Though he wasn’t present for the killings of the father and sister of a friend’s ex-girlfriend in Anaheim Hills, a Hollywood man should be found guilty of murder for helping to mastermind the ambush and doing nothing to stop it, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.
Vitaliy Krasnoperov broke his right wrist in a motorcycle accident a little more than week before the May 21, 2007, killings of Jayprakash Dhanak and his 20-year-old daughter, Karishma Dhanak, and the attempted murder of Leela Dhanak, Jayprakash’s wife.
Krasnoperov’s cell phone activity indicated he was far from the scene of the murders. But under a legal theory of aiding and abetting the killings, the 30-year-old defendant can be found guilty of murder, Senior Deputy District Attorney Howard Gundy said.
Krasnoperov’s attorney, Michael Garey, declined to make an opening statement.
Gundy said Krasnoperov was “best friends” with Iftekhar Murtaza, who has been sentenced to death for the killings, and that the two discussed how to go about the murders in an online chat about a day after Murtaza’s girlfriend, Shayona Dhanak, dumped him.
Murtaza’s plan was to “isolate” his girlfriend from everyone else and become her “BFF” so she would run back to him after her family was killed, Gundy said.
Shayona Dhanak wanted to break up with Murtaza when she started as a freshman at UC Irvine, but wasn’t sure how to go about doing it, so her mother suggested she blame the breakup on her parents since they “soured” on the relationship anyway, Gundy said.
Shayona Dhanak and Murtaza were caught in a “compromising position” in a car, which angered her parents, Gundy said.
Murtaza, who was a non-practicing Muslim, figured the breakup was due to religious differences since his girlfriend’s parents were devout Hindus, Gundy said.
Krasnoperov and Murtaza, according to transcripts of their chat, discussed hiring a hitman to kill the family, but it never came to fruition, Gundy said. The prosecutor said evidence will show Krasnoperov reached out to a woman who emigrated to the U.S. from Russia, and who the defendant figured had connections to professional killers.
When Krasnoperov apparently had to bow out and the hitmen plan failed, the prosecutor said, Murtaza recruited Charles Anthony Murphy Jr., 31, who was previously convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A third man was along for the killings, but has not been identified.
The killers ambushed the victims in their home, but didn’t finish the job against Leela Dhanak, who was found near death on a neighbor’s lawn, Gundy said. The other two victims were taken to Mason Regional Park in Irvine about 4:15 a.m. on May 22, 2007, Gundy said.
Karishma appeared to have been burned alive and her throat slashed, but Jayprakash likely died before his body was brought to the park, Gundy said.
Murtaza was arrested on May 25, 2007, at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where he was trying to catch a flight to Bangladesh, Gundy said.
After the murders, Krasnoperov met with Murtaza for about an hour and a half, Gundy said. He never mentioned that meeting with investigators, the prosecutor said.
Krasnoperov also suggested to investigators that Jayprakash Dhanak, who did time in federal prison for mail fraud, may have made enemies who targeted his family for death, Gundy said, adding it was “an effort to misdirect police away from Murtaza and himself.”
Krasnoperov “helped Murtaza plan the murders,” Gundy alleged, “and he tried to recruit others to do it.”
–City News Service