An 18-year-old murdered in her own home...
If you knew Lizzy, it's like,
no one would want to harm this person.
Leading the NYPD into uncharted territory.
Staten Island--homicides are just not heard of.
It's just not like Brooklyn. It's not Manhattan.
And Willowbrook specifically
is a very Orthodox Jewish community
and a very tight-knit community.
We have to solve this.
All the watching eyes, all the neighbors
and all of the people are saying, "Is my kid safe?"
And as secrets become unearthed...
Everyone was calling each other.
"Did you see what they wrote about Lizzy in the newspaper?"
The investigation takes a turn no one saw coming.
This was somebody who was hiding in plain sight.
Nobody wanted to believe that it was one of their own.
[dramatic music]
♪
With a richness of diversity and cultures
unparalleled in any other city, there's good reason
why New York is known as the Melting Pot.
We've got over 800 languages spoken across five boroughs
and dozens of ethnic enclaves,
from Chinatown to Little Poland.
♪
In 2005, a case pulled us
into a pocket of one of those
insular tight-knit communities
in the often-forgotten borough of Staten Island.
But this case was far from forgettable.
The victim was 18-year-old Aliza Parsy--
full of life, murdered in the safety of a neighborhood
where everyone watches each other's backs,
right in the victim's own bedroom.
[line trilling]
Sima Parsy is coming home from work,
from her office job.
She's expecting to come home,
have a nice dinner with her daughter, Aliza.
And as she walked in,
she saw that the house was ransacked.
♪
Of course, as a mother,
immediately you think the worst.
She runs to her daughter's room.
She's banging on the door. She's screaming out her name.
The door is locked.
[pounding on door]
She knew that there was a problem at this point.
I'm sure that her heart dropped.
This is every woman's worst nightmare.
♪
[phone ringing]
Sima, Aliza's mother, called me, and she said,
"Can I talk to Aliza?"
I said, "She didn't come to work today.
We tried to reach her all day."
And the mother said,
"Listen, something wrong, the house is all mess,"
and she cannot open Aliza's door.
So I said, "I'm on my way to you.
Call the police right now."
♪
Our NYPD squad from Staten Island's 122 Precinct
respond to the call.
They bust open Aliza's door.
And what do they find--
is Aliza Parsy underneath a mattress,
a pillow over her head,
her feet sticking out from under the mattress,
and she's been killed.
[siren whoops]
Veteran homicide detective Michael Kenny
races to the scene
and is immediately led to Aliza's bedroom.
She was on the ground with a towel underneath her,
and her hair was still damp.
So it looked to us that she came out of the shower
and, to her surprise,
saw somebody in the house that shouldn't have been there.
When you have somebody naked with a towel,
one of your thoughts is that she was sexually assaulted.
Early inspection of the body,
there was not any apparent cause of death.
There was no stab wounds. There was no bullet wounds.
There wasn't any bruising around the neck.
They didn't let the mother go inside the house...
and I went to the cop, and I told him,
"She need to know what's going on."
He said, "Okay, be here with her.
We found Aliza, and she's dead."
♪
Sima collapses on the front steps,
and all of a sudden,
this has turned into a murder investigation.
I remember getting a phone call saying,
"Hey, someone murdered Lizzy."
[indistinct chatter over police radio]
We were friends since we were 10 years old.
We actually met at a winter retreat
in Upstate New York
where a whole bunch of families gathered.
It was just her and a whole bunch of her friends--
girls, 10-year-olds giggling, laughing, joking around.
This one had a crush on that one, you know,
just, like, little flirty kids.
[children chattering happily]
As we got older, even after we graduated,
we all still had a tight clique.
Lizzy was the good girl that you'd bring home
to your parents if you were dating her.
I can remember--
just remember seeing her at parties, always laughing.
Laughing, laughing, yes, she was very funny.
She was funny. That's why my customers loved her.
♪
After graduating from high school,
Aliza takes a job in sales for a local moving company.
I wasn't that close to my employees,
but with her,
she's a very, very warm teenager.
She used to come to me and tell me about her life.
She took a gap year off
so she could raise money to go to school.
She wanted to save some money.
She wanted to go to Manhattan to college.
