Transcript of Thou Shalt Not Covet (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE) New

On the evening of August 10th, 2005, a man in New York City answered the phone at the office where he worked. A woman's voice came across the line and she asked to speak with one of the man's employees. And the man thought for a second and then he ultimately replied that actually that employee had not shown up for their shift that afternoon and they didn't know why, but they weren't here. And when he said this, he heard a distinct shift in this woman's tone and she told him in a very trembling voice, that she needed to hang up now and call 911. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload 2, 3, even 4 times every week.

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In the early afternoon of Wednesday, August 10th, 2005, 18-year-old Eliza Parsi sat on her bed in her home in Staten island, New York, flipping through a fashion magazine. The house was quiet because Eliza's mother, Seema, was at work. So Eliza had the whole house to herself, at least for a little while, until she herself went to work. Eliza had graduated high school just a few months ago, and now she was working as a clerk at a moving company to try to save up some money for college and also to eventually move into Manhattan to pursue her dream of working in the fashion industry. However, Eliza did feel a bit guilty about moving away.

Because it would mean leaving her mom all alone in this big house. And there wasn't really any other family nearby because both of her parents were from Israel. Sima had divorced Eliza's father about a year and a half ago, and her father had left New York and moved back to Israel. Eliza also had two half-brothers who were Sima's sons from her first marriage, and one of them was back in Israel as well. And the other, Eliza's 27-year-old half-brother Raviv, lived just a short drive away in another part of the city.

But Eliza and Sima rarely saw him because he was married with a new baby and lived with his in-laws, and so he basically had a whole new family. And also, Raviv had been put in charge of the Parsi family's kosher cookie business, which was really struggling. So he was really busy and always stressed about the company, and he really just didn't make it out to Staten Island very often. Eliza flipped through the last few pages of her magazine and then noticed that it was time to get ready for her 2 PM shift at work. But first, she wanted to check and see if she had any new messages on her internet dating profiles.

So she put her magazine down, went over to her desk, and logged into her computer. So in 2005, internet dating was just starting to take off, and Eliza had made profiles on a few different dating and meetup websites just to see what would happen. And before long, she had found herself messaging and meeting up with men from all around New York City. But she'd never told her mother about this because she knew that Her mother would not approve of Eliza dating men who were not from their same Orthodox Jewish faith. And Eliza knew this for a fact because it's exactly what had happened with her previous boyfriend at the public high school that she went to.

Eliza had friends from all different backgrounds, and she had started seriously dating a Muslim boy named Hassan, but her family had really disapproved of their relationship entirely because of his faith. And so eventually, Eliza just couldn't take the family pressure anymore. And she'd broken up with him. And so now Eliza was much more secretive about her personal life. She would come up with these phony reasons why she was going to other neighborhoods, but really it was just so she could go on dates or hook up with guys for fun without her mom knowing.

And also, she had even begun secretly bringing some of them to her house in Staten Island, but she was always very careful to sneak them in through the back door when her mom was at work so she wouldn't get caught. Now, Eliza logged into her account, and she saw there were a few messages from some guys, and so she responded to them, and then after that, she headed into the bathroom to take a shower before work. And a few minutes later, when Eliza finished her shower and turned off the water, she heard a noise coming from outside the bathroom. Now, she couldn't tell what it was. Earlier that afternoon, she'd heard a landscaping crew working at the house next door with some really loud leaf blowers, but But this noise was different.

It was like a, a weird banging sound. So, curious, Eliza got out of the shower, wrapped a towel tightly around herself, and opened the bathroom door to go see what was going on. That night, around 7:30 PM, Eliza's mother, Seema, arrived back at the house that she shared with Eliza. She turned her key in the front lock and tried to push the door open, but it would only open a couple of inches because it felt like there was something on the other side that was blocking it from opening any further. Now, Sima had no idea what this could be, and so she just began shoving against the door, and eventually she pushed it open wide enough that she could slip inside.

And when she did, the first thing she noticed was that the thing that had been blocking the door was this heavy mirror. But before Sima's mind could really process how this mirror wound up here, she turned on the lights and saw that her living room was absolutely destroyed. Furniture was overturned, cabinets were flung open, and papers were just strewn everywhere. Sima immediately felt her heart start pounding, because she realized that clearly somebody had broken in and robbed the place. But then her second thought was, "Where is Eliza?

Where's my daughter?" Because Sima knew that Eliza had been home at least part of the day, and what if this had happened when Eliza was here all alone? And so Seema began calling out for her daughter, but there was no answer. And so she followed the chaos upstairs and noticed that the door to Eliza's room was closed. So she went over to the door and put her hand on the knob and tried to open it up, but it was locked. And Seema knew that this was just not normal.

