Thou Shalt Not Covet (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

where he worked.

“A woman's voice came across the line and she asked to speak with one of the man's employees.”

And the man thought for a second and then he ultimately replied that actually, that employee

had not shown up for their shift that afternoon and they didn't know why, but they weren't here. And when he said this, he heard a distinct shift in this woman's tone. And she told him in a very trembling voice that she needed to hang up now and call 911. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious

delivered in story format, then you come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, the next time you go hiking with the follow button, make sure to secretly replace all the contents from their backpack with garbage. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any

of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's story. In the early afternoon of Wednesday, August 10, 2005, 18-year-old Eliza Parsie sat on her bed

“and her home in Staten Island, New York, flipping through a fashion magazine.”

The house was quiet because Eliza's mother, Sima, was at work. So Eliza had the whole house to herself, at least for a little while, until she herself went to work. Eliza had graduated high school just a few months ago, and now she was working as a clerk at a moving company to try to save up some money for college.

And also to eventually move into Manhattan to pursue her dream of working in the fashion industry. However, Eliza did feel a bit guilty about moving away, because it would mean leaving her mom all alone in this big house. And there wasn't really any other family nearby because both of her parents were from

Israel. Sima had divorced Eliza's father about a year and a half ago, and her father had left New York and moved back to Israel. Eliza also had two half brothers, who were Sima's sons from her first marriage, and one

“of them was back in Israel as well, and the other, Eliza's 27-year-old half-brother”

Revive, lived just a short drive away in another part of the city. But Eliza and Sima rarely saw him because he was married with a new baby and lived with his in-laws, and so he basically had a whole new family. And also, Revive had been put in charge of the Parsie family's kosher cookie business, which was really struggling.

So he was really busy, and always stressed about the company, and he really just didn't

make it out to Staten Island very often. Eliza flipped through the last few pages of her magazine, and then noticed that it was time to get ready for her two-pm shift at work. But first, she wanted to check and see if she had any new messages on her internet dating profiles.

So she put her magazine down, went over to her desk, and logged into her computer. So in 2005, internet dating was just starting to take off, and Eliza had made profiles on a few different dating and meet-up websites, just to see what would happen. And before long, she had found herself messaging and meeting up with men from all around New York City.

But, she'd never told her mother about this, because she knew that her mother would not approve of Eliza dating men who were not from their same orthodox Jewish faith. And Eliza knew this for a fact, because it's exactly what had happened with her previous boyfriend, not the public high school that she went to. Eliza had friends from all different backgrounds, and she had started seriously dating

a Muslim boy named Hassan, but her family had really disapproved of their relationship entirely because of his faith. And so, eventually, Eliza just couldn't take the family pressure anymore, and she'd broken up with him. And so now, Eliza was much more secretive about her personal life.

She would come up with these phony reasons why she was going to other neighborhoods. But really, it was just so she could go on dates or hook up with guys for fun without her mom knowing. And also, she had even begun secretly bringing some of them to her house in Staten Island.

But she was always very careful to sneak them in through the back door when her mom was

at work, so she wouldn't get caught. Now, Eliza logged into her account, and she saw there were a few messages from some guys, and so she responded to them, and then after that, she headed into the bathroom to take a shower before work. And a few minutes later, when Eliza finished her shower and turned off the water, she

heard a noise coming from outside the bathroom. And now, she couldn't tell what it was, earlier that afternoon, she'd heard a landscaping crew working at the house next door with some really loud leaf blowers, but this noise was different. It was like a weird banging sound.

So, curious, Eliza got out of the shower, wrapped a towel tightly around herself, and opened the bathroom door to go see what was going on. That night, around 730 pm, Eliza's mother Seema arrived back at the house that she shared with Eliza, she turned her key in the front lock and tried to push the door open,

other side that was blocking it from opening any further.

“Now, Seema had no idea what this could be, and so she just began shoving against the door,”

and eventually, she pushed it open wide enough that she could slip inside.