She talked about her dream
to be a fashion designer.
She used to bring her drawing of fashion clothes
she designed beautiful line, to the office.
She talked about it all the time.
This is an 18-year-old girl--
very beautiful girl with her whole life ahead of her.
Why? Why her?
♪
I just jumped in my car and sped to her house,
and you couldn't even get around.
The streets were filled.
The neighbors are immediately coming out
on to their porch, curious about what's happened.
Willowbrook is a very tight-knit community
and a very Orthodox Jewish community,
insular a little bit and, overall, very safe.
So it's unsettling.
And then her half brother showed up there.
He tried to run into the house and scream, "My sister!"
And the police stopped him.
He was hysterical, hysterical, the brother, half brother.
27-year-old Raviv Gabbay
sped over from the house in Brooklyn
he shares with his wife and newborn baby.
Aliza's half brother is yelling at detectives,
demanding answers.
You have family that are distraught.
It's heartbreaking.
It's something that really bothers you,
and it stays with you forever.
An autopsy will be necessary to establish cause of death,
but detectives scour the crime scene for clues.
There was a droplet of blood evidence on the towel.
So you looked at her body,
and you saw that there was no open wound.
Once you saw that blood,
you're hoping that it wasn't Aliza's.
You're hoping that this is DNA evidence of the assailant.
Is this the blood of the killer?
DNA, in a case like this, is essential,
but back in 2005, to process it takes several weeks.
♪
After Aliza's body was removed,
we were going around to the house, taking photos.
The back door was unlocked, and that was a big red flag.
We know a lot of burglars would just go from door to door
and try the door,
and if it's open, you know, that's good for them.
So a canvass of the neighborhood was so important,
to ascertain who was in the neighborhood at that time.
There wasn't a lot of space between where we lived.
Like, literally, it was house after house after house.
So people always were in each other's business.
Like, even if we went outside to check the mail,
you're always bumping into somebody.
♪
The neighbors are giving all sorts of theories.
"Oh, you know, I know she was fighting
with her mom the other day."
Neighbors mentioned that there was some landscapers
next door to Aliza and Sima's home.
She describes four or five males.
Was this possibly a crime of opportunity?
Maybe the door was open.
One of them had to go to the bathroom
and saw a naked girl or maybe saw some jewelry.
It was so important to track down those landscapers.
Every avenue had to be vetted.
But one major detail leads detectives to believe
this might not be a botched burglary.
♪
Why was the mattress over her body?
Why was the pillowcase over her face?
[camera shutter clicking]
We've learned that, a lot of times, you know,
somebody will put a blanket over the person's face
so they don't have to look at what they did.
You're saying, "Okay, this looks like a burglary."
But, you know, is that what the person who committed this crime
wants us to think,
by pulling drawers out and throwing papers on the floor?
Maybe she left the back door unlocked.
Maybe she knew her assailant.
♪
Coming up...
Aliza was in bed sleeping,
and she rolls over in the morning,
and he's in her room, sitting at the end of her bed,
silent, just staring at her.
He knew the house.
He knew how to come in and out of the house
without being detected.
It starts to turn into a little bit of a rabbit hole.
♪
[dramatic music]
[siren wails, indistinct chatter over police radio]
After finding the body of 18-year-old Aliza Parsy
in her Staten Island home,
detectives need to speak with the victim's family.
It's delicate.
You know, somebody is grieving, but you need information.
I offered my condolences.
I brought Sima over to the side to speak with her.
Her son Raviv was consoling Mom at the time.
[indistinct chatter over police radio]
♪
Twice divorced, 52-year-old Israeli immigrant Sima Parsy
has two adult sons from her first marriage
and Aliza, a product of her second.
Aliza was very close to her mother.
It was her mother and her in the house,
and she was like a princess.
Her two sons, Raviv and Leo,
are 10 years older to Aliza
so quite older, but by all accounts,
everyone was quite close to each other.
Sima had just finalized an amicable divorce,
and her now ex-husband and oldest son
returned to Israel, while she stayed in New York,
managing the family cookie business
until she passed it down to her son.
The mother gave Raviv the half part of the business
when he got married.
