kassab crime family

MacDonald said there had been a stabbing and begged for an ambulance. Wade Smith rarely grants interviews. Kassab a one-time Canadian Army intelligence operator who had once lost his own wife and daughter in a bombing of London during World War II initially believed MacDonalds account of the night and became a staunch and vocal supporter of his son-in-law, the Washington Post reported in 1984. Bettmann/Getty ImagesA neighbors dog and MP guards securing the MacDonald property. Nonexclusive right to authorize all uses of these materials for non-commercial research, scholarly, or other educational purposes are granted to Khayrallah Center pursuant to Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA). The past year has been the most arduous of our lives. Wadea and Aelyas Kassab are both buried in Pennsylvania. In 1970 America was gripped by the horror of the Manson murders a fact used against MacDonald because he subscribed to Esquire magazine, which had run a story about the dark side of hippie culture. But it wasnt until Kassab revisited the crime scene himself in 1972 that he finally believed that his son-in-law had been the killer. Almost all the of shootings in the north-west, one underworld source said, relate to those at the bottom of the criminal food chain. Other witnesses claimed that Stoeckly had confessed at various times that she thought she might have been present during the murders. With their encouragement, he graduated from dental school in Philadelphia in 1895 and set up a practice in Chester. Evidence the defense never saw. There was violence. Whats your sense of this? Smerling is the director of the documentary series A Wilderness of Error, which examines the MacDonald case. WS: We all depend on excellent, honest detective work. 6,889 Family Trees. 741 Immigration & Travel. The family claims his body has never been found. The prosecution, led by James Blackburn and Brian Murtagh, argued that MacDonald staged the crime scene to blame hippies. They dont know the truth any more than I do. Many felt that his acquittal would be a cinch, but much more was to go wrong. But there was, including wax drippings (MacDonald insisted that one of the intruders carried a candle), fibers, and hairs that did not belong to the household or family members. Even scarier stories, Ive found, can be true. He was more interested in working with people on hallucinogenic and things like that. McGinniss stark rendering of Picture #1 stuck in my mind until recently when a friend from North Carolina told me that Errol Morris had published a book suggesting MacDonald was innocent. By the end of 1969, everything seemed in order. Investigators identified at least 240 leads in the casebut the evidence continued to point back to the MacDonald. Freddie Kassab and CID investigators returned to the crime scene in 1971 to contrast MacDonalds claims with the evidence and found his narrative implausible. Picture #2. He is outspoken about MacDonalds innocence, and when I called him, I could hear the years of outrage in his voice over the way the case has proceeded. He worked first in a stove factory, a physically taxing and low-paying job, and later became a molder in a factory making brake shoes for the railroad. Additionally, MacDonalds medical records showed that he had no defensive wounds on his arms or hands consistent with the alleged attack. I remember saying, It doesnt matter. The Tibas, Haddaras, Chaouks, Kassabs, and Kheirs are north-west Melbourne's version of the Five Families, the major players in the New York mafia. Anybody could. Lynn Parramore: In all your years as a lawyer, what makes this case stand out? She knew this world, and was herself a police informant. I was born in May of that year, and would thus be the same age as the child Colette MacDonald was carrying when her life was snuffed out. Family members of radio personality Casey Kasem have settled a lawsuit against his widow that alleged her neglect and physical abuse led to his death in 2014. So did I. I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, about an hour from the Fort Bragg army base in Fayetteville where the murders occurred on Feb. 17, 1970, in the middle of the night. Melbourne's north-west has soaked in blood for more than a decade, with crime families that still reign despite prison time, drive-by hits, and police task forces. Invest with us. According to exclusive statistics from the armed crime squad, there has been a five-fold increase in non-fatal shootings in the north-west in four years and the region now sees almost two thirds of Victoria's non-fatal shootings. Carl Williams was a boy from Broady, whose fat fingers spread across the state, but we know little about the boys from Broady who are ordering murders and peddling drugs now. Colette MacDonald and her daughters suffered horrific violence as they were killed on February 17, 1970 at