The Zaki Murder still hasn't been solved
T
real leads as to who the murderer was. When we first saw the photos from
the scene, the first thing that popped into everyones heads was that the
wife did it.
I mean come on, murdered in your own bed at point blank range. One tap
to the back of the head and there's blood everywhere.
And Jimmy Allen was the lead detective. How interesting.
East Side murder leaves widow angry, feeling maligned
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, April 29, 2007
By Tom Mooney and Tracy Breton
Journal Staff Writers
PROVIDENCE =3F Six years to the day that her husband, the prominent Dr.
Hani Zaki, was mysteriously murdered on their bed =3F shot in the back of
the head one afternoon =3F Deborah Zaki comes to the door of her new East
Side house dressed in black.
This family photo from June 1990 shows Dr. Hani Zaki with his children,
Hani Jr., left, and Nadia.
AP, right; Courtesy of Deborah Zaki, below
She didn=3Ft realize when she agreed to the interview that it would fall
on the anniversary, she says. Her two teenage children are upstairs. So
are boxes of her clothes and belongings still untouched since they moved
four years ago to Lloyd Avenue from their million-dollar house on
Prospect Street. Though the murder scene is only three blocks away, the
family, she says, is less haunted here.
She plans to take her children to their father=3Fs grave today, but yes,
she has time to talk this morning. She is eager to talk.
And for almost three hours she does: a rambling conversation punctuated
by allegations of police incompetence and Probate Court injustice that
left the widow of the wealthy doctor initially borrowing money, she
says, to feed her children.
She talks of police investigators so focused on her as a suspect they
allowed strangers to walk through the house that day and never tracked
leads that might have revealed her husband=3Fs killer. She talks of a
conspiracy among a =3Fboys=3F club=3F of lawyers =3F a virtual Who=3Fs Who of the
Rhode Island bar =3F that has drained her, she claims, of more than $1
million in legal fees in a battle to free her husband=3Fs $6-million
estate.
She talks of family and friends torn apart by suspicion =3F and of her own
resilience.
=3FOne friendly detective advised me to go back to my maiden name, move
out of Providence, start a new life. And I told him I have nothing to
run from. I have the same last name as my children, I=3Fm not changing my
name, and I=3Fm not having people run me out of the city.... I don=3Ft have
any reason to be ashamed.=3F
Deborah Zaki says she did not kill her husband.
She has never been charged with the crime. No one has.
She has her own theories of who might be responsible. A robber, perhaps,
surprised to find the doctor at home that afternoon; or maybe someone
tied to her husband=3Fs varied business dealings =3F some with ties to the
mob, she says.
=3FWould I accuse anybody of anything? Absolutely not. I don=3Ft want
anybody coming after =3F =3F She stops. =3FI want to live a peaceful life for
me and my children. I don=3Ft want any problems from anybody.=3F
Like her mother, who found Hani Zaki=3Fs body that April afternoon splayed
out on the bed, Deborah Zaki, now 51, appeared before a grand jury. She
refused to answer questions, she says, because of how the lead detective
in the case, James Allen, tormented her children. He served them with
subpoenas at school in front of their friends and came to the house one
day threatening to knock down the door.
The incidents were =3Foutrageous,=3F she says. =3FI don=3Ft know why he was so
disrespectful to my children.=3F
In a bizarre and unrelated twist, Allen, the murder detective became a
murder victim.
In April 2005, a suspect in a knife attack whom Allen was questioning in
Providence police headquarters grabbed his service pistol and shot the
veteran officer before jumping through a window. Esteban Carpio was
later captured and convicted and is now serving a sentence of life
without parole.
Prosecutors in the attorney general=3Fs office concede that Allen=3Fs death
hurt the investigation into one of the city=3Fs most audacious murders.
They say the case remains open but won=3Ft say whether anyone is working
it now. Providence police want to hear from anyone who may have
knowledge of the crime.
=3FI probably would have preferred to get indicted and go through a
trial,=3F Deborah Zaki says, =3Fbecause I know I didn=3Ft do anything. =3F They
[investigators] would have to fabricate evidence =3F and at least,
probably, if I went through a trial I could have cleared my name rather
than have it go through so much mud=3F.