Their kosher, like, bakery business
where they actually delivered to people's houses,
and I know that it was doing very, very well.
♪
Detective Kenny asks if there's anyone
they can think of who could have done this.
♪
Immediately, Raviv says,
"Well, look at Aliza's ex-boyfriend."
We learn from Raviv that he was of the Muslim faith
and that they were Orthodox Jews,
and his family didn't support the relationship.
People don't understand, you know, what it's like to be
a young Jewish teenager in America
that comes from a background of parents
who were born in another country
and still live by those rules.
Our families, you know,
look down upon us if we date outside the religion,
and it can cause a lot of stress and a lot of anger.
♪
So she was like, "I can't be with you anymore.
"You know, my mother and my brother
are gonna disown me."
♪
She continued with her life, but he didn't.
He just was in love with her.
He didn't want to let her go.
♪
Speaking with the family,
Detective Kenny learns about an alarming incident
that happened after the breakup.
Aliza was in bed sleeping,
and she rolls over in the morning.
♪
And there's the ex-boyfriend, sitting at the end of her bed,
silent, just staring at her.
♪
He clearly knows how to get into the house,
maybe knows the locks,
knows when people have left the house.
The mattress being pulled over Aliza's face
would be consistent with somebody regretting
what they did, like an ex-boyfriend--
that, "Oh, my God. What did I do?"
Detectives take down the ex's name.
They'll need to speak with him straightaway.
In finishing off with the family,
they get both of their whereabouts that day.
Sima had been at the office,
and Raviv was delivering cookies in Long Island
some two hours from the home.
They're both swabbed for DNA.
We decide early on to get DNA evidence
from anybody we spoke to, anybody we interviewed.
You had to gather as much DNA as possible
to have a sampling
to compare with the droplet of blood evidence
on the towel.
As Detective Kenny is finishing up with the family,
his interview is interrupted.
One of the officers came up to me
with some unexpected news.
The ex-boyfriend was at the crime scene.
The second he showed up, they grabbed him.
♪
Detective Kenny takes Aliza's ex to the 122
and immediately starts the interrogation.
You know, "Where were you on August 10, 2005?
What was your day? What did you do?"
And then try and get more personal.
After locking him into a detailed timeline,
Detective Kenny probes him
about the chilling story he heard from the family.
♪
He admitted to coming into the house
and sitting at the bed,
but it was like, you know, "I loved Aliza,
and I came to the house hoping to reconcile our relationship."
For detectives, it seems possible
that Aliza could have embellished what happened
to not upset her strict Orthodox family.
I heard stories of her sneaking out to go see him.
Growing up in America, we look past religion,
but, unfortunately, our parents didn't.
So maybe he just snuck in so she wouldn't get in trouble.
♪
I didn't--you know, I didn't get like,
"He's our guy."
And he voluntarily gave us his DNA sample.
♪
There's always a danger when you're doing investigations
of getting what we call tunnel vision.
You don't want to say, "I think it's the boyfriend,"
and then try and prove it,
because then you're gonna miss all the other stuff.
♪
Covering all bases,
detectives track down the landscapers
who had been seen close to the Parsy home
the day of the murder.
We have the workers come to the precinct.
I take fingerprints of all of them and DNA.
♪
I felt comfortable that we can move on from these guys
and come back, if necessary.
♪
Orthodox law dictates that burial takes place
within 24 hours of death,
which means the medical examiner is under pressure
to fast-track the autopsy.
But detectives are eager for the funeral.
It's a chance to build a relationship with the family,
and you have to be visible
in case someone wants to approach you with information.
♪
Every service is very hard,
but this was a little different
because a lot of people were trying to say bye
to somebody not knowing what really happened to them.
Of course, I shed tears and stuff like that,
but at the same time, I was very confused.
Why did this happen to her?
It's devastating how a young girl
who has her whole life ahead of her
can lose it just like that.
♪
It's very sad. It's very sad.
I cry not only for Aliza.
I cry for Aliza, and I cry for Raviv and her mother.
♪
Detectives quietly watch the funeral,
keeping their eyes peeled for anything suspicious.
As it turns out, it's a good thing they're there.
The family is getting ready to bury Aliza.
