Two girls murdered in Texas taxi: Were they honor killings?

[Separation]

31. Very chilling

Every time I hear a story like this I am brought back to a incident that I was involved in. In 1994 I had graduated high school, and left for Marine Corps boot camp. After you graduate you get to take boot leave, and normally what happens is you get to get a temporary billet to recruit back at your high school since there can be 2-6 months before you go to your specialty school.

When I was on my rectuiting duty I was able to hang out with all of my friends, try to get them to join up, lol that wasnt ever going to happen in my circle of friends. One person who I was able to get through was a girl named Asal. We were very good friends all through high school, I would have liked to have asked her out but she was not allowed to date and had very strict parents. The last year and a half of school she would confide in me that she wanted to leave her house and get away from her family. She signed up with me to join the Marine Corps, she was unable however to go to the MEPS station to have her physical done because of the control her family had on her. She would have to have done her physical and immediately left for boot camp.

The recruiter asked me to get in touch with her as she was scheduled to go get her physical and leave for boot camp in 5 days. I managed to get a hold of her and told her the plan. The day of I was to pick her up at the pizza hut in town, bring her down to the Memphis Tn MEPS station and check her into a hotel so she would be able to go the following morning for her physical.

Except it never happened. I waited at Pizza Hut for a couple of hours, tried calling her house one time as to not arise suspicion with her parents. I checked back in with the recruiter telling him that she was a no show and probably got cold feet and changed her mind. That I would go to her house the next day and figure out what was the deal. I went to her house and her brother answered the door. I asked if Asal was home and was told no. I tried calling the house again an hour later and got her sister on the phone. She was hysterical saying Asal was gone and never was coming back and it was all her fault. I tried to calm her down and get to the bottom of what was going on. Turns out, the night before she was to meet me at pizza hut she confided in her sister that she was leaving tomorrow. That was a bad idea, she immediately told her brother who started assaulting her dragging her downstairs by her hair to her parents. He then told their parents what she intended to do. Her father took her immediately out of the house and came back the next day without her. The sister told me that her father sent her to family in Canada and then was to be flown immediately back to Iran to live with an Uncle.

There have been quite a few times in my life where my life has been rocked. This was the first time, it hits me harder now 20 years later. I have never been able to find out what happened to her other than she is back in Iran.