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After his wife had been shot to death on the street and he had been wounded, Kashif Parvaiz told the police here in her quiet hometown that three men had accosted them and, before opening fire, called them a name that is offensive to Muslims in America: “Terrorist.”
That prompted detectives to treat the case as a bias crime, a disturbing notion in Boonton, a town 30 miles from Manhattan that has become home to a sizable number of middle-class Pakistanis in recent years. Among them was the family of Parvaiz’s wife, Nazish Noorani, 27. And they were suspicious.
By all accounts the marriage had not been going well. Noorani, prosecutors said, recently sent her brother a text message about Parvaiz, 26, that said, “Can’t talk to him cuz he abuses me ... I’m so tired of this. ... Someday U will find me dead, but it’s cuz of Kashi ... he wants to kill me.”
According to the authorities, her prophecy came true. They said Friday that Parvaiz had confessed to having “contracted” with a friend to kill her and wound him, apparently in hopes of fooling investigators into thinking he, too, was a victim.
<span style="font-weight: bold">In that way, Parvaiz’s story seemed to echo accounts like those of Charles Stuart, who said he and his pregnant wife had been shot by a black robber, in Boston in 1989, and Susan Smith, who said a black man had stolen her car and kidnapped her children when she had actually drowned them, in South Carolina in 1993. Both Stuart, who later committed suicide, and Smith, who was convicted, fanned racial fears by blaming blacks for their crimes.
Parvaiz, according to prosecutors, initially described a trio of attackers: one white, one black and one whose race he said he could not determine. He later changed his story, describing all three as black, before finally admitting to setting up the shooting, according to his arrest affidavit.</span>
The Morris County prosecutor, Robert Bianchi, said that “for a significant period of time,” Parvaiz had plotted the killing with a Boston woman whom Bianchi identified as Antoinette Stephen, 26. Both were charged with first-degree murder; the arrest affidavits did not specify who was alleged to have shot Noorani.
Bail for Stephen was set at $5 million. She was being held in Boston, awaiting extradition to New Jersey. Parvaiz’s father said Friday outside his home in Brooklyn, “I have no idea what’s going on.”
Bianchi, at his news conference, said “there is obviously a relationship” between Stephen and Parvaiz. “I am not saying it is a physical relationship,” he said. “I am not saying it is a girlfriend-boyfriend relationship.” He said investigators were working to pin down the details. According to the arrest affidavit, Parvaiz had told investigators “that there were issues in his marriage and that he was angry at his wife, the victim, for allegedly speaking negatively about his family.”
He also seemed to regret her killing, saying “that he did not want to be the person to look at his children and tell them that he took their mother away,” the affidavit said.
According to the affidavit, Parvaiz told Stephen about the turbulence in his six-year marriage and Stephen promised to “think of something.” The document detailed text messages between them. In one on Aug. 12, four days before the killing, she was said to have written: “You hang in there. Freedom is just around ur corner.”
On Aug. 14, Parvaiz is alleged to have sent her a text message: “Well I need to speak to you and explain to you how to approach the situation. I’ll be depositing money tomorrow morning and I’ll see you tomorrow evening night.”
Later Stephen told him she was going on radio silence: “Call me when u can. delete all messages from phone. I wont message from here on.”
The plan, according to the affidavit, was that Parvaiz and Noorani “would go out for a walk” and that Stephen “would kill the victim and wound the suspect.”
The walk took Parvaiz and Noorani from her sister’s house — where Noorani had broken her daytime Ramadan fast — toward her father’s house a short distance away, where Parvaiz had parked his car. They left their 5-year-old son with Noorani’s sister Lubna Choudhry. They took their 3-year-old son with them in a stroller.
Choudhry said she heard noises in the street a few minutes later, noises she assumed were fireworks. But when she went outside, her sister was dead and Parvaiz was across the street, wounded and bleeding. The child was unhurt.
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That prompted detectives to treat the case as a bias crime, a disturbing notion in Boonton, a town 30 miles from Manhattan that has become home to a sizable number of middle-class Pakistanis in recent years. Among them was the family of Parvaiz’s wife, Nazish Noorani, 27. And they were suspicious.
By all accounts the marriage had not been going well. Noorani, prosecutors said, recently sent her brother a text message about Parvaiz, 26, that said, “Can’t talk to him cuz he abuses me ... I’m so tired of this. ... Someday U will find me dead, but it’s cuz of Kashi ... he wants to kill me.”
According to the authorities, her prophecy came true. They said Friday that Parvaiz had confessed to having “contracted” with a friend to kill her and wound him, apparently in hopes of fooling investigators into thinking he, too, was a victim.
<span style="font-weight: bold">In that way, Parvaiz’s story seemed to echo accounts like those of Charles Stuart, who said he and his pregnant wife had been shot by a black robber, in Boston in 1989, and Susan Smith, who said a black man had stolen her car and kidnapped her children when she had actually drowned them, in South Carolina in 1993. Both Stuart, who later committed suicide, and Smith, who was convicted, fanned racial fears by blaming blacks for their crimes.
Parvaiz, according to prosecutors, initially described a trio of attackers: one white, one black and one whose race he said he could not determine. He later changed his story, describing all three as black, before finally admitting to setting up the shooting, according to his arrest affidavit.</span>
The Morris County prosecutor, Robert Bianchi, said that “for a significant period of time,” Parvaiz had plotted the killing with a Boston woman whom Bianchi identified as Antoinette Stephen, 26. Both were charged with first-degree murder; the arrest affidavits did not specify who was alleged to have shot Noorani.
Bail for Stephen was set at $5 million. She was being held in Boston, awaiting extradition to New Jersey. Parvaiz’s father said Friday outside his home in Brooklyn, “I have no idea what’s going on.”
Bianchi, at his news conference, said “there is obviously a relationship” between Stephen and Parvaiz. “I am not saying it is a physical relationship,” he said. “I am not saying it is a girlfriend-boyfriend relationship.” He said investigators were working to pin down the details. According to the arrest affidavit, Parvaiz had told investigators “that there were issues in his marriage and that he was angry at his wife, the victim, for allegedly speaking negatively about his family.”
He also seemed to regret her killing, saying “that he did not want to be the person to look at his children and tell them that he took their mother away,” the affidavit said.
According to the affidavit, Parvaiz told Stephen about the turbulence in his six-year marriage and Stephen promised to “think of something.” The document detailed text messages between them. In one on Aug. 12, four days before the killing, she was said to have written: “You hang in there. Freedom is just around ur corner.”
On Aug. 14, Parvaiz is alleged to have sent her a text message: “Well I need to speak to you and explain to you how to approach the situation. I’ll be depositing money tomorrow morning and I’ll see you tomorrow evening night.”
Later Stephen told him she was going on radio silence: “Call me when u can. delete all messages from phone. I wont message from here on.”
The plan, according to the affidavit, was that Parvaiz and Noorani “would go out for a walk” and that Stephen “would kill the victim and wound the suspect.”
The walk took Parvaiz and Noorani from her sister’s house — where Noorani had broken her daytime Ramadan fast — toward her father’s house a short distance away, where Parvaiz had parked his car. They left their 5-year-old son with Noorani’s sister Lubna Choudhry. They took their 3-year-old son with them in a stroller.
Choudhry said she heard noises in the street a few minutes later, noises she assumed were fireworks. But when she went outside, her sister was dead and Parvaiz was across the street, wounded and bleeding. The child was unhurt.
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