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Fiji Indian On Trial For Killing Football Legend's Daughter

Suleman Din

Two years ago, Mohammed Haroon Ali drove his lover, Tracey Biletnikoff, to a verdant green hillside in San Mateo's valleys.

Such a beautiful place, perfect for romance.

On that cold winter night, the sky was alight with Orion, The Big Dipper and Hercules, all twinkling like a celestial ballet.

Ali drove off from that hillside, swathed in darkness. But Biletnikoff remained, staring soullessly at the stars.

Ali now stands on trial in San Mateo County Superior Court, in Redwood City, California, charged with Biletnikoff's murder.

The prosecution is arguing that on February 15, 1999, Ali, 24, killed Biletnikoff after a 50-minute argument in the office of his drug counselling programme, then drove out to a hillside and dumped her body there.

But lawyers for Ali, a Fiji Indian who came to the US with his family when he was 14, contend that the girl's death was an accident, brought on by lack of sleep and a insatiable craving for cocaine.

The case has captured national attention because Biletnikoff was the daughter of Pro Football Hall of Fame receiver Fred Biletnikoff, who played for the Los Angeles Raiders.

Ali's arrest also sparked outrage because he was on probation for kidnapping an ex-girlfriend, Daisy Chandra, when he killed Biletnikoff. At the time, a judge had suspended Ali's nine-year prison sentence for kidnapping Chandra in 1995.

Chris Morales, a second attorney for Ali, explained that his client first met Biletnikoff at a 'clean and sober' dance, sponsored by the drug rehabilitation project that they both attended.

Morales said Biletnikoff represented a way for Ali, the youngest of six children and the only boy in a conservative Muslim family, to escape the isolation he felt living in the US.

"Ali had a hard time when he first came to the US," he explained.

"He didn't speak the language, and he had grown up in a small Fijian village where they had no electricity, and one phone for every 100 houses ... coming to the concrete jungle of the Bay Area, it was a severe culture shock.

Ali excelled at sports, and played football at high school. But feeling alone, he was vulnerable.

"After he came here... he ended up with the wrong crowd," Morales said.

Morales said Ali started drinking alcohol and using harder drugs like crack cocaine (as a boy, Ali sniffed gas in Fiji).

Morales said Ali's drug abuse was "genetic"-- since generations before him had habitually chewed cava.

Before he met Biletnikoff, Ali dated Chandra for four years, and was engaged to her. But she broke up with him, and he assaulted her, and later kidnapped her.

The prosecution has pointed to this kidnapping as a tell-tale sign that Ali abused his girlfriends. They hope to include this in evidence against Ali, so that they can press for a first-degree murder conviction.

Morales wants the kidnapping dismissed, arguing it is not related to the killing, and that Chandra is an unreliable witness.

"She is a thief," the attorney alleged. "She has a record as long as your arm... the INS had her deported, but she was brought back for this case."

The defence argued that on the night in question, Ali and Biletnikoff shopped together in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district, had sex in a park, then argued about drugs in the evening.

He told her he had started using drugs again, and she hit him in the face, cursed him, and wouldn't let him leave the office when he wanted to get high. In his frenzied attempt to leave, he strangled her.

'It wasn't about her. He didn't want to kill her. It was the craving,' Ali's attorney, Raymond Buenaventura told the court.

But District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe argued that Biletnikoff's death was a brutal murder.

He described Ali as grabbing Biletnikoff by the throat, squeezing her throat and pinning her to the ground with his knee, then killing her by tying a T-shirt around her throat.

Ali then got into Biletnikoff's blue Chevy Nova and drove it up to Canada College, where he dumped her body. He was arrested at the Mexican border 14 hours after Biletnikoff's body was found.

The court will rule on Friday whether the kidnapping evidence can be entered in court against Ali.

If he is convicted, Ali could face up to 50 years for the crime.

EXTERNAL LINK
In memory of Tracey

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