"Morrad Ghonim sped out of the parking lot with his young bride bleeding to death in the passenger seat next to him. On the way to a hospital, he barreled through a red light.
Through frantic screams, he told the
California Highway Patrol officer who pulled him over that someone had just shot his wife, Vicki, through the window of the family’s burgundy
Honda as they left a park in La Mirada. He didn’t get a look at the shooter’s face, he said. As her body went limp, their 6-month-old son watched from the back seat.
It was July 23, 1992, and Ghonim had just become a 19-year-old widower.
Detectives followed a few leads, but the investigation went cold. A breakthrough nearly two decades after the shooting would lead investigators to a
drug dealer with a wild story — and
a courtroom drama that ended Monday.
At first, Martinez tried to pin the murder on a dead friend. But he eventually admitted to shooting Vicki Ghonim. It wasn’t the botched carjacking that authorities long had suspected. No, he told detectives, he was a hired hit man.
And his client was
Morrad Ghonim.
Now a businessman living in Antigua with his
third wife, Ghonim was
extradited last year. He recently sat at the defense table in a Norwalk courtroom — his graying temples framing heavy eyes..."
Read entire article and see photos @:
LA Times.com