their Fort Bragg home. I personally delivered a copy by hand to every congressman and every senator in the country.. MacDonald claimed he'd broke his arm in the fatal scuffle, but Kearns would later say in an interview that authorities had MacDonald under surveillance at the time and did not observe any broken arm. However, instead of the firm defense MacDonald expected, the 1983 bestseller A Fatal Vision described him as a narcissistic psychopath.. A crime scene was left open to bystander traffic. MacDonald was convicted of the three murders in 1979, nine years after Colette and her children were slain. If he could have a psychotic episode and destroy his family stab them with an ice pick and a knife 100 times, beat them with a stick, then Billy Graham could. It appeared to investigators that MacDonald had staged the scene, inspired by the recent Manson Family murders to blame hippies for his crime. Now, it appears the Tibas are at war with everybody. Most recently, retired US Marshall Jimmy Britt came forward with information that another suspect in the case, Helena Stoeckley, admitted to the prosecutor that she was in the house on the night of MacDonalds murder and that he threatened to indict her for first-degree murder if she admitted that in court. However, critics of the book say that while it paints an emotional picture of a man wrongfully tried by the media, it cherrypicks evidence and largely ignores the physical evidence that led to MacDonalds 1979 conviction. In the early '80s, I whipped through a dog-eared copy of Fatal Vision, Joe McGinniss sensational true-crime novel about the killings. After reading the full transcript of his Article 32 hearing, the Kassabs were convinced that MacDonalds story didnt add up. Republicans furious after Democrat questions 'God-given' rights at House hearing, 'Beyond parody': Critics torch Marjorie Taylor Greene for her latest appeal to Republicans, Watch: Anti-drag GOP governor bolts from reporters who unearthed photos of him in drag, Probe finds far-right Tennessee Republican 'economist' major got a 'C' in his one college econ class. WebWe found 33,440 records for Kassab last name. Kassabs suspicions deepened after he received a copy of a transcript of the Article 32 hearing and began to pore through the evidence himself. The lead prosecutor for the case, Jim Blackburn began to analyze every piece of evidence from the trial, including MacDonald's pajama shirt, which was draped over Colette's body, and the bedsheet she was wrapped in. I thought the world of Judge Dupree. Brian Murtaugh says, Sure, Ill give it to him. But did hippie intruders make sense? He remained haunted by the horrific way his stepdaughter and grandchildren had lost their lives. These shootings rarely involve significant figures, such as Oueida, or Nabil Maghnie, who was shot in the head last September but survived, or George Marrogi, who was charged with a shooting murder that same month. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. It has Charles Manson written all over it. LP: What has this case revealed about the flaws in our judicial system? WebIn July 1974, a Federal judge acted on a citizen's criminal complaint by Kassab and others, by putting the case before a grand jury. 959 Census & Voter Lists. Kassab filed a citizens criminal complaint in April 1974, petitioning a federal court to convene a grand jury and determine if MacDonald could be charged. 1,169 Birth, Marriage & Death. Kassabs unwavering support of his son-in-law also began to crumble as Kassabwho worked in telephone sales for the Quality Egg Co.began to question MacDonalds account of what happened. WebWadea Kassab was born in Damascus in 1872 to an Orthodox family that had long and deep connections to British and American Protestant missionaries in Damascus and Beirut. Also last year, Osman, 32, one of the middle brothers, was released from prison. Released and honorably discharged by the Army, MacDonald seemed to be in the clear. Kassab filed a citizens criminal complaint in April 1974, petitioning a federal court to convene a grand jury and determine if MacDonald could be charged. After learning about the case of convicted killer and U.S. Army surgeon Jeffrey MacDonald, read about John List, who killed his family in cold blood and then disappeared for 18 years. Kassab filed a citizens criminal complaint in April 1974, petitioning a federal court to convene a grand jury and determine if MacDonald could be charged. Its a case that if you were telling scary stories around the dining room table and you had all your family gathered, people could hardly believe it. And absolutely nothing fit, Kassab told the, To realize he had done it, and Colette loved him, and when you sit back and picture in your minds eye what happened that night, with him attacking, and I know from the autopsy reports what was done to the two children, you cant help but visualize in your mind, though we dont talk about it, Freddy Kassab told, Stevenson told reporters in 2005 that he had promised Freddy Kassab on his death bed that he would continue the familys quest to keep MacDonald behind bars, according to. Although Kassab didnt join the family until Colette was a teenager, he had always been close with his stepdaughter. Waters rubbished that explanation. Good potential for the future, so therefore we saw nothing wrong with them getting married, Kassab once said of his son-in-law, according to the docuseries. LP: Then why did MacDonald, the emblem of law-and-order, the Green Beret, become a suspect? 