Eliza never locked this door. And so now, you know, Seema's thinking something has happened here, something bad has happened here. And so sort of in a panic, Seema just began banging on the door, screaming her daughter's name, hoping she would answer, but it was silent. And so after a couple of seconds, Seema pulled out her phone and called the moving company where her daughter worked. And her stomach dropped when Eliza's boss told her that her daughter had not shown up to work that day.

And so with trembling hands, Seema got off that call and dialed 911. About an hour later, Detective Michael Kenny of the New York City Police Department drove slowly down a neighborhood street in Staten Island. Ahead, he could see his destination: a 3-story house with yellow crime scene tape across the front yard. But it was hard to get close because the street was now swarming with neighbors and just random people who had come out to see what was going on. So Kenny parked a few houses down and then headed for the house on foot.

And when he got there, he was met by 2 patrol officers, and they told Kenny that They had responded to a call about a robbery and then had to break down a door of a locked bedroom where they ultimately found the dead body of 18-year-old Eliza Parsi, who lived in the house with her mother Seema. The officers explained that when they had checked the rest of the scene, they had noticed that the entire house was basically torn apart, but they hadn't found any signs of forced entry. The officers then directed Kenny's attention over to Seema, who was standing nearby with a small group of people, presumably family or neighbors. Kenny knew he would have to talk to her, but first he needed to get a better sense of just what was going on inside of this house. So Kenny made his way in the front door and surveyed the living room, where some crime scene techs had already begun processing the scene.

The room had definitely been torn apart, but as Kenny looked closer, he could see that a lot of valuable items were sitting untouched and out in the open. Like the TV and the stereo, which was unusual for a burglary. Next, Kenny walked up the stairs and into Eliza's room, where more techs were collecting evidence. And the first thing he noticed was that this room also looked ransacked. There were clothes and pillows thrown everywhere, and the mattress had been pulled off the bed frame and was leaning up against the wall.

And on the floor in the middle of the room was Eliza's body. She was lying on the ground and she was naked, and there was a towel sort of bunched up underneath her. Kenny asked one of the techs if this is exactly how the body had been found, and the tech said no. When they first got to the scene, Eliza had actually been underneath the mattress and also had a pillow over her face, but they had to move both of those things out of the way in order to actually examine her body, which was why, you know, the mattress was now up against the wall. Kenny knelt down over Eliza's body But he couldn't see any visible cause of death, like a bullet or knife wounds or bruising, which could mean that maybe she was suffocated.

I mean, maybe the pillow that was on her face that they had removed was what was used to kill her. Kenny turned and asked the tech if they had found any evidence of physical injury, and the tech pointed to just a few tiny drops of blood that were on the towel underneath Eliza. Now, they were very small, and they could have been old, like maybe somebody had cut themselves shaving. But all these details— a naked young woman, the mattress, the pillow, the blood— it made Kenny concerned that Eliza might have been a victim of sexual assault before she was killed. So Kenny told the tech to make sure that the blood from the towel, as well as any other bodily fluids they could find, were collected as evidence because they might belong to Eliza's killer.

A few minutes later, Kenny emerged from the house and began walking over to speak with Sima. And Seema, she was crying onto the shoulder of a young man. And the minute this young man saw Kenny, he stepped forward and started demanding to know why the police were keeping them away from Eliza's body and also why the cops weren't out there arresting his sister's killer. So Kenny just took a deep breath because this man was obviously Eliza's brother and it was understandable why he was so upset. Kenny knew that a lot of times grief turned into anger in these situations.

So Kenny calmly explained that in order to find Eliza's killer, he first needed information, starting with where he and Sima had been that day. And this got both Raviv and Sima to calm down right away, because they seemed to realize that Kenny might actually be suspicious of them. So the man lowered his voice, and he introduced himself as Raviv, and then he and Sima began answering Kenny's questions. Sima said she'd been at work all day and that there were plenty of co-workers who could say as much. And Raviv explained that he too had been working all day delivering baked goods all around Long Island.

Kenny made notes so he could double-check all their information later, and then he asked if either of them knew anybody who might have had a reason to want to harm Eliza. And Kenny saw them share a very knowing glance. Then Raviv turned to Kenny and said he should look into Eliza's ex-boyfriend Hassan, who none of them liked or trusted. And as Kenny started jotting these details down Sima chimed in and added that her daughter had told her about something really bizarre that Hasan had done recently. Early one morning a few weeks ago, Eliza had woken up to find Hasan sitting at the end of her bed, just staring at her like he'd been watching her sleep.

