Powerful testimony in Evergreen murder trial pits brother against brother

SAN JOSE » The younger brother and one-time co-defendant of a man on trial for their parents’ murders took the stand Monday and described the morning they died while fending off a stream of questioning from his sibling who tried to implicate him as the true killer.

Omar Golamrabbi, 20, gave the heart of his testimony for the prosecution against his brother, 25-year-old Hasib bin Golamrabbi, who is charged with murdering Golam Rabbi, 59, and Shamima Rabbi, 57, the morning of April 23, 2016 at their hillside Evergreen home.

One of the more powerful revelations occurred when, during Omar’s testimony, Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Carlos Vega presented the jury with a jailhouse letter that Hasib sent to Omar after his charges were dismissed. The letter appears to instruct his younger brother and a key witness not to cooperate with the prosecution.

“I think it would be best if both of you didn’t testify at my trial,” Hasib writes in the letter, which was projected on a large screen for the jurors to see.

Other remarks in the letter include telling Omar, and by extension, Matthew Kuch — who testified last week about Hasib purportedly confessing to the murders at his Tracy home before he was arrested by San Jose police — to say “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember” when questioned by the District Attorney’s Office. Hasib also included a semi-elaborate code using references to the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants”

to use in a response letter and indicate how supportive potential witnesses might be for his defense.

The letter also offered some possible insight on how Hasib came to represent himself in his own murder trial.

“I don’t know if that is true because he often lies,” Hasib wrote in passing about an appointed defense attorney.

For his part, Hasib sought to cast doubt on the authenticity of the letter by suggesting that Omar “fabricated” the letter to incriminate his brother. He pointed out that Omar took a picture of the letter, sent the image to his attorney, then discarded the physical letter.

“Were you afraid they wouldn’t find my DNA?” Hasib asked during this cross examination. “Were

you afraid someone would discover you created the letter?”

Omar’s testimony Monday revolved around being a passive witness to the deadly shootings of his parents, and then being so paralyzed by fear that he couldn’t muster himself to call authorities even as they spent the following day attending an anime convention in Oakland.

“I was afraid of my brother, and at the same time (of) losing him,” Omar said.

The younger brother testified that on the morning of April 23, 2016, he was in the bathroom when he heard Hasib and his father arguing in the garage over a recurring conflict about his education and employment and the rules of the house.

“I heard my dad ask ‘What did you do?’ and he shot him continuously,” Omar testified about his brother.

Omar said he then heard his mother try to intervene

and Hasib telling her to hide, then moments later, shooting her in the head with what he believes was their father’s rifle. The younger brother recalled hiding for a while, then listening to Hasib telling him to get in his car outside. Then he said he caught the last glimpse of either of his parents.

“She was in the laundry room. She was lying down,” Omar said, referring to his mother.

Omar also offered an assortment of observations of the shooting scene, including a cryptic note that was written in block letters attached to the wall with a kitchen knife. The content of the note was not disclosed in court, but sources have told this news organization that police found scrawlings on the wall and floor near the bodies saying “Sorry my first kill was clumsy,” and “I can’t be like you telling a lie … I can’t love someone without telling them.”

He also recounted a moment he later relayed to detectives where Hasib told him to “check the garage if something’s coming out,” which he took as a reference to “the blood of my dad.”

Omar added that at some point Hasib told him something to the effect of “This was for the best.” He added that as they drove back to San Jose from the convention in Oakland, he agonized over whether to contact authorities, especially as they were getting constant calls from relatives who had discovered the crime scene.

About a mile from their home, they stopped in a neighborhood, Hasib got out, and after sitting in the car for a while, Omar said he started walking home. He was eventually be picked up by a San Jose police officer.

Omar initially was arrested alongside his brother and charged in the killings, but within a week he was dropped from the case for

lack of evidence.

In his cross-examination, Hasib asked questions that would implicate Omar as the actual culprit and show that Hasib was simply taking the blame. So Hasib tried to cast suspicion on how Omar was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony.

“Does confessing to the murder of our parents fall under their agreement?” Hasib asked his brother pointedly.

After a moment, Omar said he supposed so, but quickly continued: “I didn’t kill my parents though.”

Hasib also sought to characterize his brother as being equally angry and frustrated with their parents, seemingly to show that Omar had just as much motivation to kill them as he did. He brought up text messages to portray his brother as being callous and cold toward their parents, including messages that showed indifference to a heart attack their father suffered earlier in 2016, a recollection that caused Hasib to choke up and pause multiple times to finish.

The defendant also tried to imply that his younger brother killed their parents to break free of their strict rules, and also to benefit financially. Omar conceded that his relationship with his parents was strained, but remained even-tempered as he withstood the insinuations from his brother.

Omar said he had held off on calling authorities, saying he was in a hazy mental state and hoped deep down the situation was a nightmare from which he would wake up.

“I was stuck in my own head. Frozen,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

The trial is expected to be sent to jury deliberations by the end of the week.