And who do they see show up at the funeral...
but her ex-boyfriend?
For them, suspect number one,
and, obviously, the family snaps.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
The day after the murder of 18-year-old Aliza Parsy,
friends and family are gathering for her funeral,
when an unexpected guest shows up--
Aliza's ex-boyfriend.
♪
And he was trying to come close
to be part of what's going on,
you know, the prayer and everything,
but Raviv, her half brother, didn't let him come close.
The brother flipped out.
The mother was, like, saying, "Get him out of here,"
and her brother flipping out
and, like, beelining right towards him.
And a fight breaks out, and it's understandable.
Emotions are running high, but it's ugly.
And the police or somebody
escorted the ex-boyfriend out of the cemetery.
On his side, from what he told me,
he still loved her.
So it was kind of normal for him to want to come
and pay his respects.
♪
Following the funeral,
detectives meet with the medical examiner
to go over the autopsy results.
The cause of death-- manual strangulation.
♪
Being manually strangled, you kind of know
that there was a struggle that went on.
♪
Manual strangulation also tells you something else.
It's typically a crime of passion,
something unpremeditated,
something that takes place
between two people close to each other.
It's one more sign
pointing to it being someone that Aliza knew.
[indistinct chatter over police radio]
There was skin under the nails.
You could have DNA under your fingernails
if you scratch the assailant.
The medical examiner
also sheds light on a lingering question.
Being that Aliza was found naked,
we suspect the possibility of a sexual attack,
but there didn't seem to be any trauma to the vaginal area
that would be consistent with some sort of forcible rape.
Still, there was some DNA
that was taken at the time.
So Aliza did have
what we believe to be consensual intercourse
within 24 hours of her death.
Did it start off as consensual sex,
and did that go awry?
Or was it a dispute after sex,
and he strangled her?
You're only going to get so much from family members.
An 18-year-old girl
is rarely going to confide intimate details to her mom.
So, after the funeral,
you've got to speak to her girlfriends,
find out if she's got a new guy in her life.
♪
Oftentimes, we do lead somewhat of a double life,
where we say one thing to our friends
and say something completely different to our family.
♪
Friends paint a picture of Aliza
as a social, fun-loving teenager,
one who, like many in the outer boroughs,
loved venturing into Manhattan.
This is a young girl. She is 18 years old.
She liked parties.
She loved to go dancing, going to Manhattan to clubs.
I used to take my mom's minivan
and pack out all my friends in the minivan
and drive to Manhattan.
I remember being 17 years old and going to clubs
that you have to be 21 or older to get in.
We all did it. We just went to go party together.
Literally, there would be nightclubs where they can fit,
like, 5,000 people,
and everyone from my neighborhood had one section
that took up the whole section,
and no one even talked to the people in the other sections.
It's all reports of typical teenager-in-the-city behavior,
until they get one surprising disclosure.
We learned she enjoyed meeting guys on the Internet.
Bells and whistles went off. That was a big red flag.
In 2005, Internet dating was just starting,
and the Internet was booming.
It has to be really difficult
to live in an insular community.
In Staten Island, we all grew up with each other.
So I couldn't look at Lizzy or one of her friends
as being my girlfriend.
They were more like my sisters.
And so it's quite natural
for her to want to branch out and explore online.
It was definitely something that we had to pursue,
given the dangerous nature
of meeting strange people on the Internet.
But of all the possibilities of how Aliza died,
that was probably the most daunting.
I wasn't familiar with, you know,
chat rooms or the Internet, how it even worked.
I didn't even have an email address at the time,
which is why we brought on
IT detectives into the investigation.
♪
NYPD's Computer Crime Unit begins the arduous task
of dissecting Aliza's online life.
Our cybercrime detective would come to us and say,
"I got this.
Aliza spoke to this person on this date at this time."
And then we'd have to do backgrounds on each person.
So this IP address comes back to Joe Smith.
Now we have to see who Joe Smith is.
Is he a sex offender? Does he have a record?
You have to track down who's the last person she spoke to,
who were the last a hundred people she spoke to.
Any one of those people could have done this.
You're gonna be up for three to four days and not sleep
and just live on coffee and adrenaline
until these leads are all vetted.
