Justice for Sparkle

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Speaker 3 It could have been around any corner in her own big city.

Speaker 7 Could have been in the very next class at the college from which she was meant to get a degree.

Speaker 9 Not that she was looking for love, but it was looking for her.

Speaker 11 Capricious, inconvenient, forbidden.

Speaker 14 And it announced itself as Love Will 400 miles from home to everyone's surprise.

Speaker 5 And if she saw only the promise, the sparkle of it, well, she was young.

Speaker 17 What could she know of the powers arrayed against so fine a pairing as hers?

Speaker 19 I never would have thought in a million years this would have been the direction that this actually went.

Speaker 11 Who could?

Speaker 4 Certainly not her father, and not Sparkle. That was her name, by the way.
Sparkle.

Speaker 15 Her name and her attitude, effervescent is what she was, in high school a cheerleader, in college enthusiastic, for a while.

Speaker 5 And then it was the summer of 1998 and Sparkle was 20. And she was, she announced, ready for life, whatever that might be.

Speaker 23 It's that age, you know, where they think they're ready to grow up and she'd spent two years at college on her own and just wasn't ready to come back home and live, you know, under the rules in the house necessarily.

Speaker 5 So Sparkle packed her bags, said goodbye to her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, and announced where she was going when she got there.

Speaker 19 We get a call.

Speaker 21 I'm in Louisville.

Speaker 19 Where are you staying?

Speaker 24 I'm staying with grandma.

Speaker 19 I said, okay, that's fine.

Speaker 8 Bennett Reed is Sparkle's father.

Speaker 12 He's retired Army, was an infantry officer.

Speaker 25 Her stepmother, Donna Lowry, was a television reporter at WXIA in Atlanta.

Speaker 22 They were at home in bed a few months after Sparkle left when she called with more news.

Speaker 19 I guess it was about 10.30, maybe 11 o'clock at night. We were all sleeping in the house and she calls to tell me she's pregnant.

Speaker 19 And I'm thinking, thinking, gee, couldn't you call me at a better time? And of course, I'm not happy that she's pregnant to start with.

Speaker 28 How well did you know that young man by then?

Speaker 21 Oh, didn't know him.

Speaker 16 But was she in love?

Speaker 3 Oh, yes.

Speaker 30 The young man, she told them, was Ricky, Ricky Rye, a college dropout, just like Sparkle.

Speaker 5 She met him at his father's hotel in Louisville, where he was the manager, and she'd found a job working the front desk.

Speaker 10 Oh, and by the way, he was even younger than she was, just 18, and about to be a father to their baby, Sparkle's baby.

Speaker 23 Unwed and young and, you know, hadn't finished college, so we had some concerns.

Speaker 16 They felt a little better when Sparkle and Ricky moved to Atlanta.

Speaker 5 That way Bennett and Donna could help when the baby came.

Speaker 34 They really did care for each other.

Speaker 23 Yeah, that was obvious.

Speaker 23 Yeah, they loved each other a lot.

Speaker 35 And as they got to know Ricky, he opened up a little, admitted he was a bit of a black sheep.

Speaker 12 The rest of the five children in his family of Indian immigrants were piling up advanced degrees in college.

Speaker 30 He, the dropout, obviously wasn't, but he certainly seemed proud of his family.

Speaker 32 After all, his father had been a math professor and later a successful businessman.

Speaker 23 He always talked about what his family had and all the money that they had, the businesses they owned, where he went to school, the private schooling. But I always asked him, well, what do you do?

Speaker 19 I'm not interested in what they're going to do, but what do you do? How are you going to take care of the baby and her? I was always concerned that they were just barely getting by.

Speaker 12 What's a parent to do?

Speaker 12 Ricky's parents worried, too, apparently, but they seemed to blame Sparkle for running off with their son before he'd finished college.

Speaker 23 They did not like the fact that they were together.

Speaker 23 They did not like that she was pregnant.

Speaker 29 In fact, when the baby was born, Ricky's family did not come to visit.

Speaker 24 Was there any sign of his parents at all during this period of time?

Speaker 39 Never.

Speaker 11 But Ricky and Sparkle were ecstatic.

Speaker 4 They named their little girl Anala, which in Sanskrit means fiery one.

Speaker 4 And all the while that young love just seemed to grow.

Speaker 23 That's the thing that kept us going was that he loved her.

Speaker 6 And then, just as the young couple was getting used to parenthood, Ricky came to his in-laws with dreadful news.

Speaker 23 It was October of

Speaker 23 1999 that he told us that his father died from diabetes-related complications.

Speaker 12 There was to be a traditional funeral.

Speaker 41 The burial would be in India.

Speaker 13 Ricky flew there to be part of it.

Speaker 23 He was gone for just a few days and we remember thinking, wow, that was a quick trip to India.

Speaker 41 But bad news can come in batches.

Speaker 15 Within just days of Ricky's return from the India burial, there was a cyclone in India.

