Marital Woes Cited in Killing of 5 in El Cajon

The man arrested in the slaying of his Jordanian wife and four of her relatives at their Fletcher Hills home here Saturday had been despondent over her plans to divorce him and return to her homeland, police said Sunday.

Lt. Bob Moreau said that the suspect, Tufic (Tom) Badih Naddi, 44, a sometime dealer at a San Diego card room, and his wife, Aida Naddi, had been experiencing “ongoing domestic problems for quite some time” and that Mrs. Naddi had filed for a divorce on Friday.

Moreau added that Mrs. Naddi’s father, Habib Sabbagh, disapproved of the marriage and had long threatened to send his daughter back to Jordan.

Neighbors said Naddi, his wife and two children shared the four bedroom home with his wife’s parents, who neighbors said spent about six months a year at them home and the rest of the time in Jordan. “Apparently, the suspect’s two brothers-in-law arrived at the home with Mr. and Mrs. Sabbagh on Friday and had intended to take the suspect’s wife back to Jordan with them,” Moreau said. Based on statements he made to police, Naddi “apparently had contemplated the crime for some time,” Moreau said, “and decided it was ‘time to do what he had to do.’ ”

Naddi surrendered without a struggle in the driveway of his yellow stucco home on Carlow Way Saturday evening. Inside, investigators found the bodies of his wife, 26; her father, 73; her mother, Lillian Sabbagh, 58; her brother, Michael Sabbagh, 38, and her brother-in-law, Osama Mashini, 38.

Each of the victims had been shot several times with a .22-caliber rifle, authorities said. Four of the victims were apparently taking naps when they were shot, and the fifth was watching television.

The Naddis’ 5-year-old son, Nabil, and 3-year-old daughter, Katherine, were playing in the driveway when police arrived at the house. The children were unharmed. They are temporarily staying with the Robert Daynes family, close friends of the family.

Naddi is being held without bail at the San Diego County Jail on suspicion of five counts of murder.

El Cajon Police Officer Rich Day said he received a phone call at 5:30 p.m. Saturday from a man who identified himself as “Tom” and said that he had “just murdered my family.”

Day engaged the man in conversation while police surrounded the house and removed the children from the driveway; eventually, Day persuaded Naddi to leave the house and surrender. Clad in pajamas, Naddi emerged from the house with his hands over his head just after 6 p.m.

According to a neighbor, Rod Cradit, whose wife, Cathy, was a close friend and “knitting partner” of Lillian Sabbagh’s, Naddi was a native of Lebanon. Police said they could not confirm that and believed Naddi to be Jordanian.

But Cradit said that in addition to his despondency over his deteriorating relationship with his wife, Naddi had “been upset recently because his whole family has disappeared” in Beirut.

In addition, Naddi, who worked occasionally as a dealer at the Lucky Lady Card Club in East San Diego, reportedly had suffered heavy gambling losses recently. Beth Selby, an employee at the San Diego Card Club on El Cajon Boulevard, said Naddi “used to come in here every single day” and had a reputation as “a heavy, heavy loser.”

“He worked at the Lucky Lady but he used to play here all the time,” Selby said. “People said he came here to play because he was having a lot of personal problems, with his family. But I haven’t seen him for about a month.”

Neighbors said Aida Naddi’s parents had owned the house about six years. Cradit described the Sabbaghs as an “extremely wealthy” retired couple who owned a Mercedes-Benz dealership, clothing factories and numerous other businesses in Jordan.

One neighbor described the family as “kind, gentle people who never telegraphed any animosity.”

“The news about the divorce and then all this violence came as a total shock to us,” Cradit said. “We went out to dinner with them now and then and they always seemed happy. They weren’t screamers or anything. They kept a tight lid on their personal problems.”