And when she did, the first thing she noticed was that the thing that had been blocking

the door was this heavy mirror. But before Seema's mind could really process how this mirror wound up here. She turned on the lights, and saw that her living room was absolutely destroyed, furniture was overturned, cabinets were flung open, and papers were just strewn everywhere. Seema immediately felt her heart start pounding, because she realized that clearly

somebody had broken in and robbed the place. But then her second thought was, "Where is Eliza, where's my daughter?" Seema knew that Eliza had been home, at least part of the day, and what if this had happened when Eliza was here all alone? And so Seema began calling out for her daughter, but there was no answer.

And so she followed the chaos upstairs, and noticed that the door to Eliza's room was closed. So she went over to the door and put her hand on the knob and tried to open it up, but it was locked.

“And Seema knew that this was just not normal, Eliza never locked the door.”

So now Seema's thinking something has happened here, something bad has happened here. And so sort of an panic, Seema just began banging on the door, screaming her daughter's name, hoping she would answer, but it was silent. And so after a couple of seconds, Seema pulled out her phone and called the moving company, where her daughter worked.

And her stomach dropped when Eliza's boss told her that her daughter had not shown up to work that day. And so, with trembling hands, Seema got off that call, and dialed 911. About an hour later, Detective Michael Kenny of the New York City Police Department drove slowly down a neighborhood street in Staten Island.

A head, he could see his destination, a three-story house with yellow crime scene tape across the front yard. But it was hard to get close because the street was now swarming with neighbors and just random people who had come out to see what was going on.

“So Kenny parked a few houses down, and then headed for the house on foot.”

And when he got there, he was met by two patrol officers. And they told Kenny that they had responded to a call about a robbery, and then had to

break down a door of a locked bedroom, where they ultimately found the dead body of

18-year-old Eliza Parsie, who lived in the house with her mother, Seema. The officers explained that when they had checked the rest of the scene, they had noticed that the entire house was basically torn apart. That they hadn't found any signs of forced entry. The officers then directed Kenny's attention over to Seema, who was standing nearby with

a small group of people, presumably family or neighbors. Kenny knew he would have to talk to her. But first, he needed to get a better sense of just what was going on inside of this house. So Kenny made his way in the front door and surveyed the living room, where some crime scene tags said already began processing the scene.

The room had definitely been torn apart, but as Kenny looked closer, he could see that a lot of valuable items were sitting untouched and out in the open, like the TV in the stereo, which was unusual for a burglary. Next, Kenny walked up the stairs and into Eliza's room, where more texts were collecting

evidence, and the first thing he noticed was that this room also looked ransacked.

There were clothes and pillows thrown everywhere, and the mattress had been pulled off the bed frame, and was leaning up against the wall, and on the floor in the middle of the room was Eliza's body. She was lying on the ground, and she was naked, and there was a towel sort of bunched up underneath her.

Kenny asked one of the texts, if this is exactly how the body had been found, and the text said no. When they first got to the scene, Eliza had actually been underneath the mattress, and also had a pillow over her face, but they had to move both of those things out of the way in order to actually examine her body, which was why the mattress was now up against

the wall. Now down, over Eliza's body, but he couldn't see any visible cause of death, like a bullet or knife wounds or bruising, which could mean that maybe she was suffocated. I mean, maybe the pillow that was on her face that they had removed was what was used to kill her.

Kenny turned and asked the tech if they had found any evidence of physical injury. In the tech pointed to just a few tiny drops of blood that were on the towel underneath Eliza. Now, they were very small, and they could have been old, like maybe somebody had cut themselves shaving, but all these details, a naked young woman, the mattress, the pillow,

the blood, had made Kenny concerned that Eliza might have been a victim of sexual assault before she was killed. So Kenny told the tech to make sure that the blood from the towel, as well as any other bodily fluids they could find, were collected as evidence, because they might belong to Eliza's killer.