Speaker 23 Thousands of people killed. It was a big news story.
And he said his mother, who was still in India, had been killed in that cyclone. And we were devastated for him.

Speaker 37 It was just horrible.

Speaker 23 What a tragedy. And this poor kid, he lost his dad and his mom in just a few weeks.

Speaker 10 It was the following spring, the first spring of a new millennium, a new life.

Speaker 12 Ricky and Sparkle made their relationship official.

Speaker 5 They got married.

Speaker 19 Well, we thought it would work as long as they were both putting forth their best effort.

Speaker 35 Yes, and as the weeks floated happily by,

Speaker 19 they were always together. I never, ever could think of a time when, if they were more than a couple hours apart, that was strange.

Speaker 3 So there was simply no warning, no way to prepare for what happened next.

Speaker 44 April 26th, 2000.

Speaker 23 Got a call from Rick, who said, Sparkle's been attacked.

Speaker 12 He'd just come home and found her, he said. She heard, but his words didn't quite make sense.

Speaker 16 She ran to her car.

Speaker 23 And I remember driving thinking, attacked.

Speaker 33 I mean, I'm thinking, we're going to take her to the hospital and she's going to be okay.

Speaker 23 I remember thinking, I'll take the baby, you know, we'll make sure everything's okay.

Speaker 28 There are times when a parent cannot make anything right.

Speaker 40 By the time Donna arrived at Sparkle's apartment, Sparkle's father was already there.

Speaker 19 And I kept asking, is she dead or is she alive?

Speaker 21 What happened?

Speaker 19 Finally, someone would come down and tell me that she wasn't alive anymore.

Speaker 10 She was dead.

Speaker 3 Murdered.

Speaker 9 She'd been strangled and stabbed to death.

Speaker 22 Her Her six-month-old baby was unharmed, just a few feet away from Sparkle's body.

Speaker 23 As a reporter, I've covered homicide scenes, I've watched families fall apart, and it was surreal to be on the other end of it and dealing with just everything going on with that. What had happened?

Speaker 23 Who had done this?

Speaker 40 A detective named Lee Brown looked carefully at that horrific scene.

Speaker 31 He could not yet know who the murderer was or the incomprehensible design behind it, but he did know this.

Speaker 21 It appeared somebody was mad at this girl.

Speaker 18 This is raging, right?

Speaker 21 This is rage.

Speaker 23 Having my colleagues pointing their cameras at me, and they were very compassionate about what we were going through, but it was very invasive. People wanting to know more about it and how we felt.

Speaker 23 How many times have I been on the other end of that kind of thing?

Speaker 32 In Atlanta, Georgia, a television reporter came to understand the painful end of grief made public.

Speaker 35 Donna Lowry's stepdaughter, dead.

Speaker 9 Her murder, a violent overkill that looked like hate.

Speaker 22 Sparkle's father, Bennett Reed, was inconsolable.

Speaker 19 All I could do was cry.

Speaker 19 I can't believe that I lost a child.

Speaker 3 What happened?

Speaker 40 Detective Lee Brown took the call.

Speaker 21 There was a lot of blood. She had multiple stab wounds, and her throat had been cut, and she had been strangled.

Speaker 5 A rage killing, must have been.

Speaker 28 Were there any signs that anybody had forced their way into that apartment?

Speaker 21 No, none at all.

Speaker 19 So whoever went there had been allowed in.

Speaker 13 Right, that's correct.

Speaker 22 Did that mean Sparkle knew her killer?

Speaker 28 Was there anything taken from the apartment?

Speaker 21 Nothing. The apartment wasn't ransacked.
Her purse, which was lying near her body,

Speaker 21 was upside down. But there was U.S.
currency lying on the floor that obviously had come out of her purse. Actual money.
Actual money. Just lying there.
Right, right. She was obviously not a robber.

Speaker 21 Obviously it wasn't a robbery.

Speaker 13 It wasn't sexual assault either.

Speaker 3 That was obvious.

Speaker 12 But the killer had taken precautions.

Speaker 36 The telephone cord was cut. No fibers found.
No fingerprints.

Speaker 5 No DNA.

Speaker 21 We had some footwear impressions and blood. Other than that, we found very little physical evidence.

Speaker 36 As for the young husband, Ricky.

Speaker 21 Of course, we always look at the significant other or the spouse, the person closest to the victim.

Speaker 42 Was it the marriage?

Speaker 31 They seemed so happy.

Speaker 5 In spite of whatever difficulties they may have encountered with their own immaturity and sudden parenthood, they had been inseparable.

Speaker 16 But now, Detective Brown couldn't help but notice that his behavior seemed a little odd.

Speaker 21 When we arrived on the scene, he was relatively calm.

Speaker 16 Sparkle's father, Bennett Reed, watching this, was puzzled too.

Speaker 19 But he was just walking around, holding the baby. I can't say he ever actually showed any emotion that night.

Speaker 35 The police took Ricky Ryde to the station. They recorded the interview.

