The parents of a 16-year-old girl were convicted of first-degree murder by a St. Louis jury that heard gruesome, secretly recorded tapes of the daughter’s killing. A seven-minute tape of Tina Isa’s death in 1989 was made by the FBI, which had hidden bugging devices in the home of Zein Isa, 61, and Maria Isa, 48, in an unrelated investigation of Zein Isa’s possible ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization. Defense attorneys insisted that Isa had killed his daughter in self-defense when she came at him with a knife and that she had attacked him with a meat cleaver and kicked his injured leg.
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