A few minutes later, Kenny emerged from the house and began walking over to speak with Sima, and Sima, she was crying onto the shoulder of a young man, and the minute this young

He stepped forward and started demanding to know why the police were keeping them away from

“Eliza's body, and also why the cops weren't out there arresting his sister's killer.”

So Kenny just took a deep breath, because this man was obviously Eliza's brother, and it was understandable why he was so upset. Kenny knew that a lot of times grief turned into anger in these situations.

So Kenny calmly explained that in order to find Eliza's killer, he first needed information,

starting with where he and Sima had been that day. And this got both revive and Sima to calm down right away, because they seem to realize that Kenny might actually be suspicious of them, so the man lowered his voice, and he introduced himself as revive, and then he and Sima began answering Kenny's questions. Sima said she'd been at work all day, and that there were plenty of co-workers who could

say as much, and revive explained that he too had been working all day, delivering baked goods all around Long Island. Kenny made notes so we could double-check all their information later. And then he asked if either of them knew anybody who might have had a reason to want to harm Eliza, and Kenny saw them share a very knowing glance.

Then revive turned to Kenny, and said he should look into Eliza's ex-boyfriend Hassan, who none of them liked or trusted, and as Kenny started jotting these details down, Sima chimed in, and added that her daughter told her about something really bizarre that Hassan had done recently. Early one morning a few weeks ago, Eliza had woken up to find Hassan sitting at the

end of her bed just staring at her, like he'd been watching her sleep, and the whole thing had absolutely terrified Eliza, because she had no idea how he'd even gotten into the house.

She certainly hadn't invited him over, and their house was always locked overnight, and

“then before Detective Kenny could even ask a follow-up question?”

Revive, the brother, just suddenly started yelling, "Get out, get out, we don't want you here!" At somebody across the yard, and so Kenny turned to see who Revive was yelling at, and he saw this teenage boy standing there, looking completely shocked and scared. And at this point, Revive went from yelling at Hassan to yelling at Kenny, to arrest Hassan,

because that was the man who killed Eliza. Later in the night of August 10th, 2005, so just a few hours after the body of 18-year-old Eliza Parsey was found dead in her home in Staten Island, and why PD Detective Michael Kenny sat inside of an interrogation room at his precinct. Across from him was Eliza's ex-boyfriend Hassan, who had been detained after he showed up

at the crime scene. So far, Hassan had been very cooperative, and had shared a very detailed timeline of his whereabouts that day. However, he did not have a solid alibi for that afternoon, and the early evening, which was likely when Eliza was killed. Kenny had taken a DNA sample from Hassan, and he also had gotten samples from Eliza's

mother and brother at the scene to compare against the blood that had been found on that towel, and any other DNA that was found on Eliza's body. But in 2005, DNA and blood evidence took weeks to process. So Kenny was really hoping to just get Hassan to confess right now. So, once all his basic questions were out of the way, Kenny decided to test Hassan's truthfulness.

And he asked Hassan if he had ever snuck into Eliza's house, but Hassan, he didn't deny it. He immediately came clean, and admitted to everything. He said that yes, he had previously snuck into her house. And he did sit on Eliza's bed, and he had waited there until she woke up that was all true. But Hassan insisted that he had not been trying to scare Eliza. He just desperately wanted

to talk to her so they could hopefully get back together again, and Hassan said that when he did that, Eliza hadn't been scared. She was just kind of annoyed, and she had told him that they were broken up for real. And after that, he said he had left without incident. Kenny noticed that in Hassan's version of the story, the way that Eliza reacted to Hassan

sitting on her bed, you know, just being kind of annoyed and exasperated about it, was very different than the way Eliza's mother Sima had described the same event. She had

said that her daughter had basically been scared for her life. So he asked Hassan, why does

“Eliza's family dislike you so much? Why were they so quick to say you killed Eliza?”