But then the cyber unit hands over an exchange
from Aliza's computer,
and when investigators look at it,
it's clear they've struck gold.
And all of a sudden, the case is blown wide open.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
Just a 25-minute ferry ride from Manhattan
is the suburban borough of Staten Island,
where 18-year-old Aliza Parsy
was murdered in her own bedroom.
♪
NYPD's Computer Crime Unit
has been handing off numerous contacts
they've pulled from Aliza's computer.
And it just turns into a rabbit hole.
Who did she meet up with? How many times?
How long was this going on?
I mean, it's endless.
♪
And the detectives kind of hit gold
when they find this one person
who was planning to meet up with Aliza.
According to the messages,
they were planning to meet at 10:00 a.m. on August 9th,
the day before the murder.
♪
He had actually chatted with her about coming to the house
at the right time when her mom wouldn't be there,
would have presumably left for work,
and she would leave the door unlocked
so he wouldn't cause any sort of, you know, ruckus.
And you remember, the door was unlocked
when the mom had come home from work.
And so, to a detective, all of those elements
add up to the person who killed Aliza.
♪
Using the IP address,
the Cyber Squad provides Detective Kenny
with an address in Brooklyn.
♪
[indistinct chatter over police radio]
We went to interview him.
He was very cooperative.
He voluntarily gave us his DNA sample.
You're under the gun
to gather DNA from as many contacts
of your victim as possible.
You can't just bank on a hit
from someone already in our system.
But it'll be another few weeks before they have the results,
and his interview raises suspicion.
He did say that he's been in the house.
He did have sexual relations with Aliza in the past,
more than once.
♪
And he admits that he was there
the day before Aliza was killed.
This works with the medical examiner's timeline
that she had consensual intercourse
within the last 24 hours before her death.
He was definitely a person of interest.
That's somebody we take the next step with.
You have to get what they call a "So Ordered" subpoena,
which allows you to get E-ZPass records
and telephone records
and his MetroCard.
♪
They'll need to cross-check these records
with his given timeline for the day of Aliza's murder.
It's a process.
You have to backtrack
and try and disprove what they're saying.
But as this lead is heating up,
Detective Kenny gets some disturbing news.
It came out in the paper
that she had this promiscuous lifestyle.
The media kind of painted her as a bad girl.
We were kind of surprised, all of a sudden,
that this came to light in the newspaper
because it was just one of our leads.
It was obviously a dangerous lifestyle
and could have led to her being killed,
but it wasn't, at the time, any more likely
than the ex-boyfriend coming and killing her.
So, for the mother to have to read this in the paper,
for me, that's personally upsetting.
♪
Everyone was calling each other.
"Did you see what they wrote about Lizzy in the newspaper?"
They blew it out of proportion.
Guys were hitting on her on social media,
like every other girl gets hit on by guys.
She was called this and called that.
Like, first of all, she just died.
How are you guys disrespecting her like that
and making her family feel like crap
and her friends feel like crap
and everyone that was around her and close to her
feel like crap?
Because there are so many suspects,
because there are so many questions,
it leads to story after story after story,
because as a journalist, too,
you're trying to seek the truth.
But it's important to remember that there are real people
that this happened to.
Aliza's family is a real family,
and we are able to walk away from this
and move on to the next story, but they're gonna have to live
with this for the rest of their life.
♪
We have to solve this.
I was afforded anything I needed.
I had detectives that specialize in burglaries.
I had a sergeant and a detective assigned for that.
I had the two cybercrime detectives assigned to me.
It was a big deal.
♪
The community's getting angry.
The community's getting impatient.
Why is it taking so long to solve this?
Her half brother Raviv was giving me a hard time.
You know, "I don't understand
"why you haven't arrested this person already.
What are you guys doing over there?"
It's difficult. The person has just
lost someone very, very close to them.
So their emotions are very high.
People were scared.
What if there was someone who didn't like Jewish people?
Through history, you know, Jewish people had a lot
of, you know, ridicule and stuff like that,
a lot of bad stuff happened to us.
So maybe it was someone who was just gunning for us personally.