And the whole thing had absolutely terrified Eliza because she had no idea how he'd even gotten into the house. She certainly hadn't invited him over, and their house was always locked overnight. And then before Detective Kenny could even ask a follow-up question, Raviv, the brother, just suddenly started yelling, "Get out! Get out! We don't want you here!" at somebody across the yard.

And so Kenny turned to see who Raviv was yelling at, and he saw this teenage boy standing there, looking completely shocked and scared. And at this point, Raviv went from yelling at Hasan to yelling at Kenny to arrest Hasan because that was the man who killed Eliza.

Late on the night of August 10th, 2005, so just a few hours after the body of 18-year-old Eliza Parsi was found dead in her home in Staten Island, NYPD Detective Michael Kenny sat inside of an interrogation room at his precinct. Across from him was Eliza's ex-boyfriend Hassan, who had been detained after he showed up at the crime scene. So far, Hassan had been very cooperative. And had shared a very detailed timeline of his whereabouts that day. However, he did not have a solid alibi for that afternoon and the early evening, which was likely when Eliza was killed.

Kenny had taken a DNA sample from Hassan, and he also had gotten samples from Eliza's mother and brother at the scene to compare against the blood that had been found on that towel and any other DNA that was found on Eliza's body. But in 2005, DNA and blood evidence took weeks to process. So Kenny was really hoping to just get Hasan to confess right now. So once all his basic questions were out of the way, Kenny decided to test Hasan's truthfulness, and he asked Hasan if he had ever snuck into Eliza's house. But Hasan, he didn't deny it.

He immediately came clean and admitted to everything. He said that yes, he had previously snuck into her house, and he did sit on Eliza's bed, and he had waited there until she woke up. That was all true. But Hassan insisted that he had not been trying to scare Eliza. He just desperately wanted to talk to her so they could hopefully get back together again.

And Hassan had said that when he did that, Eliza hadn't been scared. She was just kind of annoyed. And she had told him that they were broken up for real. And after that, he said he had left without incident. Kenny noticed that in Hassan's version of the story, the way that Eliza reacted to Hassan sitting on her bed, you know, just being kind of annoyed and exasperated about it, was very different than the way Eliza's mother, Seema, had described the same event.

She had said that her daughter had basically been scared for her life. So he asked Hassan, "Why does Eliza's family dislike you so much? Why were they so quick to say you killed Eliza?" And Hassan just kind of hung his head and said he didn't think it was about him personally. It was about religion. Hassan was Muslim and the Parsis were Orthodox Jewish.

As Kenny took this in, he wasn't sure which version of the story to believe. Were Hassan and Eliza star-crossed lovers kept apart by her family, or was Hassan an obsessive ex-boyfriend who couldn't take no for an answer? But regardless, Kenny could not ignore the fact that Hassan had a strong motive and a history of sneaking into Eliza's house uninvited. But Kenny still didn't have a confession from Hassan, nor did he have really any hard evidence at all that would allow him to even hold Hasan. So ultimately, after the interview was over, he told Hasan he was free to go.

The next day, Thursday, August 11th, Detective Kenny walked up to a Jewish Orthodox synagogue in Brooklyn where Eliza's funeral was about to take place. The reason it was happening so quickly was because of the Jewish Orthodox custom that a body must be buried within 24 hours of death. And because of that timeline, it meant that Eliza's autopsy had already been completed. And Kenny had just received the report from the medical examiner, which confirmed that Eliza had died from asphyxiation, likely from being smothered by that pillow. The medical examiner had also found DNA evidence that could be tested against those samples Kenny had collected from the suspects.

There were some skin cells under Eliza's fingernails, as well as semen that showed Eliza had sex before she died, probably within 24 hours. And so this evidence made Kenny think that Eliza had been sexually assaulted and had fought back against the person assaulting her, which would explain the skin under her nails. But when Kenny called the medical examiner to voice this theory that he now thought was pretty likely, the medical examiner had actually disagreed because they didn't find any bruising or bleeding or anything else that indicated sexual violence. And so the autopsy actually concluded that the sex Eliza had before she was killed must have been consensual. But regardless, in Kenny's opinion, the facts of the case so far pointed towards a romantic partner being the killer, which obviously cleared Raviv and Sima and any other family members.

And it also did not seem to be some random burglar or home intruder because Sima had confirmed that nothing in the house was missing. Now, a few of the neighbors had mentioned that there had been some landscapers who had been working at the house next door at the time of her death, and Kenny had managed to track down the crew and question them. But they had all insisted that they had never left the neighbor's yard and that they hadn't seen or heard anything. But just to be sure, Kenny had taken their DNA samples just in case. Now, as Kenny made his way through the crowded sidewalk in front of the synagogue, he could see two distinct groups of people in attendance.