Speaker 49 She was laying up against the wall back there in Caddy Kitchen Streets.

Speaker 50 Ryan

Speaker 49 and she was covered in blood.

Speaker 49 And

Speaker 50 my guys called her name. Didn't touch sparkle and all?

Speaker 49 I didn't touch her anything else, but just when I tried to touch her foot, that's when I heard another cry.

Speaker 49 So

Speaker 49 I jumped over the road break and ran and picked her up.

Speaker 21 And the entire time

Speaker 21 he was still calm. He didn't exhibit the emotions that I thought would be normal.

Speaker 49 I got to ask you this for you because it strikes me as I, okay? It really does.

Speaker 49 You come home and you open a door and you see your wife lying on the floor floor

Speaker 49 and pull a button.

Speaker 49 Why don't you run into her?

Speaker 49 I don't know, because I didn't know what to think at that point.

Speaker 49 I really did not know what to think.

Speaker 49 I had no idea what was going on.

Speaker 9 They kept him for eight hours talking.

Speaker 12 His behavior somehow peculiar.

Speaker 37 But then they sent him home. They did not charge him.

Speaker 34 And here's why.

Speaker 21 He actually had a better alibi than I did if that was possible he was at work all day that day that being the case we knew there was no way that he could have committed this murder

Speaker 18 so what did that tell you

Speaker 21 our case became cold very quickly

Speaker 3 it all went cold

Speaker 48 before long Ricky turned over baby and I to Sparkle's parents and then he left town

Speaker 19 That was the last time we actually saw him. And then all of a sudden he just stopped calling.

Speaker 24 Just disappeared out of his own life.

Speaker 21 Right, right.

Speaker 21 Now that is

Speaker 6 strange. Strange, right.

Speaker 21 You know, I would periodically look to see where Ricky was, you know, or see where he had moved to, you know, to see if there was anything that I may have missed.

Speaker 16 On the one-year anniversary of the murder, Sparkle's father went on television, offering money for information leading to the killer.

Speaker 19 Today, I'm announcing a reward of $5,000 for the arrest and the conviction of that person who might have had a play in my daughter's tragic ending.

Speaker 40 No one came forward.

Speaker 37 Well, I told Mr. Reed, her father,

Speaker 21 to not give up hope. I said, you know, at some point, somebody's going to get arrested and they're going to have information about a murder.

Speaker 41 One year followed another.

Speaker 3 Little Anala grew a carbon copy of her mother.

Speaker 20 The Reeds were parents to a youngster again.

Speaker 15 It was spring 2004, four years since since Sparkle's murder.

Speaker 19 It was as unpredictable, as unexpected as that awful call in the night had been.

Speaker 42 There was a high-speed chase. The young woman arrested said she had some information about a murder.

Speaker 21 And I got a telephone call from the Atlanta Police Department Homicide Unit.

Speaker 52 And he said, let me run some things by you.

Speaker 21 And he said, spring of 2000, Union Station Apartments, Sparkle Michelle Rye. I said, yes, sir.
He said, she was stabbed, she was strangled, and her throat was cut. I said, yes, sir.

Speaker 21 He said, I have a young lady who was present in the apartment when it happened. So I was sitting in his office 15 minutes later.

Speaker 3 An eyewitness account?

Speaker 3 The solution was apparently at hand. Or was it?

Speaker 21 She told us that her friend was with her.

Speaker 21 We subsequently went and found the friend.

Speaker 12 The two women were teenagers when it happened.

Speaker 10 They met a man, a cousin, who invited them along on what they believed was a drug deal.

Speaker 7 He seemed to know where he was going.

Speaker 14 At the apartment, he stood back, told the girls, knock at the door.

Speaker 21 And when Sparkle opened the door, he forced his way in. He wrapped an extension cord from a vacuum cleaner around Sparkle's neck after he had ordered her down on the floor and strangled her.

Speaker 34 until she quit moving.

Speaker 21 He got a knife, told the two girls they needed to go wait in the truck. He come out a few minutes later with a knife and a towel, wiping the

Speaker 21 knife off with a towel. And they left the complex.

Speaker 46 The women said they also stopped at a supermarket Western Union counter. The man picked up a money order.

Speaker 12 Later, he went to a phone, made a call.

Speaker 22 They heard some of it.

Speaker 21 All they heard was him telling an individual that

Speaker 21 I'm done, it's done, and I'm on my way home.

Speaker 24 And the voice on the other end says, come home.

Speaker 46 The women looked at a photo lineup.

Speaker 16 They identified Cleveland Clark, 47 years old of Jackson, Mississippi, already in prison for armed robbery.

Speaker 27 But what possible motive could he have to kill Sparkle Rye?

Speaker 29 The truth, as Detective Brown would discover, can be so unbelievable.

Speaker 20 I was kind of flowered, be quite honest with you.

Speaker 21 I was way out there, way out there.