♪
[distant siren wailing]
And then on September 13th,
just over a month after Aliza Parsy's murder,
Detective Kenny gets the phone call
he's been waiting weeks for.
It's the medical examiner's office,
and they tell us, "We have the DNA results."
There's a time in every investigation
where there's a climactic incident
that occurs that changes everything.
You always look back in a critical eye.
Could I, should I have known this beforehand?
And in this particular instance,
no, you couldn't have known this was gonna happen.
In shock, everybody was in shock.
Coming up...
What we're missing is a motive.
Why would he do this?
He was just denying everything.
He was like the puppet master through the whole case.
It was all for naught.
She didn't have to die.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
The NYPD is working around the clock
to bring the person responsible
for 18-year-old Aliza Parsy's murder to justice.
And then on September 13th,
just over a month into the investigation,
Detective Kenny finally gets the phone call
he's been waiting weeks for.
My phone rings.
It's the medical examiner's office,
and they tell us, "We have a match on your DNA."
I said, "Really?"
And they tell me that the match
is a close relative to Aliza.
They knew that the DNA was that of a male,
so probably a brother or father.
♪
When you get a DNA result that fits a family member,
you got to be mindful that maybe what you thought
was a key piece of evidence
wasn't in fact evidence at all.
Relatives are often in that house.
That drop of blood on that towel
that we put so much hope into could have been just someone
who cut their finger or had a bloody nose in the home.
So we really have to take it with a grain of salt
and investigate further.
♪
So now I have to meet with the medical examiner
because I need to know, was it the DNA from the towel?
Is it DNA from under the fingernails?
So they tell me it's both.
♪
With Aliza's eldest half brother
and father in Israel,
detectives key in on one person.
The only possibility was that it was Raviv.
♪
But now they have to actually do a DNA sequence
of Raviv's blood
and match it to the blood from the towel and under her nails.
The results come back immediately.
Raviv's DNA matches both.
♪
Once we heard the DNA
under Aliza's fingernails matched to Raviv,
it was like everything clicked into place.
The whole time
he'd been pointing us at the ex-boyfriend
in order to deflect attention from himself.
♪
But from the public perspective,
you've got a grieving brother.
No one's gonna believe he did this
unless you have rock-solid evidence.
♪
So now with Raviv moving up the ladder
to our number-one suspect,
we get a court order for his cell site information.
We get a court order for the photograph time
that he comes through the toll and his E-ZPass records.
There's also so many cameras on the bridges
and on the highways.
So you can track somebody's movement
throughout the city in real time.
♪
Raviv had told detectives he'd been delivering cookies
for the family business.
Now, his original story was,
he was out on Long Island around 1:00 p.m.
The cell site information has him coming
over the Verrazano Bridge at 1:00 p.m.,
coming into Staten Island over the toll,
and then at 1:30,
he's within a block or so of Aliza's home.
Armed with this major discrepancy in his story,
detectives need to speak with Aliza's half brother.
Why would this person lie, you know,
except because he was somewhere where he wasn't supposed to be?
So I call him on the phone
and asked him to come into the precinct,
and he's somewhat resistant.
"Why do I have to come? I got this party.
"I got a lot of things to do.
I can't--you know, I can't come in."
I said, "Well, I need to identify
"a friend of the ex-boyfriend,
'cause we believe, you know, he was your sister's murderer."
So now he seems a little more cooperative.
♪
Raviv arrives at the station with his wife in tow.
Even as a, you know, a seasoned investigator,
I didn't understand why he would kill his sister.
It didn't make any sense.
What we're missing is the motive.
Why would he do this?
Raviv's wife is led into a waiting area,
and Detective Kenny lays out the damning evidence
against him.
♪
Raviv was almost belligerent.
He was just denying everything.
We know, with medical certainty,
that Raviv's blood matches the skin under the nails
and the blood on the towel.
And even with the DNA,
it wasn't like, "All right, you got me."
He's still denying that he had anything to do with it.
The DNA evidence has us convinced Raviv is guilty,
but we still want to hear him admit it.
It's important for the family
to know he did that, for closure.
So we train our people time and time again
in how to elicit information from people
who don't want to give it to you.
♪
So I concocted a plan.