And Hassan just kind of hung his head and said he didn't think it was about him personally. It was about religion. Hassan was Muslim, and the parties were Orthodox Jewish. As Kenny took this in, he wasn't sure which version of the story to believe. Where Hassan and Eliza star crossed lovers kept apart by her family, or was Hassan an obsessive ex-boyfriend who couldn't take no for an answer. But regardless, Kenny could not ignore the fact that Hassan

had a strong motive, and history of sneaking into Eliza's house uninvited, but Kenny still didn't have a confession from Hassan, nor did he have any hard evidence at all that

Hassan he was free to go. The next day, Thursday, August 11th, detective Kenny walked

“up to a Jewish Orthodox synagogue in Brooklyn, where Eliza's funeral was about to take”

place. The reason it was happening so quickly was because of the Jewish Orthodox custom that a body must be buried within 24 hours of death. And because of that timeline, it meant that Eliza's autopsy had already been completed, and Kenny had just received the report from the Medical Examiner, which confirmed that Eliza had died from asphyxiation, likely from being smothered by that pillow. The Medical Examiner had also found DNA evidence

that could be tested against those samples Kenny had collected from the suspects. There were some skin cells under Eliza's fingernails, as well as Seaman that showed Eliza had sex before she died, probably within 24 hours. And so this evidence made Kenny think that Eliza had been sexually assaulted and had fought back against the person assaulting her, which would explain the skin under her nails. But when Kenny called the Medical Examiner

to voice this theory that he now thought was pretty likely, the Medical Examiner had

“actually disagreed because they didn't find any bruising or bleeding or anything else”

that indicated sexual violence. And so the autopsy actually concluded that the sex Eliza had before she was killed must have been consensual. But regardless, in Kenny's opinion, the facts of the case so far pointed towards a romantic partner being the killer, which obviously cleared, revive, and Seema and any other family members, and it also did not seem to be some random burglar or home intruder because Seema had confirmed that nothing

in the house was missing. Now, a few of the neighbors had mentioned that there had been some landscapeers who had been working at the house next door at the time of her death, and Kenny had managed to track down the crew and question them. But they had all insisted

that they had never left the neighbor's yard and that they hadn't seen or heard anything.

But just to be sure, Kenny had taken their DNA samples just in case. Now, as Kenny made his way through the crowded sidewalk in front of the synagogue, he could see two distinct groups of people in attendance. There were members of the Orthodox community wearing their long skirts and prayer shawls and also young people dressed in more modern clothes, who he assumed were Eliza's friends from school. Kenny walked up the front steps and entered

the synagogue, and he noticed that the inside of the building was split in half by a wooden partition, almost like a wall, with men on one side and women on the other. So, Kenny joined the men's side and stood in the back corner where he could just observe. Kenny noticed Eliza's brother revived standing near the front, near the casket, and he watched as other men walked up to pay him their respects. The atmosphere was solemn, understandably, and

Kenny didn't pick up on any tension or animosity. It just sort of felt like a community coming together to kind of make sense of this tragedy, but then Kenny felt the energy in the room suddenly changed, like a switch-ed flick, and he could hear people start to whisper to each other very urgently, and everybody's heads turned to look back towards the entrance. Kenny turned his head and looked as well, and he saw this one person who was trying to push

through the crowd and make their way up the aisle to the front, where Eliza's casket was. And Kenny realized this person was Hassan. For some reason, he'd shown up, again, despite the fact that Eliza's family clearly didn't want him around. And Kenny actually watched as Reveev, who, you know, had seen Hassan, Reveev went straight to Hassan and literally stopped him and shoved him backwards, and shouted him to get out, because they all knew

he killed Eliza. Kenny, sensing a physical fight, was going to happen here, began pushing his way through the crowd to try to stop them and separate them. But fortunately, before he reached them, other men separated Hassan and Reveev, and then Hassan was escorted out of the building. About two weeks later, on August 24th, 2005, Detective Kenny was in the office of the NYPD Computer Crime Unit, where the department's IT specialists had begun

digging into Eliza's online life. After her funeral, Kenny had spoken to Eliza's school friends, who had told him that Eliza had been trying to move on from her relationship with Hassan, and that she had actually opened accounts on a whole bunch of dating sites that she used to meet guys, or sometimes just took up. And when Kenny had pressed them for more information, the friends had told him that none of those online men were from

her tight-knit orthodox community, which was part of the appeal to Eliza. But it obviously