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Speaker 23 I got the call one day from the cold case unit. It had been four years, and at that point,

Speaker 23 he was saying that they had had some new information.

Speaker 42 Is this out of the blue?

Speaker 23 Out of the blue.

Speaker 30 There is, of necessity, a protocol to the way old cases are given new life.

Speaker 45 Four years after the ghastly murder of the young newly married mother, Sparkle Rye, Detective Brown hit pay dirt.

Speaker 8 Two young women said they'd witnessed the murder.

Speaker 7 They'd identified a convicted felon named Cleveland Clark who was serving time in a Mississippi prison.

Speaker 21 I had a suspicion somebody had paid him but I didn't know who it was or why.

Speaker 12 The story implied he was a contract killer.

Speaker 35 But that was it.

Speaker 36 He wasn't talking.

Speaker 16 Dead end.

Speaker 39 This was kind of a case where we didn't have DNA.

Speaker 36 Time to call in the Atlanta Police cold case team.

Speaker 13 Vince Velasquez, Alton Calhoun.

Speaker 39 It was just kind of like the old-fashioned, you know, feet on the pavement,

Speaker 39 beating the street, trying to drum up some evidence.

Speaker 11 Who would have arranged to have Sparkle killed?

Speaker 51 Remember, detectives did think it was a murder for hire.

Speaker 51 The two girls who witnessed the murder said they recalled that Cleveland Clark stopped and picked up money orders at a Western Union.

Speaker 51 They also remembered that after the murder, he made a phone call, said into the phone, the job is done, heard a man's voice at the other end say, come on home.

Speaker 7 Who was Cleveland Clark speaking to?

Speaker 46 And who had sent the money?

Speaker 13 That part, it turned out, was traceable, all in the records.

Speaker 42 The money had come from Jackson, Mississippi, from a 74-year-old man named Willie Fred Evans.

Speaker 18 Who the heck is that?

Speaker 39 He's a person who has lived his whole life in Jackson, Mississippi. Illiterate, didn't finish school, but was very street savvy.

Speaker 42 Phone records revealed that Willie Fred Evans was the very same man Cleveland Clark called right after the murder.

Speaker 18 You needed information from him.

Speaker 39 Yeah, we knew from the phone records and the wire transfers that he was connected to Cleveland Clark.

Speaker 32 They paid a visit to Mr.

Speaker 12 Evans.

Speaker 21 Was he forthcoming?

Speaker 39 Not at first. I said, you know, I know you're lying.
The records don't lie, but I tell you what, why don't you think about it?

Speaker 16 There was a pause then. Days, weeks.

Speaker 44 The detectives pretended disinterest.

Speaker 39 He was calling me non-stop, just calling, and you could tell his messages were getting a little more frantic.

Speaker 8 And sure enough, Willie Fred Evans was willing to meet at a Jackson, Mississippi Hilton Hotel, and this time he brought a friend, 60-year-old Herbert Green.

Speaker 26 Was that the man who put out the contract on Sparkle?

Speaker 24 It's like, it can't be that easy. He's going to bring the guy to us.

Speaker 3 Who was Herbert Green?

Speaker 46 A little detective work made the connection.

Speaker 12 Herbert Green was a sometimes business partner of Chimon Rai,

Speaker 30 Ricky Rai's father.

Speaker 24 I remember looking at some reports and I see

Speaker 24 Chimon Rai's name and right next to his name I saw Herbert Green's name.

Speaker 36 Wait a minute, Chimon Rai?

Speaker 12 Was that the same man Ricky told Sparkle's parents he'd buried in India?

Speaker 4 Why, yes, it was.

Speaker 19 I never knew when he was telling me the truth or not.

Speaker 35 Right, he wasn't. The father who had supposedly died from diabetes, who so disapproved of Sparkle's presence in his son's life, was not dead at all.

Speaker 41 Was not in India.

Speaker 6 He was alive and well and living in Mississippi, not far from Willie Fred Evans and Herbert Greene.

Speaker 3 And now, Chiman Rai became the prime suspect in his daughter-in-law's murder.

Speaker 24 It wasn't the point to say, as we got him, but that was the connection.

Speaker 26 The DA offered Green and Evans a deal.

Speaker 29 Tell the truth about their connection to Rai and stay out of jail.

Speaker 26 And with that, the two men who initially denied their involvement finally confirmed the convoluted plot.

Speaker 8 They were the middlemen in a plot hatched by Chiman Rai himself to kill his daughter-in-law, Sparkle.

Speaker 39 Chiman Rai had approached Herbert Green to kill his daughter-in-law. Herbert Green then went to Willie Fred Evans.

Speaker 39 Willie Fred Evans then went to Cleveland Clark and asked him, and Cleveland Clark agreed. There was a price agreed upon of $10,000.

Speaker 20 $10,000 to kill Sparkle Rye.

Speaker 29 Still, the detectives wanted further proof of Rai's involvement, so they enlisted Herbert Greene, asked him to pay a visit to his old friend Chiman Rai at Rai's Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, that same hotel where Ricky and Sparkle first met.

