A Beersheba father-of-three allegedly strangled his wife and cut off her head
when a dispute over money turned violent, according to an indictment filed in
the city’s district court on Thursday.
Yaso is charged with murder,
indecent assault and obstruction of justice.
The indictment describes a
murder in which the accused, Hanoch Yaso, 42, launched a frenzied attack on his
wife, strangling, biting and beating her before sexually assaulting her corpse
and decapitating her with a kitchen knife.
Yaso, a prison guard, and his
wife, Sara, were married for nine years and lived with their three children in a
Beersheba apartment.
On the night of the murder, as their three children
lay asleep in their rooms, the married couple began to argue over Yaso’s plans
to buy a car, the indictment said.
Around 1.30 a.m., Yaso allegedly began
to attack Sara, choking her.
Yaso then took a knife from a kitchen drawer
and held it against his terrified wife’s neck, as she tried to push him away,
the indictment alleges.
Allegedly, Yaso continued his assault, hitting
his wife in the face and biting her left cheek.
He continued strangling
Sara, who collapsed and died, according to the indictment.
The document
describes in detail the injuries that Sara sustained to her face and neck,
allegedly as a result of Yaso’s brutal attack.
As Sara lay dead on the
floor, Yaso allegedly sexually assaulted her corpse.
Yaso decided to
decapitate his dead wife, the indictment alleges.
Yaso used the knife to
sever Sara’s head from her neck, cutting through her spinal cord, vertebrae and
blood vessels, the indictment said.
He then allegedly washed the knife in
the kitchen sink and returned it to its place in a drawer.
Next, Yaso
allegedly washed Sara’s severed head in water, and put it into a plastic
bag.
To prevent the couple’s three children from seeing their mother’s
decapitated corpse, Yaso locked them into their bedrooms before leaving the
house, carrying the bag containing the severed head, the indictment
said.
Allegedly, Yaso got into his car, put the severed head on the floor
behind his seat, and drove to a construction site near Beersheba’s Kaye College.
There, Yaso buried the head in sand.
The father-of-three then drove to
the prison where he worked as a guard, and sat inside his parked car for a time,
the indictment said.
At 5.18 a.m., Yaso called the police, and told them
he had quarreled with his wife and that the couple planned to commit suicide.
Yaso asked the police to send a patrol car to his home.
When the police
arrived at the Yasos’ apartment, they discovered Sara’s decapitated corpse on
the living room floor, and the couple’s three children locked into their
bedrooms, the indictment said.
That same day, Yaso took police to where
he had buried his wife’s head.