1,169 Birth, Marriage & Death. They are the dealers who, as Osman Tiba alluded to, were probably driven to the job because of their own addictions who cannot afford to forgive a middling debt, even if it is only for a few hundred dollars. Some said he should never have taken the case because his former son-in-law was the prosecutor in the original army hearing. Pennsylvania had the highest population of Kassab families in 1920. Additionally, much of what Morris introduces as new evidence was already including in the trial that convicted MacDonald. Of those in prison, one was jailed for having guns that so troubled a judge she described them as "the sort of weapons that were used down in Tasmania", a reference to the Port Arthur massacre. McGinniss made the murders sound like the work of a diabolical genius, a man who could transform in a moment from a loving father to a homicidal maniac, and again, in the blink of an eye, to a calculating conman. When you accept Picture #1, youre deciding that Jeffrey MacDonald is the Person Who Must Pay. Even before bureaucratic stalling and federal machinery overtook the search for truth, things were working against Jeffrey MacDonald. LP: She said that to her lawyer at the time of the 1979 trial? That got my attention: the Oscar-winning Morris, whose film The Thin Blue Line exonerated a Texas man wrongfully convicted for murder, is one of the worlds great documentary filmmakers. WebIn 1971, his father-in-law, Freddy Kassab, became progressively suspicious of MacDonald and sought formal reopening of the case. A portrait photograph of Wadea (left) and Aelyas (right) Kassab. Back in the 1979 trial, a lawyer named Jerry Leonard represented Helena Stoeckley. My wife and I can sit for hours and days and not talk to each other, but were both thinking, you know. WebWadea Kassab was born in Damascus in 1872 to an Orthodox family that had long and deep connections to British and American Protestant missionaries in Damascus and Beirut. Eventually, after pressure from Colettes family, MacDonald was indicted and found guilty of the three murders on August 29, 1979. Waters rubbished that explanation. We reconstructed the murders using what McDonald said. The social justice movement is now involved; the Innocence Project, a prestigious nationwide network dedicated to exonerating the wrongfully convicted, has worked strenuously to overturn MacDonalds conviction. These were the families police identified in 2011 as causing most of the trouble in the band, which stretches roughly from Coburg North to Campbellfield, then in an arc around to Altona in Freddy Kassab had inserted himself into the 1970 military hearing and made himself the center of a media circus, holding news conferences and firing off letters to members of Congress. In July 1974, a Federal judge acted on a citizen's criminal complaint by Kassab and others, by putting the case before a grand jury. Thinking that he could never reveal it? {{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}. The crime scene was so messed up that you couldnt depend on it. Appearances didnt help MacDonald, either. When the initial military hearing was conducted in 1970, no one in his life could be found who had a bad thing to say about him. Not only did victims of drug addiction build that fortune, but there are the consequences of maintaining this empire. But just what changed Kassabs mind about the man he once called . The man is a fanatic.. No one ever knew what it was Helena told him because of attorney-client privilege. Of all places! He made fun of them. Prosecutors appealed the decision to the Supreme Court and in 1978 the countrys highest court decided to reinstate the indictment. He survived. For all of us independent news organizations, its no exception. In the fall of 1963, they decided to get married and in April of the following year, their daughter Kimberly was born. Steve Liss/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesJeffrey MacDonald behind bars in Terminal Island federal penitentiary. Kassab a one-time Canadian Army intelligence operator who had once lost his own wife and daughter in a bombing of London during World War II initially believed MacDonalds account of the night and became a staunch and vocal supporter of his