Speaker 9 And there was a caveat.

Speaker 57 Don, do you have eyes on him yet?

Speaker 16 Green would have to wear a hidden camera.

Speaker 39 We told him to let Rai know that the Atlanta police are trying to contact him, that they had been to Jackson. They want to talk to him about the murder.

Speaker 58 So you ready?

Speaker 59 Yeah, ready.

Speaker 17 Herbert Green walked into the hotel, camera rolling.

Speaker 21 Morning!

Speaker 56 He made small talk with the woman behind the counter.

Speaker 29 How are you doing, Ms. Morgan?

Speaker 21 And who was she?

Speaker 56 Why, it was Ricky Rai's mother, alive and well, and quite obviously not the victim of that terrible cyclone in India.

Speaker 27 And she had some interesting news about Ricky.

Speaker 60 How's Ricky doing? Ricky's all right. Ricky got married to the Indian guy.
Oh, he did.

Speaker 5 Finally, the meeting with Rai.

Speaker 50 Hey, how's it going?

Speaker 50 How are you doing today?

Speaker 60 You all right? Nice to see you. All right, I'm happy to talk to you for a minute.
The Atlanta police have been to my house twice.

Speaker 60 To your house?

Speaker 61 Yeah, but they had to. Yeah, but I hadn't talked to the police yet.
The Atlanta police.

Speaker 60 I guess they wanted to question me about that girl's death.

Speaker 61 So I hadn't talked to him yet. So I need £5,000 out of it so I can

Speaker 61 get around.

Speaker 57 Right now I have no money at all.

Speaker 39 The script was for him to ask him for money. because he needed to get out of town.

Speaker 59 But the Atlanta police, you know, could catch up me, but what do you want me to tell them?

Speaker 59 I understand.

Speaker 59 But I don't know. Because you know if I go to jail, you're going too.

Speaker 57 Well, we had to go to jail, we had to go.

Speaker 57 What can you do?

Speaker 59 Oh, you don't mind going to jail?

Speaker 57 What can you do?

Speaker 60 We had to go.

Speaker 57 I can give you $500. That's all I can help you out.
I swear to you, I don't have money. I swear to the God.

Speaker 61 But Doc? But

Speaker 59 I had this done for you.

Speaker 59 I understand.

Speaker 62 You don't know anything. That's the only thing you have to say.
I have no idea who is what is this. That's the only thing is.
Why you have to go answer everything?

Speaker 62 Right?

Speaker 39 And we knew at that point we had him

Speaker 39 because that is not something an innocent man would say.

Speaker 24 This is the closest we're going to get to a smoking gun. It gets no better than this.

Speaker 20 It was good enough that in September 2006, Chimon Rai, a former mathematics professor and business owner, was charged with murder.

Speaker 21 But why?

Speaker 4 Why would a man pay to have his own daughter-in-law brutally murdered?

Speaker 63 The killer that was hired by this man did a good job. Things were wiped down and they were clean.

Speaker 20 Prosecutors are, at heart, storytellers.

Speaker 32 And the death penalty case against 68-year-old Chiman Rai was the story of a rage that burned so intensely in his breast.

Speaker 25 He arranged to have his own daughter-in-law murdered in cold blood.

Speaker 21 Why?

Speaker 42 Listen to this from co-prosecutor Sheila Ross.

Speaker 63 Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence will show that it was this defendant, this man sitting right here, who sent that killer to her door.

Speaker 63 And the evidence will show that he hired a hitman to kill Sparkle

Speaker 63 because she married his son,

Speaker 63 because she had a child with his son,

Speaker 63 and ladies and gentlemen

Speaker 63 because she was black.

Speaker 63 We could reach no other reasonable conclusion than he had her killed because she was black and that he was against it and did not want that for his son, did not want that for his family.

Speaker 35 Jimon Rai was a racist, said the prosecution. To prove it, they called a former inmate who'd shared a jail cell with Rai as he awaited trial.

Speaker 32 Here's co-prosecutor Eleanor Ross.

Speaker 64 Did the defendant ever express his feelings about people of other races, in particular black people? Yes.

Speaker 65 One particular time he said that

Speaker 65 he hated all this. He wished he couldn't get rid of them.
At one point he said that he's already spent a lot of money to protect his family once. He wishes he can get rid of the rest of them.

Speaker 58 You solemnly swear to affirm that the other.

Speaker 56 And as Sparkle's cousin told the jury, Ricky's parents did not approve of Ricky's relationship with Sparkle.

Speaker 41 They'd already made a different plan for him.

Speaker 64 Did Sparkle ever tell you during those conversations that Mr. Rai

Speaker 64 did not want her and Ricky Rai together because of cultural differences and that Ricky Rye had a prearranged marriage?

Speaker 53 She and Rick both told me that.