=3FI felt like I almost went through a trial and I was accused of a lot of
things without being able to defend myself. =3F A radio show [host], which
I think is outrageous, said: =3FWhat do you call it when a wife gets away
with killing her husband?=3F And it was: =3FPulling a Zaki.=3F =3F
THEY MET IN the early 1980s at the Institute of Mental Health, Rhode
Island=3Fs state hospital. Deborah Zaki was a nurse, Hani M. Zaki a
hustling new doctor =3F specializing in ear, nose and throat disorders =3F
with offices in Johnston, Cumberland and Warwick. They married in 1985.
In the ensuing years, Hani Zaki cultivated one of the state=3Fs busiest
practices. Patients often waited hours, spilling into hallways, to see
him. His files of patients included the names of the meek and the
powerful: key lawmakers, lawyers, cops and the onetime head of the New
England mob.
Many patients and the employees who worked in Zaki=3Fs offices saw him as
a round, gregarious fellow; a chain-smoking doctor who would share a
cigarette with one patient and offer the next a whirling fan to blow his
smoke away.
He enjoyed extravagance and at times displayed carelessness.
In 1993 he acknowledged forging the names of three doctors who he said
supported a project to build an outpatient surgery center in Johnston.
Dozens of malpractice cases plagued him and cost him his license to
perform surgery for 17 months. Restrictions on his license were lifted
the month he died.
Some people who called him a friend exploited his soft side =3F his
inability to say no =3F his widow says, and tapped him for money for
various deals from real estate to importing and exporting gems.
At home in his stately brick house at 91 Prospect St., built by previous
owners to match the neighborhood=3Fs Colonial architecture, Zaki, the son
of strict Egyptian Muslims, was at times controlling and mean, say some.
He was a jealous man, Deborah Zaki says, who prohibited her from keeping
a checking account.
His mother-in-law, Lorraine Beaudoin, described him three weeks after
finding him dead as a =3FDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.=3F
All his friends =3Fknew Dr. Jekyll,=3F she said. She knew a different side,
=3Fbelieve me.=3F
THE MR. HYDE side inflicted abuse, mental and physical, says his widow.
=3FI think my husband was so sweet and charming at the office with all his
friends that sometimes he tended to bring his frustrations home =3Fcause
he just held things in all the time,=3F says Deborah Zaki. =3FHe came from a
very explosive family where his father was very hostile to his mother.=3F
She says her father-in-law was partially responsible for her husband
filing for divorce against her, in 1987, three months after she went
into labor prematurely with twins. The girl, Nadia, survived with a
brain injury. She is 19. But the son died.
=3FI had had a boy die and you would really have to live within the Arab
families to understand the significance of having a male die and a
daughter with abnormalities. =3F It=3Fs not accepted in the culture for the
most part=3F.=3F
The couple reconciled and eventually had another baby, a son named Hani
Jr., now 16.
=3FMy husband was a giver. I=3Fm a giver. He was a wonderful father. I have
to say he was a wonderful husband 99.9 percent of the time. ... Did we
have problems? Yes, but they were usually smoothed out in a day or two
at the most.=3F
A big problem erupted about two months before Zaki=3Fs killing.
The Zakis were in mourning after the death of Hani Zaki=3Fs mother in
February 2001. Her husband=3Fs extended family had assembled at her house.
She had cooked them a meal and then told the doctor she was going out
for a time. An interior designer, she says she wanted to drop off some
blueprints for a garden at a client=3Fs house. Dr. Zaki became enraged.
=3FHe said, =3FYou=3Fre not allowed to leave the house.=3F =3F The two argued and
the doctor struck his wife, she says.
She did not leave. But she told her husband=3Fs nephew, Monty Sarhan, =3FIf
that happens again, I will get a divorce.=3F Within days, she also
contacted a lawyer, Edward L. Gerstein.
A month after the April murder, police detective Allen focused in on the
couple=3Fs marital difficulties in a highly inflammatory affidavit,
included in public court documents, which pointed a finger of blame at
Deborah Zaki.
In the affidavit, which sought court permission to search computers that
had been taken out of the Zaki house, Allen wrote that Sarhan had
approached the police after the killing with the suspicion that Deborah
Zaki was having an affair and had planned to harm her husband.