son-in-law, the Washington Post reported in 1984. I wasnt there that night. The new war involves men with names many Victorians could barely pronounce shooting each other in downtrodden suburbs they have almost certainly never visited. Freddy was not going to quit. Its hard to imagine now, but in the late 1960s and early '70s there were spooky, weird people on acidback then it was believable. Shes haunting this case. Marc Smerling thinks he has some idea. On the evening of the murders, Jeffrey MacDonald had taken his kids to ride the pony he had bought them, fed them dinner while their mother took a night class, and put them to bed. He is, of course, one of many ensnared in that cycle, particularly in the north-west, which consistently ranks among the worst in the state for employment, education and substance dependence. There may be hope that MacDonald will eventually gain his freedom and at least be able to live the last few years of his life outside of a prison cell. Aside from being the Wall Street of Victoria's firearms and drugs market, and the enormous consequences this trafficking has on the state, and the impact on the medical system of record numbers of people being maimed, there are the people who die completely innocently because the rules of these markets means shooting first has become an unwritten rule. The Tibas are the only clan in the five families that can boast three generations of serious offenders from murderers to drug traffickers. Freddie Kassab and CID investigators returned to the crime scene in 1971 to contrast MacDonalds claims with the evidence and found his narrative implausible. When the show was over, I retired to the security of my bed, safe from unpredictable evils. It has Helena Stoeckley, the dominant person who continues to play a remarkable role. Furthermore, an FBI lab technician reenacted how MacDonald claimed he defended against the intruders attacks and proved his testimony contradicted the evidence. Jeffrey MacDonald had it all. MacDonald in late 1970 after the Army acquitted him of all charges. The cost to Melbourne's north-west is huge. WebThe Kassab family name was found in the USA in 1920. But things got out of hand. WebWadea Kassab was born in Damascus in 1872 to an Orthodox family that had long and deep connections to British and American Protestant missionaries in Damascus and Beirut. The nine-year lag between the murders and the trial is extremely unusual; experts consider such a lag to pose a great danger of wrongful conviction. He was found guilty and given three life sentences on Aug. 26, 1979. The chanting blonde, meanwhile, had not been found. Then, if someone draws your attention to certain details, suddenly the picture transforms into the profile of an old woman. These were the families police identified in 2011 as causing most of the trouble in the band, which stretches roughly from Coburg North to Campbellfield, then in an arc around to Altona in It was almost as scary as Helter Skelter the story of the Charles Manson murders in Californa that are said to have inspired Jeffrey MacDonald in the coverup for his homicidal rampage. But it is also hard to feel any empathy, or concern as Victorians do about other crimes against more innocent victims that it could happen to them. In 1920 there were 5 Kassab families living in Pennsylvania. But then I felt uneasy. The CIDs five-month-long interrogation (referred to as an Article 32 hearing) began in April, with officials intent on using only physical evidence and MacDonalds own statements to form their view. That huge standard protects us from miscarriages of justice. Freddie Kassab and CID investigators returned to the crime scene in 1971 to contrast MacDonalds claims with the evidence and found his narrative implausible. At the moment, the five Haddaras are similarly constrained, with only one of them free, two dead and two in prison. He could have gone on with his life, and he should have. LP: Did anything new come out in the Wilmington hearing in September? A military hearing found charges against him untrue, but he was convicted nine years later in a civilian trial. He read the papers at a little square table and he sat there and he chain smoked three packs a day, day after day after day going over and over everything, Bob Stevenson recalled in the docuseries. Why the MacDonald Case Matters to Everyone. Two in prison I can sit for hours and days and not talk to each other in suburbs! Sought formal reopening of the following year, Osman, 32, one of them free, two dead two... I whipped through a dog-eared copy of Fatal Vision, Joe McGinniss sensational true-crime novel about the flaws in judicial. Finally believed that his son-in-law had been the killer, Joe McGinniss sensational novel... The Kassabs were convinced that MacDonalds story didnt add up the Article 32 kassab crime family, Green. 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