Jill: yaser and her made the kids recant their story and say that it didn´t happen .
Det.E.Curtis:it could be that they felt pressured or they were scared and didn´t want to see parent get in truble.
Now yaser was free to allegedly continue abusing his daughters well into their teens.. there were no more allegations of sexual abuse. but these interactions yaser videotaped with sarah and amina apear to have some troubling sexual overtones .
Yaser reportedly didn´t want any other men looking at his daughters without his aproval
Det.E .Curtis: he believed in arranged marriages. didn´t like the girls having boyfriends.
Infact Jill says that yasser was already trying to find them husbands in his own homeland.
Jill :he took amina when she was 16 to egypt and tried to marry her with a 47 years old .amina said no ,but ruth trotter the mother of the boyfriend joseph who amina kept secret from her father says yaser wouldn´t take no for an answer.
Ruth: she told my son that her father had plans for both girls , once they graduated to be in a forced marriage and that´s why they were going to Egypt during the summer because he was introducing her to men that i guess was potential suitors,and they would go to the highest bidder.
Amina and sarah were horrified and they wanted enjoy the freedom that was afforded to their brother Islam.
Islam said
Connie:yaser treated islam a lot diffrent from what i´ve been told. the boys in the muslim family are very respected.
Jill: thats what they believed.that guys can do what they want.
Connie :he was always so diffrent from the girls.
yaser kept constant guard on Amina and sarah, reportedly using cameras and other spying techniques to monitor their very movement.
Det.E .Curtis: as they got older i believe that ,kids get older , you started to lose a little bit of that control and i don´t think he liked that.
Alleged yaser had bugged their cars and was getting into their computers and phones .
Det.E .Curtis: he was checking cell phone bills ,finding numbers on the cell phones ,he would go back and then he would call those phone numbers to find out if it belonged to a male or a female to see who they were talking to.
Yaser went high alert after after his daughters began working part time at a local store.
this is yaser staking out the store with his camera rolling spying on sarah while Amina is in the car. with him. and he becomes enraged. when she smile to a male customer.then yaser would make a discovery that cops would prove fatal for amina and sarah
Det.E .Curtis: our belief is that is you know ,what drove him to ultimately kill them
it was more than just puppy love. Amina said and joseph were like romeo and juliet .joseph and amina were like romeo and juliet.
Joseph:we both felt like we had was very real and it was very,very much worth fighting for and to her it was worth dying for.
and Amina would die for it along with her younger when their father yaser allegedly shot both dead in a taxi ,after learning about aminas romance with boyfriend joseph. josef and Amina had had falling in love firtst sight when they were young teenagers. they were in the same Martial Arts class .
joseph: she walke in and i like ” hwo is that girl.”? and i was immediately attractrd to her.
Amina felt the same attraction.
Miguel:i would describe it as stereotypical young teenage love, they were together almost everyday of the week.
josef: it didn´t take much time for us to start a relationship .it went from “hey i like you”, from i “love you.”
the young lovers would be bound at heart for four years.
joesph: we were really in love with each other .
joseph mother ruth trotter fully approved of amina .
Ruth: first of all s she was strikingly beautiful she had these amazing beautiful green eyes .and a smile , i mean.to know her was just to fall in love with her.
joseph : we used to write like …little love notes to each other pretty much everyday.when we com to class we just trade notes with each other during the day ay school or whatever,we wouild just write whatever we thougt and it became like a daily thing.
Joseph and Amina were also best friends.
joseph: she was the kind of person , i could have the worse day at school maybe arguing with my mom or something and within a minute of being around her nothing else mattered.she juist had a very strong presence about her .she…she was just one of a kind.
but amina and joseph had to keep their romance secret from her father yaser ,who had forbidden both his daughters having an american boyfriend.
Joseph: she started to tell me just little by little that it was more than just him being protective ,it was more him being controlling. and abusive. wanted to get her away from that so bad ,she was such a good person ,she didn´t deserve ti live that.
The two could never been seen together
Joseph :we had to pick her up inthe parking lot of the Taekwondo studio because we couldn´t come to her house because her dad was there.
Joseph mother says ,he and Amina had to be very careful.
Ruth: early on ,she started…kind of giving instruction to my son ,you´re gonna be in my phone under a different name. they had code for that. Amina and joseph had their on language .
Amina had a separate phone her father didn´t know about.
Ruth: thats was for safe place to be able to contact my son.