There were members of the Orthodox community wearing their long skirts and prayer shawls, and also young people dressed in more modern clothes who he assumed were Eliza's friends from school. Kenni walked up the front steps and entered the synagogue, and he noticed that the inside of the building was split in half by a wooden partition, almost like a wall, with men on one side and women on the other. So Kenni joined the men's side and stood in the back corner where he could just observe. Kenni noticed Eliza's brother, Raviv, standing near the front, near the casket, and he watched as other men walked up to pay him their respects. The atmosphere was solemn, understandably, And Kenny didn't pick up on any tension or animosity.

It just sort of felt like a community coming together to kind of make sense of this tragedy. But then Kenny felt the energy in the room suddenly change, like a switch had flicked. And he could hear people start to whisper to each other very urgently, and everybody's heads turned to look back towards the entrance. Kenny turned his head and looked as well, and he saw this one person who was trying to push through the crowd and make their way up the aisle to the front, where Eliza's casket was. And Kenny realized this person was Hassan.

For some reason, he'd shown up again despite the fact that Eliza's family clearly didn't want him around. And Kenny actually watched as Raviv, who, you know, had seen Hassan, Raviv went straight to Hassan and literally stopped him and shoved him backwards and shouted at him to get out because they all knew he killed Eliza. Kenny, sensing a physical fight was going to happen here, began pushing his way through the crowd to try to stop them and separate them. But fortunately, before he reached them, other men separated Hassan and Raviv, and then Hassan was escorted out of the building. About 2 weeks later, on August 24th, 2005, Detective Kenny was in the office of the NYPD Computer Crime Unit, where the department's IT specialists had begun digging into Eliza's online life.

After her funeral, Kenny had spoken to Eliza's school friends, who had told him that Eliza had been trying to move on from her relationship with the son and that she had actually opened accounts on a whole bunch of dating sites that she used to meet guys or sometimes just hook up. And when Kenny had pressed them for more information, the friends had told him that none of those online men were from her tight-knit Orthodox community, which was part of the appeal to Eliza. But it obviously was not something she wanted to share with her mother, so she'd kept it all a big secret from everybody except from her closest friends. Kenny had been able to actually get Eliza's computer with her mother's permission and had brought some IT specialists on board who were able to dig into Eliza's email and browser history. Now Kenny watched as the IT specialists directed his attention to one of Eliza's dating site message threads.

In this thread, Eliza and a man named Jonathan were making plans for when and where they were going to meet up to have sex. They'd gone back and forth on a few different options until finally Eliza just said that he should just come over to her house when her mother was at work and that she would leave the back door unlocked so he could sneak in without the neighbors seeing. Kenny saw that this particular hookup was planned for Tuesday, August 9th, 2005, just one day before Eliza was killed. Now, naturally, this made Kenny and the rest of the investigators raise an eyebrow because this plan of Eliza and Jonathan's, you know, of —of having him enter secretly through the back door while Seema was at work—matched up exactly with what they had found at the crime scene.

In late August of 2005, more than 2 weeks after the murder of Eliza Parsi, NYPD detective Michael Kenny was sitting at a kitchen table in an apartment in Brooklyn, New York, across from Jonathan Harris, the internet dating match who Eliza had secretly invited to her home the day before she was killed. When Kenny informed the young man that he was here investigating the murder of Eliza Parsi, he noticed that Jonathan didn't seem surprised. But Eliza's murder had been all over local news, and a lot of stories were really exploiting her romantic past and her sex life, so he had probably already heard about what had happened. Kenny asked Jonathan if he had known Eliza, and Jonathan said, "Yes." Then he detailed basically everything that had been planned in that chat message. He said that he had gone to her house, he had snuck in through the back door that was unlocked, and they had had consensual sex.

At least Jonathan swore it had been consensual. Jonathan insisted that after that, he had not seen Eliza again and had never even gone back to Staten Island after that. He then gave Kenny a detailed timeline of where he had been on the day Eliza was killed, and overall, he was a lot more cooperative than Kenny had expected. He even provided a DNA sample without any objection. And so as Kenny left Jonathan's apartment, he was starting to feel a bit worried that this potential big break in the case might actually turn out to be a dead end.

