Investigators of Boy’s Death Ignore Mother’s ‘Revelations,’ Attorney Says

The attorney for a doctor suspected of murdering his 11-year-old son accused Los Angeles sheriff’s investigators Friday of ignoring writings by the boy’s mother about religious “revelations” in which she dreamed of knife attacks and other acts of violence.

Leslie Abramson, lawyer for Dr. Khalid Parwez, said she offered the written material to sheriff’s homicide investigators a few days after the strangulation and dismemberment of Raheel Parwez, whose mutilated body was found in a trash dumpster in Hacienda Heights on Nov. 16.

“They told me they didn’t want to even look at her writings,” Abramson said. “They had decided early that they were after the father because they didn’t like his demeanor when he first learned of his son’s death. The mother thinks she is the new Messiah, but they have shown little interest in her.”

Khalid Parwez, 38, who is being held without bail for investigation of murder, was transferred from a sheriff’s substation in the City of Industry to the Los Angeles County Jail on Friday while investigators continued a search for his brother, Sattar Ahmed, 27, also suspected of involvement in the killing.

Ahmed, who had moved to Southern California from Pakistan in recent months, had lived with Parwez in Hacienda Heights before renting his own apartment there a month before the murder of his nephew.

The boy’s body was found in a trash dumpster at the apartment complex, and Ahmed was linked to the killing after a search of his apartment produced evidence that the murder took place there. Ahmed disappeared the day after the body was found.

While the murder investigation continued, the mother of the dead boy, Amtul Parwez, moved in Superior Court on Friday for immediate custody of her remaining son, Nabeel, 7, who has been placed in protective custody since the disappearance of his brother. A hearing was set for Tuesday.

Abramson and attorney Valerie Colb, who represented Khalid Parwez in his divorce from his former wife, turned over copies of Amtul Parwez’s writings and photographs of the couple and their children to The Times on Friday in an effort to counter statements by a psychiatrist and others portraying the Kaiser Permanente gynecologist as a hot-tempered man who was fearful of losing custody of his children to his former wife.

The writings, according to Colb, were found by Khalid Parwez after the couple had filed divorce papers, but while they were still living together in 1986. Jotted on paper in Amtul Parwez’s native Urdu language, they were translated by a court-approved expert into English.

In one letter to a leader of a Muslim splinter group known as the Ahmedia movement, headquartered in London, Amtul Parwez wrote that she had received a divine revelation that she would be marrying the religious leader and spreading “the divine message of God to the world.”

The writings were filled with references to knife attacks, political bombings and general destruction. On June 16, 1986, she wrote:

“First God will bless me with an honorable rank and status. Then a very important and respectable member of family will die.”

In one of her dreams, according to the translation provided by Colb and Abramson, Amtul Parwez was with the Ahmedia religious leader when an unidentified “head of state” tried to shoot him.

“I went towards that head of state before he started shooting,” she wrote. “His bodyguard came forward, but I pushed him back with full might. And I attacked three times on the head of the head of the state. . . . He died right there.”

Abramson said she made the writings public because of attacks in the news media by relatives of Amtul Parwez against her client. She also criticized statements by a psychiatrist, Dr. Howard Caplan, who has said he found Amtul Parwez free of any mental problems after a two-hour consultation during the couple’s custody fight over their two children.

“No judge in Los Angeles would have altered custody because of the totally unprofessional report of Dr. Caplan,” Abramson said. “My client had absolutely no reason to be afraid of losing his children. The letters of Amtul Parwez make her mental condition rather clear. We have information that even the head of the Ahmedia movement in London told her the letters showed signs of a psychiatric disturbance.”

Abramson and Colb also disputed charges by Caplan that Khalid Parwez had forced his wife to wear Western clothes, drink alcohol and watch pornographic movies with him, describing her as a “fashion plate” who had posed for pictures in a bikini and modishly styled outfits before adopting traditional Pakistani religious dress and veil two years ago, when her revelations began.

“My client drank occasionally and so did she. It was her uncle who persuaded them to start drinking. He certainly did not have an alcohol problem, and it was the wife who rented the pornographic movies. There were five rentals over a 12-year marriage,” she said.

“I’m not accusing anybody,” Abramson added. “But I’m tired of all the accusations against my client. To my knowledge there is no evidence against him. They are proceeding only on the basis that since his brother is a suspect, he must be a suspect.”

Sheriff’s investigators said Friday that they would have no comment on Abramson’s statements. One detective said homicide investigators are “confident” that Khalid Parwez and his missing brother, Sattar Ahmed, acted together in the killing.

Abramson turned Amtul Parwez’s writings over to the district attorney’s office late Friday. That office is expected to decide Monday whether to file murder charges against Khalid Parwez.