Joseph: she was always afraid of her dad finding the phone ,finding my number.
Ruth says Amina even sent her a picture of her family members.
warning her they might be dangerous
Ruth: she said if you ever see any of these people around your house or around you or joseph you need to be very scared and you and you need to try to get to the police
At the same time Amina and joseph were talking about eloping
Joseph :i wanted her to be my wife, i wanted her to be my queen and we were gonna make it happen on way or another.we were gonna go to Vegas and just have a trip and we´re gonna get married.
but that´s when Yaser discovered one of their letters and realized Amina had a boyfriend.
joseph: she told me that ihe found one that she was writting to me and was asking her, you know ,who is this for,like you know ,what the hell is this .
Xoel :he went ballistic,he was beating Amina , she was bleeding,it was horrible. and yaser pretty much was forcing Amina to tell her where joseph was .
but amina refused to betray her boyfriend.
Xoel: amina wouldn´t say anything.so you know ,he kept hitting her because of that .Amina knew if she talking about joseph ,he would probably go and kill joseph.
Yaser was teremined Amina would never see joseph again and within days he had relocated his whole family from their home in bedford Texas to the town of louisville 20 miles away.
Joseph:she was just gone.and i hadn´t ,i had no idea like what happened, she literally just from always talking to her hours a day , every day to just nothing. she just ..she was just gone.
Yaser said was in rage when he discovered his daughter Amina had a secret boyfriend.
Ruth: she got a brutal beating because he wanted all the information on my son and she didn´t reveal anything to him.
Yaser was determined Amina would never see her sweetheart joseph again.imemediately relocating the whole family Bedford Texas to near Dallas to a new home in louisville 20 miles away.
Joseph : i had no idea what happened.she literally just from talking to her hours a day,everyday to just nothing.she was just gone.
Joseph mother Ruth says Amina was too afraid to even contact him for the sake of their safety.
Ruth: i was conserned because i knew at that point the threat where Amina and my son´s life were real .
filmmaker Xoel pamos says Amina had long believed her father would eventually kill her.
Xoel :Amina knew she was going to die. she just new it was matter of time.
and pamos said amina became sso resigned to it that she´d reportedly even considered committing suicide with her father´s own gun.
Xoel: ther´s emails where she talked about killing herself.where she says ,”next time he leaves his gun on the washer , im gonna use it for what he bought it for.wich is kill me , i´ll make it easier for him.
now after being forcibly separated from the love of her life , a scared and heartbroken Amina sent a letter to joseph´s mom.reading :
” i hate it here my heart Jojo and i pray we´ll be together again.”
Amina sent another letter to joseph saying :
” i dont care.he´ll have to kill me first , i´d rather die than live without you , one day we´ll be married and happy, i love you , i can´t stop crying, i love you “
she also wrote in emails that her father was still determined to sell both her and sister sarah into an arranged marriage in his native Egypt. saying :
” he´s gonna take me over there and let some guy choose me ,like i´m a freaking object.i´d give anything to just get to pick my own husband”
And when Amina finally refused to take part in a arranged marriage her aunt jill says a furious yaser reportedly threatened to kill both her and sarah whom he discovered had a secret boyfriend to.
Jill :he pulled a gun on them that day and he was gonna kill them.
the sisters finally realized they had to get away from Yaser to save their own lives
Ruth: and thats when Amina and her sister made the plan that they were gonna go ahead and run away .
joseph: she jsut didn´t want want to be under her dad anymore and her and sarah basically had enough and they wanted a chance of a real life so they left .
and mom patricia fled with them ,driving to Tulsa Oklahoma where they leased an apartement to hide out .
Patricia: when we left we took out our Sims cards out of our cellphones and we broke them in half and trhough them in the trash.
Joseph: the first thing the father would do was to track them from their cellphones and after they left they ,they got another one.
the first thing amina did was call the sweetheart she been pining for.
Joseph : we started talking again .and just because things gotten a little crazy ,there was no reason to give up on it.
but Yaser wasn´t giving up either ,trying to find his runaway wife and daughters through her family.
Connie:he was trying to say that he wanted them to come home ,but i told her “it´s a trick ” just don´t go back .just stay away .
there mom patricia would make the mistake of calling him and once yaser had there new number he was relentless
Patricia: leaving voicemails and sending emails to my phone and aminas phone saying that ” just to go back home,it was our house not to leave”.
and joseph says Amina noticed her mother´s resolve weakening.