Sarhan, who had been living with the Zakis after his own father died,
told the police that he had taken items from the house two months
earlier. They included the computers, scraps from an alleged =3Flove note=3F
and some of Deborah Zaki=3Fs lingerie from Victoria=3Fs Secret. He said he
had taken them as possible evidence against her if the couple went
through a divorce. Sarhan said he was so concerned about his uncle that
he put a lock on the master bedroom door to keep her out.
Allen said he believed the computers contained writings from Deborah
Zaki that =3Fmay further evidence Mrs. Zaki=3Fs motive or intent to do
physical harm to her husband.=3F
Yet even now, when Deborah Zaki talks about the computers and her
lingerie, she says they were stolen from the house =3F =3Flike days=3F before
her husband was killed. She blames a robbery that the police never
investigated and also mentions an uninvestigated =3Fbreak-in=3F at the
doctor=3Fs Johnston office after his killing.
Deborah Zaki, however, never filed police reports about the alleged
break-ins. And when reminded that Sarhan told the police that he took
the computers and underwear two months before the killing, she agrees
that is true. She also agrees that it is more than likely that the
doctor=3Fs relatives had the key and the combination to the safe in the
Johnston office.
But she adamantly denies Sarhan=3Fs claims that she was having an affair.
Please, she says, =3FI was a mess.=3F She had had a tummy-tuck procedure
that became infected. =3FI didn=3Ft even have a belly button.=3F
Yes, Sarhan had put some kind of lock on the door, she says. But it
didn=3Ft matter. Anyone could get through it. She and her husband were
sleeping together =3F despite Sarhan=3Fs assertions =3F except for when they
were both recovering from surgeries.
Allen=3Fs affidavit also refers to the Zakis=3F prenuptial agreement that
would have limited Deborah Zaki to a one-time payment of $75,000 if they
got divorced and would have given custody of their children to the
doctor.
Deborah Zaki signed the prenuptial, she says, to appease her father-in-
law who believed the West Warwick nurse =3Fwasn=3Ft good enough=3F for his
son. =3FI said it really doesn=3Ft bother me, I=3Fll sign it.=3F
DEBORAH ZAKI last saw her husband, she says, the morning of the murder,
April 10, 2001.
She went upstairs into the bedroom to ask for some lunch money for
Nadia. Hani Zaki, 51, was in bed. He told her to check his pants pocket.
She peeled some money off a large roll of bills =3F a wad of bills which
she also says was missing after the killing, along with a sacred
medallion her husband always wore around his neck.
After the children went to school, Deborah Zaki says she went to her
friend Cheryl Bready=3Fs house for coffee and to use her computer, since
her own computers were gone. She accompanied Bready to Squires hair
salon on the East Side, where her friend was having some nail work done.
Then she walked to Kinko=3Fs to have copies made of plans she had helped
design for a park on Benefit Street.
She says she drove with Bready to Teapots and Tassels in Barrington,
where she was picking up invitations for two different parties, and had
lunch at Camille=3Fs Roman Garden on Federal Hill, where she says she
bumped into David Cicilline, the future mayor of Providence and one of
the lawyers she would eventually hire in the criminal investigation into
her husband=3Fs death.
=3FI had a whole day that day =3Fcause we had about 10 things we had to
accomplish.=3F
After school, she took her daughter to a waxing treatment at a salon at
the end of Blackstone Boulevard and took her son to a tutor. She says
she didn=3Ft return to her house until about 4:30 p.m. =3F about an hour
after her mother told the police she had found the body.
Her mother, who had gone to the house to walk the dog, she says, met her
at the door and told her to leave immediately with the children. She
says her mother, afraid of what the children might see, told her nothing
other than to go to a friend=3Fs house and call from there.
When she called, Deborah Zaki says, her mother told her that her husband
had been shot and killed.
=3FI=3Fm not sure they [the police] ever wanted to investigate the whole
picture. I don=3Ft mind them investigating me. I always said, let them do
whatever they want, let them ask whoever they want. There is enough
people who saw me that day. =3F They know who my husband=3Fs friends are.