Speaker 9 And then the only witness who could finally offer some sort of explanation for the deception of the heart of the marriage, for the secrets kept from parents, Ricky Rai.

Speaker 17 A reluctant witness, but he did tell the story.

Speaker 33 Did you you tell your parents that you were dating Sparkle?

Speaker 66 I did not. I was supposed to be at the hotel working and going to school, not dating anybody.

Speaker 63 Did you tell your parents that she was pregnant?

Speaker 21 No.

Speaker 42 Instead, he lied to his in-laws, told them his parents were dead, all to avoid questions about why his parents weren't involved in his life and his baby's life.

Speaker 63 Did you ever tell your parents that you had married Sparkle?

Speaker 34 No.

Speaker 66 You know, we were brought up up that, you know, we should marry,

Speaker 66 you know,

Speaker 66 Indian, same race.

Speaker 63 He was very much so afraid of what they were going to do if they found out. They let it be known to him early on in the relationship that they did not approve.

Speaker 12 And that is why Ricky and Sparkle, afraid of the consequences of disobeying his parents, moved to Atlanta in the spring of 1999 when she was not too obviously pregnant yet.

Speaker 63 Did you and Sparkle move away in order to get away from your parents?

Speaker 67 Yes.

Speaker 26 But Ricky's parents soon found out about the marriage and the baby, and their new address wasn't kept secret for long.

Speaker 8 They hired a private detective to track down the couple.

Speaker 26 He testified Chime and Rai fretted about the family's reputation.

Speaker 68 He was attempting at that time to arrange a marriage.

Speaker 68 for another child.

Speaker 68 He explained that the arranging of the marriage may be difficult because of the relationship that Ricky had at that time with his girlfriend, because of either being pregnant or because of her being an African-American.

Speaker 48 And so, said the prosecution, Rai, who now knew Ricky and Sparkle's address, was determined to put an end to this forbidden love affair.

Speaker 17 Not only was Sparkle not part of their cast, she was not part of their race.

Speaker 32 Rye approached fellow business owner and friend Herbert Green for help.

Speaker 61 He said the girl was causing him some problems and he needed her

Speaker 7 and need her killed.

Speaker 21 He's saying he needed it done quick.

Speaker 64 He already told me when he...

Speaker 63 Did he tell you why he needed it done quickly?

Speaker 61 No, he didn't

Speaker 61 tell me why.

Speaker 5 But the prosecution claimed to know why.

Speaker 63 Timon Rai wanted Sparkle killed before his daughter's wedding.

Speaker 10 Rai's eldest daughter was getting married, and he did not want Sparkle showing up to spoil the party.

Speaker 22 So Rai's friend Herbert Green went to the middleman, Willie Fred Evans, who made the deal with accused killer Cleveland Clark.

Speaker 68 I told him, I say, now, the man told me now that y'all wouldn't pay but $10,000.

Speaker 56 He told me he won't leave the night.

Speaker 23 That same night? Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 46 Might have got away with it, too, save for the young women he picked up in Atlanta.

Speaker 63 While that killer was very good about not leaving behind any forensic evidence, he made a big, big mistake because he left not one,

Speaker 63 but two.

Speaker 63 Two eyewitnesses to this crime.

Speaker 64 And is this the man that was pulling the cord around her neck?

Speaker 50 Yes.

Speaker 9 Those two eyewitnesses were used to create a ruse to get Clark into the apartment.

Speaker 71 You asked Louise the bathroom, she said yes,

Speaker 71 and she walked away from the door.

Speaker 53 Clee went in the house behind her.

Speaker 71 I heard gasping sounds, choking sounds, and Clee was straying on her.

Speaker 12 They said Cleveland Clark called his contact, got his money at the Western Union, and that was that.

Speaker 30 Except, of course, for what the prosecution called its smoking gun, that hidden camera footage of Herbert Green telling Chimin Rai, the police are onto them.

Speaker 60 I guess they want to question me about that girl's death, uh-huh.

Speaker 63 And the first thing out of Chime and Rai's mouth is, uh-huh. That's it, uh-huh.
He never says, what are you talking about?

Speaker 61 What girl?

Speaker 63 Never denies it. He knew knew exactly what Herbert Green was talking about.
Chimen Rai is guilty of every single count on the indictment. He hired someone else to do it.

Speaker 63 He's responsible for it because he sent the hitman to her door.

Speaker 20 So there it was, the prosecution's case for conviction of father's intolerance of his son's bride.

Speaker 17 True story? Maybe.

Speaker 3 Maybe not.

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Speaker 12 In the steamy summer heat of Atlanta, Georgia, in the artificial cold of courtroom 6G, Fulton County Courthouse, justice appeared finally to be closing in on a businessman, former math professor, and determinedly traditional father named Chimon Rai.

Speaker 29 Finally, this man would pay the price for arranging the brutal murder of his daughter-in-law, Sparkle.

Speaker 17 A young woman he'd put under the sentence of death for the unforgivable sin of being a different race and marrying his son.

