Texas man accused of murdering teen daughters in ‘honor killing’ claims he was being followed

The Texas man who allegedly murdered his teenage daughters because they had started dating against his wishes took the witness stand Monday and painted a conspiratorial story about being followed on the day they were killed.

Yaser Said, 65, has pleaded not guilty to the murders of 17-year-old Sarah and 18-year-old Amina, who were found dead in his taxi cab on Jan. 1, 2008. After their deaths, Said went on the lam, spending 12 years on on the FBI’s Most Wanted List before he was found in Justin, Tex., in August 2020.

Through a translator on Monday, Said said that he was taking the girls out to dinner on New Year’s Day to work out their issues. As he was driving, he “felt somebody was following me,” he testified, according to Fox 4.

Fearing his daughters had sent someone to kill him, Said stopped the car and ran into a wooded area, he claimed. Both Sarah and Amina were alive when he left.

“I told them, ‘The car is yours. You do whatever you want,’” he said. “Since they know how to drive, I left the car for them.”

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Asked by prosecutors why he “left your daughters to get slaughtered in the car,” Said said he had no idea what would happen when he ran. He also said he left his cell phone and a handgun in the cab.

“If you didn’t kill your daughters, why did you hide for 12 years?” prosecutors asked.

“Because I believed behind this coverage, there was a secret agenda,” he replied, according to Fox 4. “And all of the media was steered in a certain direction against me and that I would not get a fair trial.”

Last week, Patricia Owens, Said’s ex-wife and the mother of Sarah and Amina, called him the “devil,” accusing him of being controlling and abusive during their marriage. She left him on Christmas Day 2007, fleeing to Oklahoma with their daughters and their clothes in trash bags. By New Year’s, the girls had gone back to Texas after Said begged, Owens testified.

She also claimed that her daughters told her in October 1998, when both were under 10 years old, that Said had sexually abused them.

The lead detective on the case, now-retired Randall Johnson, said police initially looked into the girls’ boyfriends as suspects, but all evidence pointed to Said.

If convicted, Said faces up to life in prison.