They know who my husband=3Fs family is. They know basically everything
that went on, I imagine, with me that day. I didn=3Ft hide anything that
day.=3F
Yet Deborah Zaki never talked to the police =3F and still hasn=3Ft.
She says she was following the advice of her lawyer, Edward Gerstein,
who =3Ftold me to keep my mouth shut.=3F
=3FI gave all the information to my attorney at the time, where I was,
what I was doing. I told him he could provide it to the police, the
attorney general, anyone he wants to.=3F
But she wasn=3Ft going to talk to Detective Allen.
AS =3FSHOCKINGLY horrific=3F as her husband=3Fs murder was, Deborah Zaki says
her trauma continues in Providence Probate Court.
Her outrage over how she is being treated in that court led her to call
a Providence Journal reporter and begin what amounted to hours of
interviews.
She portrays herself as a type of Prometheus, the mythological Greek
character who each day endured an eagle eating his liver. In her case,
she says, she was preyed upon by a pack of lawyers who wore her down,
intimidated her, and =3Fstared at me=3F =3F as they pecked away at her
family=3Fs money.
The cast of lawyers, more than a dozen in all, included at times Robert
Clark Corrente, now U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island, and Robert G.
Flanders Jr., a former Rhode Island Supreme Court justice who charged
$450 an hour. She=3Fs now represented by former Lt. Gov. Bernard A.
Jackvony.
Providence Probate Judge John E. Martinelli puts it mildly: =3FThis has
not been an amicable probate.=3F
Martinelli blames some of the wrangling on the =3Fconvoluted estate plan=3F
that Dr. Zaki drew up =3F one that included 20 life insurance policies for
the doctor alone, various properties and other assets and trusts for his
children. And then there was the naming of three trustees, two of whom
loathe each other: Deborah Zaki and her sister-in-law Nihal Sarhan.
=3FAll of the people [the lawyers] represent hate each other,=3F says
Martinelli.
Deborah Zaki blames Martinelli and the lawyers: =3FThis estate has been
drained to the point that there are barely enough funds to secure any
type of future for my family, let alone continue to fight attorneys.=3F
She says that last fall, she reluctantly agreed to sign a settlement
agreement with the lawyers and accountants that would pay them and put a
halt to further billings so she and her children wouldn=3Ft be
=3Fbankrupted=3F and =3Fthrown out on the street=3F like Katrina victims.
Gerstein says he can=3Ft understand her claims of poverty when, by his
calculations, she=3Fs already reaped almost $1.9 million from her
husband=3Fs estate. And in a few weeks, she=3Fs going to open a beauty spa
on the first floor of her house.
A LOOK AT the probate case, the documents Deborah Zaki gave to The
Journal and interviews with some of the lawyers help explain why the
legal fees are so high.
Suspicion is one reason Deborah Zaki went for a time without access to
money from the estate. Her sister-in-law and her husband=3Fs accountant,
Wayne Wilfand, also a trustee, suspected she was the killer.
In a letter Gerstein wrote to Deborah Zaki and which she released to The
Journal, Gerstein said =3Fit was fairly obvious that the others were
waiting for you to be indicted.=3F And state law forbids those who are
responsible for someone=3Fs demise to benefit from the estate under what=3Fs
called the =3FSlayer=3Fs Act.=3F
During one meeting at a lawyer=3Fs office, Deborah Zaki says, the two
other trustees called her a murderer.
=3FI walked home =3F to Prospect Street hysterical. I was in shock. I said,
=3FIt=3Fs one thing if they charge me. It=3Fs another thing to be accused to
my face by people that are supposed to be watching out for our best
interest, including my best interest.=3F =3F
The life insurance companies that held Dr. Zaki=3Fs policies also balked
at paying up in the months after Zaki=3Fs murder, citing the Slayer=3Fs Act.
Deborah Zaki is also personally responsible, some of the lawyers say,
for delays in settling the estate.
She delayed filing accountings for her children as ordered by the
probate court and then came under fire from lawyers for her handling of
her children=3Fs trust accounts.
Court and property records show that Deborah Zaki bought the house on
Lloyd Avenue for $875,000 in cash, three weeks before she sold the house
on Prospect Street for $1,075,000. Gerstein says she pocketed $350,000
from the sale, after paying off mortgages and fees.