I said, "Well, you know,
"there was speculation in the paper
"that she was a victim of a sexual assault.
"Unless you want the community to believe
"that you sexually assaulted your sister,
this is your opportunity to tell us what happened."
♪
Detective Kenny is well aware from the autopsy
that Aliza had consensual sex,
and it had most likely been with her online paramour
the day before she was murdered.
But that information hadn't been made public.
I said, "If nothing else, for your mother,
"we need to know.
"Your mother needs to know what happened
and why this happened."
So he started thinking, and he paused,
and he said to me,
he goes, "Okay, I'll tell you what happened."
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
Five weeks after the shocking murder
of 18-year-old Aliza Parsy,
detectives have damning evidence
pointing to her half brother, Raviv Gabbay.
♪
After hours of adamant denials,
Detective Michael Kenny finally breaks him.
After, you know, careful contemplation,
Raviv decides to tell us the story.
♪
Raviv is newly married.
He's living in the basement of his in-laws,
who obviously seem to be of means.
It was a big, huge house.
There's a pressure instantly to make a lot of money
from his side,
and he thinks he's going to be making a lot of money,
because as a wedding gift, his mom gifts him
with the family's kosher cookie business.
But then the business stagnates.
We learn from Raviv that the business wasn't really worth,
like, what he would feel would be an appropriate wedding gift.
So he felt that his mother still owed him a wedding gift.
Then he learns that his mom
has actually come into a little bit of money.
His mother came into some money
from the sale of a house in Israel
from the divorce from her husband.
Raviv felt that he was owed some of that money.
"I'm the one with the new family, having children,
"having to raise them.
You're all set."
Then Raviv tells the detectives
he was on his way to Long Island
to make a delivery.
He decides, "You know what?
I'm gonna make a detour to my mother's house."
♪
Raviv's expectation was Aliza would be at work.
Sima would be at work.
♪
He went into the house
and started rummaging through the mother's triple dresser,
not aware that Aliza was in the shower.
♪
She comes out of the shower.
He turns around.
He's shocked to see his sister there.
♪
According to Raviv's statement,
when Aliza saw him,
she jumped on his back and scratched him.
♪
He flipped her off, and that's when Aliza hit her head
on the box spring and passed out.
♪
And he's so shocked by what he's done,
he can't believe that he's just killed his sister,
that he covers her body,
and he continues on to his delivery route.
He claims it was accidental,
but the autopsy tells us a very different story.
Regardless, detectives have his confession,
and Raviv Gabbay is arrested
for the murder of his half sister.
♪
[indistinct chatter over police radio]
It is jaw-dropping
that it is somebody that you dealt with.
You gave information to them, that you felt bad for them.
He was, like, the puppet master through the whole case.
♪
Unfortunately, I had the task of going to his mother
and telling her,
"We found the person that killed your daughter.
It was your son."
This woman lost her son and her daughter on the same day.
The mother just
was so embarrassed and so ashamed
and so heartbroken, and, you know,
she obviously still loves him, even though he did what he did.
♪
Raviv Gabbay pleads guilty to first-degree manslaughter
and is sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Manslaughter indicates there was a lack of prior intent,
which is consistent with what he said in his confession.
This was the rare case where the killer
was under our nose the entire time.
From the moment Raviv Gabbay appeared at the crime scene,
he was playing us.
But we had NYPD's finest,
from detectives specializing in burglaries
to our Computer Crimes Unit.
If not for our forensics team giving us the DNA findings,
Raviv might have gotten away with it.
But that indisputable evidence,
along with Detective Kenny's unwavering determination
to get a confession,
produced some much needed justice for Aliza Parsy.
♪
I hope he never gets out.
If he can do that to Lizzy,
what can he do to somebody else?
♪
He killed his own sister with his bare hands
and stuffed her underneath a mattress.
That's...
I don't even have words for that.
♪
She was such an amazing person.
I'm 100% positive that if she didn't die,
she would be an amazing wife
and been an amazing mother right now.
♪
When you called me to come, you know,
I went to the computer
and looked in the newspaper and everything.
You can't even look at it.
You know, I prefer to remember her
when we laughed and we talked and she told me everything.
I prefer to remember her like this
and not a different way.