By Kristy Stevens
The passage below is written in the killer's voice and is invented. It is not a quotation. See the editor's note at the end of this article.
It was the summer of 2010, my wife left me three years prior and I was just coming into my prime. I was 34 and ready to put myself out there in a way NO ONE would ever forget. The streets were alive with young, fresh blood, and I was ready to paint the town with it.
Elias was born on August 29,1976 to a well off Christian Arab family living in Ramla, Israel. While he is one of the more recent serial killers, he is not as well known as many others in this category such as Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy. He seems to be best known for his attacks due to the racial nature of his crimes, with most of his victims primarily being black males. His crimes occurred across multiple states including Michigan, Virginia, and Ohio, with his preferred method of murder being to stab his victims. While his confirmed number of victims was only 5, he was later charged with numerous other crimes, and believed to be the murderer responsible for many other deaths that he was never charged with. There is very little information offered up as to what his actual motives behind the murders were, and we are left with more questions than we have answers.
It is known that as a young child, Elias left Israel with his family and relocated to the United States. His mother remarried and was able to obtain a Green Card, although she was never granted full US citizenship. Later in his life, Elias obtained employment as a mental health technician working for the Piedmont Behavioral Health Center, which has since changed its name to North Spring Behavioral Healthcare. He maintained his employment at Piedmont until 2008, and it’s during this time that many speculate he acquired the idea to plead insanity when he was later arrested and charged for murder. On July 30, 2004, Elias managed to marry a woman by the name of Jessica Hirth. However, their marriage was not meant to be, and they were divorced three years later in 2007. It has been stated that Jessica’s parents were later blindsided by the crimes that Elias had committed. Jessica’s mother stated that she always thought he was such a “nice man”, however Jessica’s father seemed to have a darker story to tell. He claimed that Abuelazam was very abusive toward Jessica and that is what led to the downfall of their marriage and eventually, their divorce. Although things seemed to be going downhill fast for Elias, it would be three more years before he committed his first KNOWN murder.
Elias Abuelazam’s crimes took place between May and August of 2010, and it was believed that he would drive around late at night in his Chevy Trail Blazer targeting small-framed men that happened to be walking alone. Like many others before him, Abuelazam had a knack for playing the role of a helpless victim to get what he wanted. He would come up with a cover story such as asking for directions or claiming that he needed help with his vehicle to gain the trust of his intended victims before stabbing them to death. Giving consideration to the fact that the majority of his victims were black males, it is suspected that his crimes were racially motivated by hatred. By August 4, 2010, there had been an unusually large number of stabbings that had been occurring since May, and it was clear to police that it was most likely the work of one, lone perpetrator. A special task force was then assembled to begin a deeper investigation into these crimes. The Leesburg police were eventually able to connect attacks on three black man to be the work of one man, and witnesses were called in to give a description of the suspect, as well as having video surveillance footage pulled to be analyzed.
However, police were finally able to make a break in the case when Elias happened to get arrested on August 5, 2010 in Arlington, Virginia. After being pulled over for a routine traffic stop, it was discovered that Abuelazam had an outstanding warrant for his arrest due to a previous assault. Although he was arrested and released on a few short hours later, police were able to get his information into the system, and it is here that police were truly able to start piecing the puzzle together. Elias Abuelazam was now their main suspect in the ongoing murder investigations.
On August 11, 2010, Abuelazam was waiting to board a flight headed for Tel Aviv when he was arrested by police at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport. Although he was given the option to fight being extradited to Michigan, he chose to decline, and he was successfully transported back to Flint, Michigan on August 26, 2010. Due to the brutal nature of his suspected crimes, he was denied bail and placed into solitary confinement as he awaited his trial.
The first trial took place on May 8, 2012, for the murder of Arnold Minor. During this trial, the judge overlooking the proceedings did something very unusual, and he allowed evidence obtained from the other murder cases (that Abuelazam was suspected to be part of) to be admitted during the trial. Probably the most important piece of evidence admitted during this trial, was a droplet of blood found on Abuelazam’s pants. Forensics were able to use DNA testing to determine the blood was that of Arnold Minor. It is reported that there were fifty witnesses called in by the prosecution, including Abuelazam’s own uncle, who aided police in the arrest of his nephew. Considering the overwhelming amount of evidence obtained against Abuelazam, his defense team turned their attention towards obtaining an insanity plea. However, the only witness that took the stand to testify on behalf of Abuelazam’s mental state, was a psychiatrist who’s credibility was immediately called into question by the prosecution team because his expertise was alcohol and drug addiction, not mental illness. Therefore, the prosecution called in two psychologists of their own to determine Abuelazam’s mental stability. The psychologists claimed that, although it was highly likely that Abuelazam was suffering from some kind of personality disorder, there was no evidence that supported the idea that he was insane during the time of the murders. It was then established that he didn’t meet the legal criteria of insanity. The jury officially began their deliberations on May 22, 2012. After only one hour of deliberation, the jury had made their decision. Elias Abuelazam was found guilty on all accounts for the murder of Arnold Minor, but it didn’t end there.
Sometime later, Elias Abuelazam was charged for numerous other crimes including:
Assault with intent to murder Bill Fisher 42, June 26, 2010
Assault with intent to murder Antoine Jackson 29, July 12, 2010
Assault with intent to murder Richard Booker, July 19, 2010
Murder Darwin Marshall 43, July 26, 2010
Assault with intent to murder Antwoine Marshall 26, July 27, 2010
Assault with intent to murder Davon Rawls 20, July 29, 2010
Murder Frank Kellybrew 60, July 30, 2010
Assault with intent to murder Etwan Wilson 18, August 1, 2010
Murder Arnold Minor 49, August 2, 2010
Murder Unnamed 59-year-old man (Indictment for this case)
He was also suspected of numerous other crimes, but to date, he has not been charged for them. These crimes include:
David Motley 31, Found murdered May 24, 2010
Emmanuel Abdul Muhammad 59, Found murdered June 21, 2010
Stabbing an unnamed 21-year-old man July 23, 2010
Stabbing an unnamed 59-year-old man July 29, 2010
Stabbing an unnamed 28-year-old man July 30, 2010
Attack on an unnamed teenager August 3, 2010
Stabbing of an unnamed 67-year-old man August 5, 2010
Attack of an unnamed man with a hammer August 6, 2010
After all the crimes he had committed, ultimately Elias Abuelazam was sentenced to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole on June 25, 2012.
Editor's note: this piece is one of five in the Murder and Madness series, which ran in Serial Killer Magazine. Each article opens with a passage written in the killer's own voice. Those passages are invented. They are the author's dramatisation, not a quotation, not a confession and not drawn from any letter, interview or statement, and nothing in them should be read as something the man actually said.
Against the archive's own record, three things in this article need adjusting. His date of birth is given here as August 29, 1976; the roster has August 28. The piece says his confirmed victims numbered five, which is right, but it is worth stating what the five sit inside: eighteen men were attacked in Michigan, Virginia and Ohio between May and August 2010, and sixteen of the eighteen were Black. The five who died were David Motley, thirty-one, Emmanuel Abdul Muhammad, fifty-nine, Darwin Marshall, forty-three, Frank Kellybrew, sixty, and Arnold Minor, forty-nine. Motley and Muhammad appear in this article's second list, the one headed as suspected and uncharged in Michigan, because the charges in their cases came separately from the Genesee County conviction described here.
The article says there is little information about motive. The investigation and the city did not treat it as open. He selected Black men who were walking alone at night in a city with a majority Black population, and the men had done nothing except be outside. Men in Flint stopped walking at night that summer.