Ex-husband indicted for premeditated murder of Ofira Chaim

David Chaim played cards with his mother immediately after allegedly strangling ex-wife to death.

By TAMARA ZIEVE
Updated: JULY 31, 2018 03:11
Murder victim Ofira Chaim (photo credit: ISRAEL POLICE)
Murder victim Ofira Chaim
(photo credit: ISRAEL POLICE)
David Chaim pre-planned the murder of his ex-wife Ofira Chaim due to family disputes and financial disagreements, according to an indictment filed by the Central District Attorney’s Office on Monday.
David, who confessed to the murder, killed Ofira on June 20 outside her home in Tel Mond, before burying her in a hole in her garden, according to the indictment.
The couple got divorced in 2004 but continued to live in the same family compound in Tel Mond.
The indictment states as follows: Days before the murder, David hired an Eritrean migrant, whom he sometimes employed for gardening work, to dig a hole in his ex-wife’s garden while she was touring Georgia under the pretense that he needed to fix a water leak, according to the indictment.
On the afternoon of June 20, the defendant, equipped with a nylon thread which he put it in his trouser pocket, called the victim to come out of her house in order to speak to her. He asked her a number of things related to their residence and to the family, but she refused all of his requests.
While they were talking, David dragged Ofira to the backyard where the hole had been dug and attacked her from behind, wrapping the nylon cord around her neck and strangling her for about ten minutes, ignoring her pleas for him to stop until she fell to the ground. David checked that her pulse and breathing had stopped and then dug the hole deeper, before burying her in it.
Following the crime, the defendant acted to conceal the murder and his actions. He smashed the victim’s cell phone with a hammer, opened her purse, removed and cut up her credit cards and threw the broken phone, purse and the thread he had used to kill her into a trashcan in town.
After the search began for Ofira, who had been reported missing, the defendant gave false testimony at the police station that he knew nothing about her disappearance and even pretended that he was assisting in the search for her.
Attorney Yael Zelig wrote that “the brutal way in which the accused murdered the deceased, strangling her in the yard of her house, making sure she was not alive, throwing her into a pit that was dug ahead of time and covering her in sand,” shows the dangerous nature of the defendant.
“These are cruel and difficult acts that teach us about the defendant’s violent and dangerous patterns of thinking,” Zelig said. “Another detail that attests to the great danger that he poses is the calmness of the defendant after he murdered and buried the deceased. Immediately after the murder, the defendant went to his mother’s house to play with her a game of cards as he did in his daily routine.”
The attorney requested from the court that Chaim remain in custody until the end of the legal proceedings against him.


Related Tags
divorce