Speaker 3 Really?

Speaker 12 This is defense attorney Jack Martin.

Speaker 52 And everybody would just laugh when I said, well, is he a racist? Of course not.

Speaker 43 He was a great man for the community.

Speaker 19 Everybody loved him in the community.

Speaker 12 Would this man arrange a murder to end his son's marriage?

Speaker 16 Out of the question.

Speaker 43 This man had nothing to do with it. There was no question that the parents and other family members were upset with the relationship.

Speaker 18 It didn't have to do anything with race.

Speaker 47 It had to do with the fact that Ricky was young, only a teenager.

Speaker 70 The fact that he hadn't finished his education.

Speaker 12 The defense cross-examined Rai's son, Ricky.

Speaker 58 You were supposed to, in your family, get a college education, weren't you?

Speaker 24 Yes, sir.

Speaker 66 And any conversations that we did have, yes, they were targeted towards, you know,

Speaker 66 do what you want, but get your education first.

Speaker 47 So it wasn't that she was African-American or black.

Speaker 70 Even if she had been Indian, it was a problem, correct?

Speaker 43 Correct.

Speaker 5 And there was further proof, said the defense, that Chimon Rai was no racist.

Speaker 8 For years, Rai had taught at an historically black university, and among his many businesses, owned a convenience store in a predominantly black community of Jackson, Mississippi.

Speaker 70 Did you ever notice him treat any of his black customers with disrespect?

Speaker 40 No, sir.

Speaker 47 You ever hear him disparaging black people?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 61 It's not in his makeup.

Speaker 74 Is Mr. Rai a racist?

Speaker 6 No, sir. None, not at all.

Speaker 16 The defense called Rai's other children.

Speaker 46 Two medical doctors, a teacher, a financial analyst, to vouch for their father.

Speaker 52 Have you dated African-American women?

Speaker 21 I have.

Speaker 43 Has that been a big issue in the family that you've dated women that are not Indian or African-American?

Speaker 75 No, no, not at all.

Speaker 22 No, said the defense.

Speaker 5 Race was not the reason that Sparkle was found dead.

Speaker 3 But if it wasn't about race, what was it?

Speaker 44 Why did Sparkle die?

Speaker 40 Defense Attorney Don Samuel.

Speaker 67 What really happened was not that Chime and Rai

Speaker 67 sent out someone to kill Sparkle Rye. What happened was Herbert Green decided that they would go to the house where Ricky Rai and Sparkle Rye lived and would steal money and would steal drugs.

Speaker 27 Drugs?

Speaker 5 Sure enough, under questioning, Herbert Greene admitted he'd heard some things.

Speaker 34 Did you tell the police repeatedly that Ricky and Sparkle were using drugs?

Speaker 52 That's what I heard on the street.

Speaker 41 Which is why, claimed the defense, Herbert Green and Willie Fred Evans hired Cleveland Clark, who made the 400-mile drive from Jackson, Mississippi to Atlanta, to commit not a murder, but a robbery.

Speaker 47 In the apartment, he said at least four times, where are the drugs?

Speaker 21 Where are the drugs?

Speaker 50 Yes.

Speaker 43 The murderer was looking for something.

Speaker 17 Where are the drugs?

Speaker 43 Where are the drugs? Running through the cabinets. That didn't make any sense for a hitman.

Speaker 45 And the very way in which Sparkle was murdered, said the defense, was further proof that the murder occurred after and because the robbery went bad.

Speaker 65 The stab wounds could be created by common knives and the ligature could be any kind of a cord.

Speaker 16 Sparkle had been strangled with a vacuum cord, stabbed to death with a kitchen knife.

Speaker 3 Not the work of a hired killer, said the defense.

Speaker 74 What type of hitman shows up with no weapon, goes there to use items he may or may not find in the house to commit the murder?

Speaker 46 So why would Herbert Greene and Willie Fred Evans tell the prosecution they'd set up the murder under contract from Chime and Rye?

Speaker 12 Simple, said the defense.

Speaker 30 Their story was a clever cover-up that had the added advantage of a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Speaker 17 These were two liars who got probation instead of a jail term in exchange for their cooperation.

Speaker 74 They know they're caught.

Speaker 43 They cook up the story.

Speaker 70 We'll blame it on Mr. Rai.

Speaker 74 He's the one who did all this. You could have 100 liars testify to something, and it's not worth anything.

Speaker 22 But Chimon Rai and his defense attorneys still had one very big problem, that hidden camera video.

Speaker 25 How could anyone explain away what sounded like Rai's own virtual confession?

Speaker 59 I did murder for you.

Speaker 60 You know what I did, huh?

Speaker 51 You did it for me?

Speaker 34 I did this for you.

Speaker 18 Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 47 What it really appears to be is Mr.

Speaker 52 Rai trying to get him out of there as quickly as possible.

Speaker 43 Often people say, uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah, yeah. Meaning, I'm listening to you.

Speaker 47 When are we going to get over this?

