Woman says she threatened father to force murder confession

Defense attorneys for a Jordanian-born man on trial in Houston for capital murder in the death of his daughter’s husband and a second person have gotten the daughter to acknowledge she had threatened her father and sister.

But Nesreen Irsan testified Tuesday that a detective had coached her to make the threats in an effort to get 60-year-old Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan to admit to the 2012 killings.

Prosecutors say the slayings were motivated by the elder Irsan’s anger over his daughter’s conversion to Christianity and marriage to Coty Beavers, a Christian.

Authorities say Irsan also fatally shot Iranian women’s rights activist Gelareh Bagherzadeh, a friend of Nesreen Irsan who encouraged her to marry Beavers.

The Houston Chronicle reports that defense attorneys contend the evidence is circumstantial and that it’s not clear who killed the two.