Joseph: she was very worried.because her mom was having secons thoughts .
Then a fateful decision
Patricia: we agreed on going back to Texas.
Joseph: that was a horrible idea .i mean if you can´t trust mom and you know what your dad is like .and she told me she had to do what she had to do.
Amina and sarah said had to run for their lives.fleeing their lewisville Texas home with mom patricia to escape their allegedly abusive and violant father Yaser.
and the tree were living in Oklahoma where Yaser couldn´t find them.but now patricia tells her daughters she wants them to return to Texas to visit family members over the christmas and New Year´s holliday.
and amina and boyfrien jospeh are alarmed.
Joseph: Amina was very scared because…i mean , she knew what that meant.
Ruth: joseph beg her not to go back.he said “Amina you know what´s gonna happen.
But mom patricia had reportedly reassured her daughters they wouldn´t be staying with yaser.
Connie: Amina said that ,my sister patricia told her that she was going to come back and stay at my house and put flowers on my mom´s grave for her birthday
and Amina reluctantly agrees to go.
It isn´t until they arrived back in lousiville that Amina discovers to her horror that her mother has apparently tricked her and sarah.
Ruth: then she told them ,”im going back to to your father.
and they were going with her .prompting a panicked Amina to send text message to boyfriend joseph.telling him ,that she was terrified.
Ruth: sarah went and Amina refused.
Connie: she said” i ´m never going back.i´d rather die before i go back
Jill: Amina refused to go home, she went to her friends house.
But Yaser begs Amina to at least visit him.
Det.E .Curtis: Amina talked to yaser and he told her that everything was gonna be okej.
Amina agrees to meet him on the first day of the New Year and what will turn out to be the last day of her life.
patricia: so i went picked her up from her friends house and we went home.
Det.E .Curtis: and yaser tells the girls that he wants to take them out to eat and to talk.
Amina and sara getting into the taxi, yaser is driving, that evening would be the last time their mother would see them alive.
police dispatchers get a horrifying 911 call.from a frantic sarah.
Sara is being shot as she calling.
sarah can be heard taking her last breath on the call.
and as cops try to her location dispatchers another 911 call about bodies in a cab parked at a taxi stand outside this hotel.
Cops arrive at the scene to find Amina lying dead from two gunshot wound and sarah from nine. but there is no driver.
Det.E .Curtis: he´s nowhere to be found.
Not only do police have a double homicide on their hands. they now believe the killer may be the girl´s own father.
Sarah her self had named him as the gunman on her 911
Jill: i just can´t believe it.sara ,after being shot like that could stil managed to call 911.and identify her killer.
Det.E .Curtis: the officers began searching the area ,they began searching the home.any places that they could think of that he might go.
And as cops hunting for Yaser heartbroken friends and family learn of the murders
Jill: i couldn´t believe it, i was just shocked, i was like” you gotta be kidding me” how did yaser get the girls? how,did he get them?
Kresha Hull: i was just like bawling-crying cuz i couldn´t believe it.like it was just …so surreal .
Joseph : of course i didnt believe it…..
Ruth the love of his life was executed and …they´ll never be anymore joseph and Amina .
Joseph : all rage in the world couldn´t reverse it.
Losing Amina leaves joseph devastated.
Joseph: i lost my grip on reality for more than a little while .
Ruth: he was crying 24 hours a day,he couldn´t eat , he couldn´t sleep. he couldn´t drink.
Joseph: that i could get out of bed ,go brush my teeth was an accomplishment in itself.
Ruth: we had to seek help gor him medical help.
Nobody can believe a father would kill his own daughters.Nor can their mothers family imagine why she would allow them near Yaser after all the abuse and death threats he allegedly allready inflicted upon them
Jill: i dont have no symphathy for any mother that would lie and trick their girls and put them through what she did ,all their lifes.
Jill believe also that going back to Texas was a death sentence.
Jill: yeas ,i do believe that. defently they knew if they ever went back,that he would definitely kill them.
Xoel pamos came to the same conclusion wile making the dokumentary “the price of honnor”
Xoel : according to everybody, that i i´ve talked to through the investigation that we did for the documentary yeas.i say defenitely yeas.
but patricia insists she never imagined yaser would murder their daughters
Patricia: hwo would thing that their father would kill them?
and Detectiv eric curtis says her judgement may have been affected by the abuse she also allegedely suffered at the hands of her husband.
