Man evaded capture for 12 years, will stand trial in Dallas for slayings of his daughters

A North Texas man who evaded law enforcement for 12 years after police said he killed his two teen daughters will stand trial in Dallas this week.

Yaser Said, 65, faces a charge of capital murder and an automatic life sentence if convicted of killing 18-year-old Amina Said and 17-year-old Sarah Said on New Year’s Day 2008.

Their bullet-laden bodies were found inside his taxi parked at the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Las Colinas, part of Irving.

Amina and Sarah were honor students and athletes at Lewisville High School.

Lawyers will pick a jury Monday and testimony is expected to start Tuesday.

Said wrote letters from jail to state District Judge Chika Anyiam, who is overseeing the case, and denied he killed the girls.

“I did not do the killings or any to hurt them, that’s fact,” Said wrote.

Most of Said’s writings ramble about politics in the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates. Said was born in Egypt and has dual citizenship in the U.S.

An FBI investigation led authorities to a family house in Justin in Denton County, where they arrested Said in August 2020.

Said’s son, Islam Said, and brother, Yassim Said, were arrested on suspicion of helping hide him. Last year, Islam Said was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, and Yassein Said got 12 years.

Said was controlling and abusive, friends and relatives of the girls have said.

In October 1998, when Amina and Sarah were 9 and 8, they accused their father of sexual abuse.

The allegations were reported to the sheriff’s office in Hill County, where the girls told a detective their father had been touching them inappropriately. Amina described a rape to the authorities.

But a few months later, the girls said they lied because they wanted to go live with their grandmother. A district judge dismissed the case. Relatives have said they believe Said pressured his daughters to say they lied.

A week before the murders, Amina and Sarah fled Texas with their mother and two friends. They rented an apartment in Oklahoma under an assumed name because they feared Said, authorities have said.

‘My dad shot me’

They returned to North Texas on New Year’s Eve. Sarah Said called 911 the evening of Jan. 1, 2008, in her final moments.

“My dad shot me,” she wailed before saying something inaudible. The operator asked what was happening. “I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying,” she said.

A man who discovered the bodies called 911 about an hour later.

A 2014 documentary called The Price of Honor fueled speculation Said killed his daughters because he harbored archaic beliefs that they should die for bringing shame to the family.

The narrative took off soon after the killings, and again after Said’s arrest in 2020, prompting local Muslim leaders to educate the general public that so-called honor killings are not condoned by the Islamic religion.

Said’s ex-wife, Patricia Owens, who divorced him while he was on the run, couldn’t be reached for comment, but she has said he wasn’t religious.

In one jail letter to the judge dated July 23, 2021, Said said he was unhappy with the girls’ “dating activity.”

Owens is featured in the documentary and said she married Said as a teenager, even though he was 14 years older. Said persuaded her father to permit the marriage by saying his family was wealthy and would take care of Owens.

Said was in Texas on a permanent residence visa when they married, Owens said in the documentary. She said she helped him get dual citizenship.

Owens gave birth to her first child, Islam Said, when she was 16. She was 17 when Amina was born and 18 at Sarah’s birth.