Mother of man slain in Harris County ‘honor killing’ relates threat

The mother of a Houston man shot to death in an “honor killing” testified in tears Monday that she suspected Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan as soon as homicide detectives arrived at her door in the middle of the night.

“We knew who was responsible, but we didn’t know who all had helped him,” said Shirley McCormick said from the witness stand. “I told them it was Ali Irsan, and he also had to be the one who killed Gelareh.”

Irsan, 60, a Jordanian immigrant and devout Muslim, is accused of killing his son-in-law, Coty Beavers, 28, and his daughter’s best friend because she supported his daughter’s conversion to Christianity and marriage to a Christian.

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The testimony, in the second week of Irsan’s death penalty trial, tied together both alleged “honor killings” that Irsan is accused of and painted a picture of the harrowing months preceding them.

However, defense lawyers have said the two homicides are unrelated, and Irsan had nothing to do with either killing. If convicted of capital murder, Irsan will face life in prison without parole or the death penalty.

McCormick, a single mother who raised Beavers, his twin brother and two other children while working at a downtown law firm, wiped her eyes several times as she described the two slayings and the months before.

Coty Beavers and his brother, Cory, met Nesreen Irsan and her sister Nadia while they were all enrolled at Lone Star College and studying healthcare in 2011.

Coty and Nesreen started secretly dating, while Cory spurned Nadia’s advances. Instead, Cory was dating Nesreen’s best friend, Gelareh Bagherzadeh, a politically active Iranian medical student.

“It made me happy because my boys were happy,” said McCormick, explaining how the two young couples spent time at her home in Spring. “It was lively. Four twenty-somethings and two Pomeranians.”

At that time, Nesreen and Coty were living in the Spring residence owned by McCormick. It was during that time, that Irsan began allegedly harassing McCormick, her family and neighbors trying to get Nesreen to move back into Irsan’s family compound in rural Montgomery County.

Prosecutors said he was an over-protective father who wanted to restore his honor because his daughter was converting to Christianity and dating Beavers, a Christian. He wanted to kill his daughter and her husband, prosecutors have said.

McCormick testified that Irsan called the police on her family and accused them of abducting Nesreen, then harassed them until the family obtained a protective order.

After Nesreen skipped her own college graduation for safety reasons, her father allegedly called her and reached McCormick.

“He said, ‘I’ll get you, bitch.’” McCormick testified. “It was very sinister and it sounded like a growl. I was terrified and it gave me chills.”

In the fall of 2011, Bagherzadeh spent many hours at the home, McCormick said, and she saw the activist just days before she was killed.

“I just hugged her,” McCormick testified. “I remember thinking how tiny she was and how pretty. She was always so pretty, so stylish.”

McCormick said the family had flat tires at least once a week after Nesreen moved in. They also had two cars that stopped running on the freeway because someone put sugar in the gas tanks, prosecutors said.

Special prosecutors have told the jury that Irsan, his wife and his son tracked down and shot Bagherzadeh in the parking lot of her parents’ Galleria condominium in January 2012.

The activist’s ambush killing took place while McCormick was in Dallas. When her son told her about the shooting over the phone, she recalled the young couple were besides themselves with grief.

“Coty was wailing. Nesreen was screaming,” McCormick said.

Six months later, Coty and Nesreen went to the Harris County courthouse and were married.

Their marriage took place on July 5, 2012, and they moved out of the McCormick residence and into their own apartment within weeks.

But only six months later, in November 2012, Coty Beavers was shot to death. Beavers, 28, had walked his young bride to her car so she could drive to work. He returned to their small apartment, where he was shot seven times by intruders, prosecutors have said.

By alleging that the two shootings were part of the same scheme, prosecutors can seek the death penalty under Texas law.

Special prosecutors Jon Stephenson, Marie Primm and Anna Emmons are handling the case after Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, citing previous involvement in the case by a top aide, recused her office from the prosecution. Irsan is being defended by Allen Tanner and Rudy Duarte.

Last week, the jury heard from police who investigated Bagherzadeh’s death. They also heard from a Department of Public Safety trooper who pulled Irsan over for driving erratically at approximately 12:30 a.m. Jan. 16, 2012, less than an hour after the homicide.

The trooper testified Irsan was racing north of Houston on Interstate 45 at 79 mph with his wife and son when he pulled him over. Irsan said he was speeding because he was diabetic and needed to buy a drink, presumably to address his low blood sugar, the trooper said.

Irsan was let go with a warning because the trooper was assigned to stop motorists suspected of driving under the influence, and Irsan did not appear to be intoxicated.

The trial is expected to take six to eight weeks in state District Judge Jan Krocker’s court.