Det.E.Curtis: it´s not uncommon that when a person is a victim of domestic violence that have a hard time getting away from that abuser.
Detective curtis blames the murdes of amina and sarahs on a fatal culture clach.
Det.E.Curtis: our indications are that yaser was upset about amina and saras westen lifestyle that they were living.
and the detective said,finding out that amina had an american boyfriend and that sarah one too sent egyptian.born yaser over the edge.
Det.E.Curtis: our belief is that this is what drove him to ultimately kill them .
some say the heinous crime was what is known as an honor killing.
Xoel :it´s a culture belief, if you don´t honor my name i´m gonna honnor my name myself . i´m gonna kill you to clean the shame.
Jill: this is a double honor killing.this is exactly what this is .nothing is honorable about this.it is not.
but detective curtis alleges it´s something else.
Det.E Curtis : in the day it´s just murder . he murdered his two daughters.
Now more then 8 years later , yaser said is still on the loose.and on the FBI:s most wanted list . they have been some reported sightings of him but authorities still have no idea of his whereabouts.
After the murders, Said disappeared and although it was first assumed he fled to Egypt, no such record was ever found. Owens filed for divorce in 2009. Alleged sightings of Said driving a taxi in New York City and in Newark, New Jersey, prompted the FBI to issue a statement suggesting he could be in the area.
On December 4, 2014, Said was added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives with a $100,000 reward for any information leading to his arrest. Said evaded capture by law enforcement for 12 years and spent six years on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.
A break in the case came on August 14, 2017, when a maintenance worker at an apartment complex in Bedford, Texas, where Yaser’s son, Islam Said, rented an apartment, reported seeing a man matching Yaser’s description inside of Islam’s apartment. When detectives showed him a picture of Yaser Said, the worker identified him as the man he had seen in the apartment.
At approximately 6:30 p.m. that evening, an agent came into the apartment to interview Islam. He was upset and allegedly refused to cooperate. He then called someone, saying, “We have a problem.” At 1:00 a.m., a search warrant was executed on the apartment, which was empty at the time. However, the police observed a sliding glass patio door open. Below the patio, they noticed a shrub with broken branches, suggesting someone had jumped off the patio and landed on the bush. Next to the flattened bush, they found a pair of eyeglasses, which they collected as evidence.
They collected evidence inside the apartment, including several cigarette butts and a toothbrush. The FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, compared the DNA from those items to the DNA of Amina and Sarah, and determined the DNA most likely came from their biological father.
Three years later, in August 2020, the police began 24-hour surveillance on a home in Justin, Texas. They observed Islam and Yassein entering and exiting the home and the shadow of another man inside the home after the two men had left. After a week of surveillance, the FBI obtained a search warrant and arrested Yaser on August 26, 2020
On the same day in nearby Euless, Texas, they also arrested Islam, age 32, and Yassein Abdulfatah Said, age 59. Said’s son and brother were both charged with concealing a person from arrest. Authorities suspect that other people helped Said evade arrest over the years, and a federal criminal complaint said that Islam was in contact with two more of his father’s brothers.
Even though Yaser Said was indicted on capital murder charges, prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. Since his capture, he has been held at Dallas County Jail – North Tower.His trial opened on August 2, 2022.Said argued through a translator that he was not present during the murders, having taken his daughters in his taxi for a ride and that there was a threat following them that made him leave, leaving his two daughters alone as Said has thought he was a target. After hearing closing arguments and three hours of deliberation, the jury found Said guilty of capital murder. Dallas County District Court Judge Chika Anyiam sentenced Said to life in prison without the possibility of parole. As of January 2023, he is incarcerated at Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s McConnell Unit in Bee County, Texas.
On January 19, 2021, Islam Yaser-Abdel Said pleaded guilty to harboring a fugitive, conspiring to harbor a fugitive, and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice. On April 27, 2021, he was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for the aforementioned charges.As of 30 January 2023, he is serving his sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Big Spring.
According to his defense, Yassein Abdulfatah Said claimed that he hated Yaser for what he did and that he would never have helped him if he had known what would happen.On February 4, 2021, he was found guilty of conspiracy and harboring a fugitive. He was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison on June 4, 2021. As of 30 January 2023, he is serving his sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Bastrop
As to friends and relatives of Amina and sarah who are still haunted by their shocking murders ,and every NewYears day marks another aniversary of the killings a heartbreaking reminder of Amina and joseph tragic romeo and juliet romance.