Speaker 60 I don't know anything about that.

Speaker 57 Am I right wrong?

Speaker 50 I don't know nothing about that.

Speaker 52 A lot of what he's saying is, I don't know anything, you don't know anything.

Speaker 40 Was he right that Chimon Rai had nothing to do with Sparkle Rai's murder, that this tape was nothing more than an effort to frame an innocent man?

Speaker 70 Does a peaceful man with no history of violence in his entire life suddenly turn to violence and murder when he's older than 60?

Speaker 70 Their motive is weak and quite frankly, not there.

Speaker 42 You don't have to decide who's telling the true story, but the jury would have to.

Speaker 12 They would hold a man's life in their hands.

Speaker 30 If they found Cheyman Rai guilty of murder, the penalty could be death.

Speaker 63 This is a murder-for-hire case, which is why the defendant is guilty of murder without ever having stepped foot in the state of Georgia.

Speaker 70 It was a senseless, stupid, brutal crime.

Speaker 43 But this man had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 35 There is no telling quite how a jury will react to the stories it's told.

Speaker 22 No way for a waiting family to know what to think.

Speaker 19 I was on pins and needles the whole time.

Speaker 30 The jury stayed out a day and then a day and a half.

Speaker 58 Has the jury reached a verdict, sir?

Speaker 3 We have, Your Honor.

Speaker 12 And then announced it had a verdict in the death penalty case against businessman Chimon Rai.

Speaker 23 Actually, I said to him, I think we've got this.

Speaker 19 But I always had in the back of my mind, what if these 12 people are not seeing the same thing I'm seeing?

Speaker 12 They've been waiting for this moment eight long years.

Speaker 32 The judge asked the jury for a person.

Speaker 15 Read the verdict.

Speaker 69 We, the jury, found a defendant, Chimin L.

Speaker 3 Rai, guilty.

Speaker 70 Count two, felony, murder, burglary.

Speaker 69 We, the jury, found a defendant, Chimin L.

Speaker 58 Rai, guilty.

Speaker 3 Guilty.

Speaker 40 Chiman Rai was guilty of murder and every count that followed.

Speaker 69 We, the jury, found the defendant, Chimin L. Wright,

Speaker 58 guilty.

Speaker 23 Guilty came out of the mouth of the four men. That was unbelievable.
It's just the tears started flowing, and they couldn't stop.

Speaker 19 I sat through everything, and I never cried for anything.

Speaker 19 But to hear that guilty verdict, especially the second guilty,

Speaker 37 I couldn't help it.

Speaker 58 Guilty.

Speaker 12 Chimon Rai's face was unreadable.

Speaker 7 He seemed emotionless.

Speaker 3 He was not, said his lawyer.

Speaker 16 Guilty.

Speaker 7 He was just befuddled by it.

Speaker 47 And he expected to be acquitted.

Speaker 62 You don't know anything. That's the only thing you have to say.

Speaker 10 It may have been the incriminating hidden camera footage of Rai talking with Herbert Green that swayed the jury.

Speaker 29 But it was a death penalty case.

Speaker 32 And so now the jury sat to hear pleas for Rai's life.

Speaker 12 His children, with the exception of son Ricky, pleaded with the jury. It was the first time Rai showed any emotion during the trial.

Speaker 33 My father is still the greatest man I know.

Speaker 20 I ask that you allow him to live so that others may benefit from his positive traits.

Speaker 33 I ask you

Speaker 75 to allow me to hold on to my father.

Speaker 75 To me, he is someone who is very, very hard to find.

Speaker 75 I assure you that no matter where I am on this earth, that he will always be with me.

Speaker 47 It is your decision today.

Speaker 3 You're responsible.

Speaker 43 Do you want to kill this man?

Speaker 32 Sparkle's stepmom, Donna Bowery, also spoke to the jury, telling them the loss of Sparkle was especially traumatic for baby Inala.

Speaker 23 At six months old, her mother was gone, never to hold her or sing to her, never to read books to her, never to smell or touch her or feel her warmth.

Speaker 33 How alone she must have felt.

Speaker 32 In the end, the jury spared Rai's life.

Speaker 42 He was sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 58 Mr. Chimon Rhyme, I remand you into the custody of the state where you will serve life without parole plus 25 years.

Speaker 23 We can live with the fact that he's going to spend the rest of his life in jail.

Speaker 14 But how can they live, they wonder, with what he did?

Speaker 20 A man who hired a hit on their own sweet daughter just to keep her out of his family.

Speaker 23 Here's a man who could raise these kids to be so wonderful,

Speaker 47 to serve the public.

Speaker 23 One's a teacher, a couple doctors, and yet he could have a woman killed.

Speaker 21 It's inconceivable, isn't it?

Speaker 23 And just to think, I'm going to get rid of her. I'm just going to pay $10,000 and get rid of her, and she'll be out of my family.
That's what a life is worth? That's it.

Speaker 33 $10,000.

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