“was not something she wanted to share with her mother, so she kept it all a big secret”

from everybody except from her closest friends. Kenny had been able to actually get Eliza's computer with her mother's permission, and had brought some IT specialists on board who were able to dig into Eliza's email and browser history. Now, Kenny watched, as the IT specialists, directed his attention to one of Eliza's dating site message threats. In this thread, Eliza, and a man named Jonathan were making plans for "when and where they were going to meet

up to have sex." They'd gone back and forth on a few different options, until finally,

work, and that she would leave the back door unlocked so he could sneak in without the neighbor's

“scene. Kenny saw that this particular hookup was planned for Tuesday, August 9, 2005, just”

one day before Eliza was killed. Now, naturally, this made Kenny in the rest of the investigators raise an eyebrow, because this plan of Eliza and Jonathan, you know, of having him enter secretly through the back door while Sima was at work, matched up exactly with what they had found at the crime scene. In late August of 2005, more than two weeks after the murder of Eliza Parsie, and why PD Detective Michael Kenny was sitting at a kitchen table in an apartment

in Brooklyn, New York, across from Jonathan Harris. The internet dating match, who Eliza had secretly invited to her home the day before she was killed. When Kenny informed the young man that he was here investigating the murder of Eliza Parsie, he noticed that Jonathan didn't seem surprised. But Eliza's murder had been all over local news, and a lot of stories were really exploiting her romantic past and her sex life, so he had probably already heard about what had

“happened. Kenny asked Jonathan if he had known Eliza. And Jonathan said, yes, then he detailed”

basically everything that had been planned in that chat message. He said that he had gone to her house, he had snuck in through the back door that was unlocked, and they had had "consensual sex," at least Jonathan's "swar," it had been "consensual." Jonathan insisted that after that,

he had not seen Eliza again, and had never even gone back to Staten Island after that. He then

gave Kenny a detailed timeline of where he had been on the day Eliza was killed. And overall, he was a lot more cooperative than Kenny had expected. He even provided a DNA sample without any objection, and so as Kenny left Jonathan's apartment, he was starting to feel a bit worried that this potential big break in the case might actually turn out to be a dead end. Weeks later, on September 13, 2005, Detective Kenny sat at his desk, reviewing all the information

he had gathered about Eliza Parsie's murder. He had checked Jonathan's phone records,

“also his transit card, and his toll pass. But there was nothing that put him on Staten Island”

the day of Eliza's murder. And the computer crimes investigators had not turned up any other promising suspects from Eliza's online dating profiles. Detective Kenny had also continued digging into Hassan, but he didn't have enough evidence to either arrest him or clear him. And this was frustrating because Eliza's murder had stayed in the news, and there was a lot of pressure to find the killer, especially from the Orthodox Jewish community, which was significant

in New York. It was starting to look like the case had gone cold. Just then, Kenny's phone rang. And when he picked it up, it was the medical examiner who was calling with an update. The results

of the DNA analysis were finally in, and the Siemens sample did not match those skin cells

that had been found under Eliza's fingernails. So this meant there was DNA from two different people at the crime scene. And when the medical examiner said who each of these samples belonged to, suddenly, Detective Kenny knew who killed Eliza. Based on the entire investigation, DNA evidence and the killer's eventual confession, here is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Eliza Parsie on the afternoon of August 10, 2005.