In 2005, two years after moving to Lloyd Avenue with her children, she
changed the deed to make her two minor children 48-percent owners of the
house and took $100,000 from each of her children=3Fs trust accounts as
payment for their shares.
Her accountings, which became the subject of a probate court hearing,
also show that over a four-year period, Deborah Zaki withdrew hundreds
of thousands more from the children=3Fs accounts to reimburse herself for
major renovations to the house and for personal and household expenses,
including food, restaurant bills and rug cleaning.
Deborah Zaki took reimbursements for some tuition payments that she had
not paid, says the children=3Fs Providence lawyer, Craig Scott. He says
the trusts had actually paid those private school tuitions directly.
Over four years, says Scott, Deborah Zaki withdrew almost all of the
money in her children=3Fs trust accounts =3F more than $600,000 in all.
When initially asked how she had afforded all the renovations to the
house and the new business start-up costs, Deborah Zaki said she
borrowed from friends and family. Later, when asked to explain the
withdrawals from the children=3Fs accounts, she says she believed making
the kids owners of the house was the best investment for them.
Changing the deed, she says, was approved by both Scott and Gerstein and
that they didn=3Ft object to the transaction =3Funtil I tried to fire them
both. That=3Fs when they started screaming about it.=3F
Scott and Gerstein say they never approved of the ownership change in
the house or the large withdrawals from the children=3Fs accounts and
didn=3Ft find out about these things until long afterward. What Deborah
Zaki did with the children=3Fs money, says Scott, was a =3Fmisappropriation
or even worse.=3F In 2005, he took the matter to court where eventually
Deborah Zaki was ordered to pay back all the money to her children=3Fs
trust funds, plus some interest.
The court also ordered her to relinquish control of her children=3Fs
trusts to her sister, who lives in Georgia, and a professional trust
officer.
Deborah Zaki=3Fs current lawyer, Jackvony, says he hopes the estate will
be settled soon but there are still trust issues tied up in Superior
Court.
As part of the settlement agreement she signed with the lawyers and
accountants, Jackvony says, Deborah Zaki has waived her right to receive
more than $200,000 from her late husband=3Fs trust and agreed to give that
money to her children. Jackvony declined to make public the final copy
of the settlement agreement but says that Deborah Zaki is =3Fnot too far
off=3F when she says the criminal investigation and probate matters have
cost her and Hani Zaki=3Fs estate about $1 million in fees.
AFTER THE MURDER, Deborah Zaki says, =3Fall of my husband=3Fs friends
scattered like cockroaches.=3F
Six years later, she still has not talked to the police.
Does she wish she had?
=3FUm, I really had nothing to say to them that would add to their
investigation whatsoever, because I wouldn=3Ft accuse any family members
of anything and I wouldn=3Ft accuse any of my husband=3Fs friends of
anything because I do not have proof. I do not have videotape
surveillance in my house. I don=3Ft feel my family is involved in this,
and I um, um, the way the crime scene was handled and the way they
talked to my children, um, I definitely would not have wanted to be
interviewed by Detective Allen, definitely not. =3F No, I would want
nothing to do with him.=3F
Zaki says, perhaps if it were a female officer, she might consider
talking if it would help.
=3FIt=3Fs a mystery. It=3Fs a tragedy. It=3Fs a heartache for my children and
myself. It is something we live with every day. And not only were we
traumatized by a crime, we were traumatized by a state system in this
city of Providence that were supposed to be looking out for myself and
my children and had no interest whatsoever in watching out for us but
for draining an estate. And I really blame the courts for that. =3F
=3FAs a result we live in fear, not only of what happened to my husband,
we live in fear of what=3Fs going to happen to =3F How much money can we owe
people? How much money can we owe the IRS? How much money can we owe
attorneys? How long can a court system drag people through this? Harass
them, intimidate them, belittle? =3F
Zaki says her 19-year-old daughter, Nadia, stays in contact with one
Providence detective.
Nadia asks the detective a lot of questions.
What kind of questions?
=3FI don=3Ft ask her.=3F
Questions about the murder?
=3FI would hope so.=3F