Indictment: Daughter, boyfriend planned murder of mother

The defendants engaged intensively in planning the murder, which they perpetrated on June 6.

By TAMARA ZIEVE
Updated: JULY 6, 2018 09:27
A general view of Jaffa Clock Tower, in Jaffa, Israel (photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
A general view of Jaffa Clock Tower, in Jaffa, Israel
(photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
A teenage girl and her boyfriend murdered the former’s mother because of her opposition to their romantic relationship, according to an indictment filed by the Tel Aviv District prosecutor on Thursday morning.
According to police, Padilla Cadis opposed the one-and-a-half-year relationship between her 18-year-old daughter Tracy Cadis and her boyfriend Amir Marmesh, of the same age, because of their different religions. Padilla Cadis was the widow of the head of the Orthodox Church Association in Jaffa, Gabriel Cadis, who was murdered in 2012.
The indictment states as follows.
The defendants engaged intensively in planning the murder, which they perpetrated on June 6. That night, Tracy waited until her mother had gone to bed and then unlocked the back door to the house where they lived together, and left a scarf in her room for the purpose of covering the face of the victim during her murder.
Around 2:30 a.m., Marmesh arrived at the house, entering through the back door, went to the defendant’s room, woke her, and showed her the knife he had brought with him to kill Padilla. The defendants stayed together in Tracy’s room until about 5:30 a.m., when she asked her boyfriend to leave her room and kill Padilla. She gave him the scarf to cover his face, wished him “good luck” and put on headphones to listen to loud music so she would not hear her mother’s screams.
According to the indictment, Marmesh opened the door of Padilla’s room, who woke up and went into the hall, calling her daughter’s name. When she saw the masked defendant, she screamed, before he stabbed her with a knife in the neck and chest, continuing to do so even after she collapsed on the floor.
He only stopped stabbing her when the knife broke, the indictment states.
After the murder, the pair went down to the ground floor and the victim’s daughter handed her boyfriend a rag and a towel to clean up the scene of the murder, instructing him to move her mother’s body to a room on the third floor, handing him a key to the room.
Marmesh did as instructed, and cleaned the blood from the crime house. Together, the defendants moved the victim’s clothes and possessions from her room to a room on the third floor, in order to mislead the rest of the family that Padilla had left the house. The defendants locked the room on the third floor and hid the key.
They took her cell phone and Tracy used it to send text messages, in her mother’s name, to her aunt who was looking for Padilla. Pretending to be her mother, Tracy wrote that she was busy with a friend and unavailable to answer calls. She also wrote in her mother’s name in the family Whatsapp group, when other family members were asking how she was, and she said she was spending time with her friend.
The defendants also took credit cards from the decease bag with which they bought things and booked a hotel room in Tel Aviv.
The defendants left the house at midday and Tracy took the knife and the phone with her, threw the knife out in an unknown spot outside the house, and went to school.
The defendants planned to stay at the hotel and in the evening, when Tracy came to the house to pack her belongings, her brother showed up, looking for their mother. He knocked on the door and she deliberately paused before opening the door, allowing time for her boyfriend to leave via back door, taking with him with the victim’s cell phone and the top-floor key.
Tracy continued to pretend to be searching for mother together with her family, pretending to search for the key to the room on the third floor and sending text messages to her mother’s cell phone.
The indictment states that Marmesh sent the family members and his girlfriend text messages from Padilla’s cell phone, saying that she had traveled abroad and authorized him to stay with her daughter in her house. Later, he turned off the cell phone and hid it in Jaffa.
The defendants also planned to attack Tracy’s sister-in-law, according to the indictment.