When an Ohio lawyer got a call from police in mid-April saying his sister had fallen 140 feet to her death while mountain climbing in Arizona with her rocket scientist husband, he immediately suspected it was a murder case.
Hassanain Joseph, 38, told The Washington Post that he believed his sister, Zainab Joseph, was pushed off a cliff by her husband and that he expressed his suspicions to detectives investigating the case.
“I knew my sister was beginning the process of separating from her husband after years of abuse,” explained Joseph, who put his law practice in Toledo on hold to investigate Zainab’s final moments.
“So it was clear to me that foul play was involved.”
Zainab, 40, a teacher and mother of three from California, was pronounced dead on April 15 after being persuaded by her husband, Syed Danish Zaidi, to go hiking on Bear Mountain in the Coconino National Forest, a famed red rock formation near Flagstaff.
The Huntington Beach couple, along with their 10-month-old child, Mountain website It is characterized as one of the most “tough” trails.
The couple were vacationing in Sedona with their children and Zaidi’s mother.
A group of hikers who heard her cries of pain found Zainab lying on a rocky bank, still alive, but she died a few minutes later.
The grieving brothers said that stress engineer Zaidi Virgin GalacticA woman who tried to save her from the rocket attack told Zainab’s relatives that she lost her life trying to save her mobile phone.
“He gave us this bullshit story that he was trying to take a picture of her and he dropped his phone,” Joseph said.
“He said the phone bounced off and his sister chased it and fell off a cliff, but she wouldn’t risk her life for a phone. His story didn’t make any sense.”
Joseph recently spent 10 days in Sedona, visiting Bear Mountain and meeting with local police and hikers who witnessed his sister’s death.
“Hikers were on scene within a minute and said they didn’t see him shedding a tear,” Joseph said of his brother-in-law.
“The area where the accident happened is very flat, so if the phone had been dropped it wouldn’t have rolled away,” he said.
“The hikers said they thought you’d have to be standing within two feet of the cliff edge for the phone to fall, but I can’t imagine my sister would do that.”
After discovering several since-deleted Reddit posts from Zaidi’s pre-vacation period requesting information about Bear Mountain’s Fay Canyon Trail and property division during the divorce, Joseph said he believed Zaidi found out Zainab was leaving and “pushed her off a cliff” as planned.
“He didn’t go to the cemetery, he didn’t bring his kids to the funeral,” Joseph said.
“He’s just a cruel man.”
Zaidi and his mother initially refused to be interviewed by investigators, but Zaidi finally met with detectives recently and was interviewed, police said.
Authorities confirmed that an investigation into the fatal crash is ongoing.
Detectives declined to comment on whether Zaidi’s cellphone had been seized as evidence.
Police did not say whether they had recovered Zaidi’s mobile phone as evidence.
Zaidi did not respond to multiple phone messages seeking comment.
He has not been charged with any crime.
“This was very planned and calculated,” Joseph said.
“Justice is on the way and we can only hope that it comes before he escapes to Pakistan. He nearly planned the perfect murder.”