Shortly before 2 p.m., the killer approached the back door of the Parsie home where they knew they wouldn't be seen by neighbors. And once they were there, they slowly opened up the door. Once they were inside, they walked all the way through the house right to the front door just to check to make sure it was locked, which it was. And so after that, they went and got a heavy mirror, and they moved it and put it in front of the door to block it. The killer knew that both women

who lived in the house, Seema and her daughter Eliza, worked during the day. And so the killer didn't expect them to come home. But just in case, they didn't want to take any chances, hence barricading the door. Once they were satisfied with the barricade, the killer got to work, opening drawers and cabinets looking in every place they could, because they needed something very specific inside of this home that was very valuable. But they couldn't find it anywhere on the bottom

floor, which made the killer think it must be in one of the bedroom's upstairs. So the killer climbed the stairs and went into the master bedroom, where they looked to the dresser and in the closet, but they still couldn't find what they were looking for. So the killer left the master bedroom and decided to search the other bedroom next. But when they opened the door to that bedroom, they were shocked to see a young woman coming out of the attached bathroom wrapped in a towel.

And from this young woman's reaction on her face, the killer could tell that she knew what they, the killer were up to, and this enraged the killer. Because they were sure, this woman was going to

silence between the two of them. The young woman opened her mouth like she was about to scream

“for help. And so the killer instinctively just tackled her to the ground and then grabbed a nearby”

pillow and pressed it down hard over her face. She scratched and she clawed trying everything to break free, but the more she fought, the angrier and more emboldened the killer became and the harder they pressed down. And to eventually her body went limp after that, the killer stood up and they they looked down and they saw what they had done and it caused them to start to panic.

Because they never meant to kill her just to scare her and shut her up, but they had obviously gone too far.

So not knowing what to do, the killer just grabbed the pillow and put it over her face and then also dragged the mattress and put it on top of her body just so they wouldn't have to look at her. Then instead of continuing their search for this thing that they wanted inside of this home, they just went downstairs and left out the back door and they didn't return to the house for hours, not until they received a call from their mother. Because the killer was Eliza's half-brother,

Revive.

The DNA from the CMIN that was found at the crime scene belonged to Jonathan, the man that Eliza had

consensually had sex with 24 hours before her death. The DNA that was found under Eliza's fingernails belonged to Revive. It would turn out Eliza's death did not have anything to do with who she was sleeping with. Revive was angry at their mother because the family business that she had passed along to him didn't make as much money as he had thought it would. And so as a result, Revive was stuck working all these long hours and also raising his family and his in-laws,

basement which he found totally humiliating and he knew that CMIN had recently come into some money through the sale of a property in connection with her divorce. And Revive felt like that money was rightfully his because he had a wife and a child to provide for. But CMIN wouldn't give it to him. So instead of driving his typical delivery route on Long Island that day, Revive went to his mother's house to literally look for the money so he could steal it,

but Eliza's work schedule had recently changed. And so he didn't realize Eliza's shift

“actually started later in the day. And so what was supposed to be a simple robbery?”

Turn deadly. Revive ultimately pled guilty to first remand slaughter and was sentenced to

18 years in prison. A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events. But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballon Podcast, strange dark and mysterious stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballon. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Our head of production is Zach

Levitt, produced by Jeremy Bohn, story editing by Evan Allen, research and fact checking by Shelley Xu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Calhan, research and fact-checking supervision by Stephenier. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit LaCassio and Cole LaCassio, Perry Crowell, and Jordan Stitham. Mixed in Mastered by Brendan Kane, production coordination by Samantha Collins, production support by Antonio Minata, and Delana Corley.

Art work by Jessica Clarkston-Kiner, theme song called "Something Wicked" by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballon Podcast, and just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballon Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballon YouTube channel that very same day, and trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe.

“Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballon. If you want to listen to episodes,”

one week early, and add free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast+ on Apple Podcasts, or visit SiriusXM.com/podcast+ to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So, that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.