This little girl was from Toronto, her parents are on trial now.
Here is her story.
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She was just five years old, or almost 6 as children that age are usually determined to see it. She stood three and three-quarter inches over three feet, and weighed 35 pounds, tiny by any measure. She was in the afternoon senior kindergarten class at Second Street Junior Middle School in the west end of the city.
And yet, according to the first statement her father, Muhammad Arsal Khan, gave Toronto police after his arrest, Farah committed suicide "by slitting her own throat" while her daddy and stepmother were at the grocery store.
She hadn't wanted to go with them, Mr. Khan said, protesting that it was too cold out, and that she wanted to watch cartoons. So they left her in the apartment, Mr. Khan told detectives in a videotaped interview on Jan. 19, 2000, and when they got home, darned if she wasn't lying on the living room floor, near death, blood everywhere, her body "flopping around."
He picked her up, Mr. Khan continued, adding a dramatic detail: As she died in his arms, he said, she urinated on him.
Still and all, Mr. Khan reasonably concluded that "no one would believe the truth, that Farah had killed herself," so the next thing he did was to carry his daughter into the bathroom and cut her into pieces -- eight of them, not counting her head and her torso.
That was Mr. Khan's story four years ago, or rather the first of them ~ Mr. Khan has since abandoned that original version of events.
The first parts of Farah's dismembered body were discovered on Dec. 7, 1999, by a woman who was walking her dog at a lakefront park not far from where the family then lived. This woman, Mr. Fisher said, will identify Mr. Khan and Ms. Fatima as the couple she saw by the water, digging among the rocks, and whom she first suspected of having buried drugs there. When she investigated shortly afterwards, she found a double-bagged package, opened it a bit, and "saw a child's hand, and then she saw a child's leg." The woman dropped the bag and ran for help.
Police would later discover a total of five different bags in different locations in that park and another in the north end of the city, finding the little girl's head -- ignominiously hidden face down under a rock -- only with Mr. Khan acting as a guide. Farah's torso was never located, though the bag that apparently contained it was, still bearing traces of her blood.
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The family was Pakistani, and apparenty Farah was the daughter of Mrs. Khan to her first husband that was an arranged marriage, they met on their wedding day and divorced after 4 months.
Mr. Khan called Farah a *advertiser censored* child and was cruel to her and his new wife, Farah's mother. She however, is also charged with 1st degree murder.. the trial is still going on. They have both pled 'not guilty' although Mr. Khan's lawyer asked for a plea bargain to manslaughter and the crown refused it.
Story from the Globe and Mail
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040130/BLATCHM30/TPFront/TopStories
Here is her story.
~~~~
She was just five years old, or almost 6 as children that age are usually determined to see it. She stood three and three-quarter inches over three feet, and weighed 35 pounds, tiny by any measure. She was in the afternoon senior kindergarten class at Second Street Junior Middle School in the west end of the city.
And yet, according to the first statement her father, Muhammad Arsal Khan, gave Toronto police after his arrest, Farah committed suicide "by slitting her own throat" while her daddy and stepmother were at the grocery store.
She hadn't wanted to go with them, Mr. Khan said, protesting that it was too cold out, and that she wanted to watch cartoons. So they left her in the apartment, Mr. Khan told detectives in a videotaped interview on Jan. 19, 2000, and when they got home, darned if she wasn't lying on the living room floor, near death, blood everywhere, her body "flopping around."
He picked her up, Mr. Khan continued, adding a dramatic detail: As she died in his arms, he said, she urinated on him.
Still and all, Mr. Khan reasonably concluded that "no one would believe the truth, that Farah had killed herself," so the next thing he did was to carry his daughter into the bathroom and cut her into pieces -- eight of them, not counting her head and her torso.
That was Mr. Khan's story four years ago, or rather the first of them ~ Mr. Khan has since abandoned that original version of events.
The first parts of Farah's dismembered body were discovered on Dec. 7, 1999, by a woman who was walking her dog at a lakefront park not far from where the family then lived. This woman, Mr. Fisher said, will identify Mr. Khan and Ms. Fatima as the couple she saw by the water, digging among the rocks, and whom she first suspected of having buried drugs there. When she investigated shortly afterwards, she found a double-bagged package, opened it a bit, and "saw a child's hand, and then she saw a child's leg." The woman dropped the bag and ran for help.
Police would later discover a total of five different bags in different locations in that park and another in the north end of the city, finding the little girl's head -- ignominiously hidden face down under a rock -- only with Mr. Khan acting as a guide. Farah's torso was never located, though the bag that apparently contained it was, still bearing traces of her blood.
~~~~
The family was Pakistani, and apparenty Farah was the daughter of Mrs. Khan to her first husband that was an arranged marriage, they met on their wedding day and divorced after 4 months.
Mr. Khan called Farah a *advertiser censored* child and was cruel to her and his new wife, Farah's mother. She however, is also charged with 1st degree murder.. the trial is still going on. They have both pled 'not guilty' although Mr. Khan's lawyer asked for a plea bargain to manslaughter and the crown refused it.
Story from the Globe and Mail
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040130/BLATCHM30/TPFront/TopStories