Weeks later, on September 13th, 2005, Detective Kenny sat at his desk reviewing all the information he had gathered about Eliza Parsi's murder. He had checked Jonathan's phone records, also his transit card and his toll pass. But there was nothing that put him on Staten Island the day of Eliza's murder. And the computer crimes investigators had not turned up any other promising suspects from Eliza's online dating profiles. Detective Kenny had also continued digging into Hassan, but he didn't have enough evidence to either arrest him or clear him.

And this was frustrating because Eliza's murder had stayed in the news, and there was a lot of pressure to find the killer, especially from the Orthodox Jewish community, which was significant in New York. It was starting to look like the case had gone cold. Just then, Kenny's phone rang, and when he picked it up, it was the medical examiner who was calling with an update. The results of the DNA analysis were finally in, and the semen sample did not match those skin cells that had been found under Eliza's fingernails. So this meant there was DNA from two different people at the crime scene.

And when the medical examiner said who each of these samples belonged to, suddenly Detective Kenney knew who killed Eliza.

Based on the entire investigation, DNA evidence, and the killer's eventual confession, here is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Eliza Parsee on the afternoon of August 10th, 2005.

Shortly before 2 PM, The killer approached the back door of the Parsi home where they knew they wouldn't be seen by neighbors. And once they were there, they slowly opened up the door. Once they were inside, they walked all the way through the house right to the front door just to check to make sure it was locked, which it was. And so after that, they went and got a heavy mirror and they moved it and put it in front of the door to block it. The killer knew that both women who lived in this house, Seema and her daughter Eliza, worked during the day, and so the killer didn't expect them to come home.

But just in case, they didn't want to take any chances, hence barricading the door. Once they were satisfied with the barricade, the killer got to work opening drawers and cabinets, looking in every place they could, because they needed something very specific inside of this home that was very valuable. But they couldn't find it anywhere on the bottom floor, which made the killer think it must be in one of the bedrooms upstairs. So the killer climbed the stairs and went into the master bedroom, where they looked through the dresser and in the closet, but they still couldn't find what they were looking for. So the killer left the master bedroom and decided to search the other bedroom next.

But when they opened the door to that bedroom, they were shocked to see a young woman coming out of the attached bathroom wrapped in a towel. And from this young woman's reaction on her face, the killer could tell that she knew what they, the killer, were up to. And this enraged the killer because they were sure this woman was going to tell someone what she saw and it would ruin the killer's plan. After a moment of just shocked silence between the two of them, the young woman opened her mouth like she was about to scream for help. And so the killer instinctively just tackled her to the ground and then grabbed a nearby pillow and pressed it down hard over her face.

She scratched and she clawed, trying everything to break free. But the more she fought, the angrier and more emboldened the killer became, and the harder they pressed down until eventually her body went limp. After that, the killer stood up and they, they looked down and they saw what they had done, and it caused them to start to panic because they never meant to kill her, just to scare her and shut her up. But they had obviously gone too far. So not knowing what to do, the killer just grabbed the pillow and put it over her face and then also dragged the mattress and put it on top of her body.

Just so they wouldn't have to look at her. Then, instead of continuing their search for this thing that they wanted inside of this home, they just went downstairs and left out the back door. And they didn't return to the house for hours, not until they received a call from their mother, because the killer was Eliza's half-brother, Raviv.

The DNA from the semen that was found at the crime scene belonged to Jonathan, the man that Eliza had consensually had sex with 24 hours before her death. The DNA that was found under Eliza's fingernails belonged to Raviv. It would turn out Eliza's death did not have anything to do with who she was sleeping with. Raviv was angry at their mother because the family business that she had passed along to him didn't make as much money as he had thought it would. And so as a result, Raviv was stuck working all these long hours and also raising his family in his in-laws' basement, which he found totally humiliating.

And he knew that Seema had recently come into some money through the sale of a property in connection with her divorce. And Raviv felt like that money was rightfully his because he had a wife and a child to provide for. But Seema wouldn't give it to him. So instead of driving his typical delivery route on Long Island that day, Raviv went to his mother's house to literally look for the money so he could steal it. But Eliza's work schedule had recently changed, and so he didn't realize Eliza's shift actually started later in the day.

And so what was supposed to be a simple robbery turned deadly. Raviv ultimately pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

A quick note about our stories: they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

The Mr. Ballen Podcast: Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballen. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Our head of production is Zach Levitt. Produced by Jeremy Bone. Story editing by Evan Allen.

Research and fact-checking by Shelley Xu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacascio and Cole Lacascio, Perry Kroll, and Jordan Stidham. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Production coordination by Samantha Collins.

Production support by Antonio Manata and Delaina Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner. Theme song called "Something Wicked" by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballen Podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballen Podcast you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballen YouTube channel that very same day.

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Until next time, see ya.