Ali Irsan

Ali Mahmood Awad Irsan (علي محمود عوض عرسان; born December 27, 1957 ) is a Jordanian-American convicted murderer held on Texas death row.

He was sentenced for the murders of Iranian-American activist Gelareh Bagherzadeh, a friend of one of his daughters; and his son-in-law, Coty Beavers, in Greater Houston.

Multiple media reports described the crimes as honor killings.

Ali Irsan was born to a father in the Jordanian Army.

Irsan, using a student visa, came to the United States in 1979, and became a naturalized United States citizen.

He lived on a 3 acre property in a rural area, in unincorporated eastern Montgomery County, Texas, near Conroe.

Craig Malisow of the Houston Press stated that Irsan "considered himself to be a devout Muslim."

Irsan studied in a "medical laboratory" program at Kirkwood Community College.

He stated in court filings that he studied in a medical program at a tertiary institution in Jordan, and he also stated that he had a Houston Community College "diploma of auto-mechanic".

Irsan, then 22, married his first wife when she was 17.

He and Robin Dahl first met in 1979 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, while he studied in community college and she worked on her GED.

They married circa 1980, and moved to the Houston area by 1984.

The couple had four children, with their first being born in 1981.

Two of Irsan's daughters, Nadia (نادیا علي عرسان; born 1984), and Nesreen (نسرین عرسان; born 1988), were children of Irsan's first wife.

Nadia is a U.S. citizen, and the family had previously educated them through homeschooling.

After Irsan suffered a heart attack and was diagnosed with a heart condition, Nesreen and Nadia were able to convince their father to allow them to go to medical school to become doctors and ensure their father’s health would be properly maintained.

To their surprise, Irsan allowed Nadia and Nesreen to enroll in a tertiary institution, a biology program at Lone Star College-Montgomery.

Candace Strang, a professor at Lone Star who taught the women, stated that, as paraphrased by Malislow in a Houston Press article, Nadia and Nesreen "fought hard to convince their father to let them enroll".

While there, Nesreen and her older sister, Nadia, met Coty Beavers and his twin brother, Cory.

Beavers was a Christian, while the girls were Muslims; at the time, both girls wore hijabs.

Within a few months, the girls began taking off their hijabs and wearing makeup at school.

Nesreen very quickly fell in love with Coty Beavers, and the two began secretly dating.

While Nesreen initially had the help and support of her older sister, Nadia, after Nadia's romantic feelings for Coty's twin brother, Cory, were not returned, Nadia quickly became jealous of her sister’s new relationship and retreated into the role of dutiful daughter to Irsan.

The two women and Cory Beavers were admitted to the molecular genetics program at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in the Texas Medical Center; at MD Anderson, Nesreen met Gelareh Bagherzadeh, an Iranian woman.

Bagherzadeh, a medical student and medical researcher, had molecular genetics as her area of study.

She was born in France and was from Tehran.

In 1994 Irsan divorced his first wife.

When Irsan was 35, he traveled to Jordan and entered into an arranged marriage with a girl, Shmou Ali Alrawabdeh (شمو علي الروابدة), who was approximately 15 or 16.

His first wife left the house shortly after he brought home his second wife.

Alrawabdeh, a Jordanian national, arrived in the U.S. circa 1995.

In federal court, Irsan stated that he married her in Jordan but that he did not legally marry her in the United States.

Alrawabdeh had eight children with him while they lived in the United States; including those from his other wife, the total number of children known to be fathered by Irsan is 12.

In 1999, Irsan killed Amjad Hussein Alidam (أمجد حسین علي دام), the husband of Nasemah Rachelle Irsan (نسيمة راشیل عرسان), Irsan's eldest daughter, at Irsan's residence.

Alidam was an Iraqi immigrant to the U.S. and a Shia Muslim.

Irsan stated that he shot Alidam in the head with a shotgun in self-defense.

Irsan never received criminal charges in that case, as area law enforcement believed him to be innocent.

A Montgomery County grand jury did not indict Irsan for Alidam's murder.

Nasemah was sent back to Jordan, where she remarried; she later returned to the U.S. with her new husband.

She naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2001.

She studied biology in Tehran and later attended university in Budapest, Hungary, before moving to Houston in 2007 to join her parents, who bought a house near Uptown Houston (the area around the Houston Galleria) so she could live there; this residence was within the Woodway Point townhomes, where a nearby street would become the site of her death.