i knew they called them axes, but... EASTPOINTE MURDER ARRAIGNMENT: Son is charged in mother's killing
Police say he bludgeoned her with electric guitar
April 12, 2005
BY STAN DONALDSON
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Emil Batayeh often bragged about the sleek black electric guitar his mother got him for his November birthday. Music was a part of the 29-year-old man's life. Neighbors said his father is a former Iraqi television star, and his brother plays in a band.
But medication also was a part of Batayeh's life.
Police said they often came to the family's small, white home in Eastpointe to help Batayeh's mother medicate her mentally ill son and control his temper.
Margaret Besola's determined fight to help her son may ultimately have killed her. After a heated fight between the two Saturday morning, police said, Betayeh bludgeoned his mother to death with the same guitar he once bragged about.
Besola's older son found the 53-year-old woman dead at 3:30 a.m. in the living room of their house in the 24000 block of Lexington Avenue. She died from blunt-force trauma to the head, said Eastpointe Police Lt. Leo Borowsky.
Batayeh was charged with second-degree murder and arraigned in 38th District Court in Eastpointe on Monday. He remains in the Macomb County Jail without bond.
During his arraignment, Batayeh pleaded with Judge Norene Redmond to not send him to jail, and requested shock treatment to make him feel better.
He gently pounded his head several times on the podium while the judge talked to him.
"I want to raise my right hand to tell you the truth about what happened," Batayeh said in court. "I want my ma," he added.
The man implicated his brother in the crime and said he had been framed.
"Now I am an orphan," he told Redmond. "Thanks to Raed, I am a falling angel."
Borowsky said Raed Batayeh, the suspect's older brother, told police Emil had argued with their mother earlier Friday. Raed Batayeh tried to intervene, but his mother told him to go to bed. When he woke during the night to get some water, he found her dead with the bloody, damaged guitar nearby.
Borowsky said police found blood and hair in Emil Batayeh's room that links him with the crime. He said the police have been to the house more than five times because of altercations between mother and son.
On March 19, Emil Batayeh tried to strike her with a barbell, Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor Robert Merrelli said. Police arrested him on suspicion of felonious assault. The case was still under investigation when Besola was killed.
Merrelli said the family let him back in the house after his arrest when he agreed to seek treatment for his "emotional difficulties." On Monday, a piece of broken police tape hung from a downspout at the family's house. A few piles of shrubbery lay on a strip of lawn in front of the house, the remainders of a tree that fell on the house a few weeks ago, neighbors said.
"The cops would come over here a lot," said next-door neighbor Lena Zbozien, who learned of her neighbor's death earlier Monday. "This is a real tragedy, and I can't get over it."
The recently-widowed Zbozien said Besola would help move her trash cans to the backyard after trash day, and would always ask her how she was doing.
"She wanted to help her son and didn't want him to stay in a home," she said.
Macomb County Circuit Court records paint a portrait of Margaret Besola as a woman living in fear for years, though not always of her son.
After filing for divorce from Ronald Besola, her second husband, she sought a personal protection order against him in August 2002 -- citing a physical attack in their home in April 2002 and a fear that she was being stalked.
The order was granted two weeks later and extended once before it expired in February. But investigators said they see no link between Besola's ex-husband -- who is not Batayeh's father -- and her death.
Neighbors Marge and Ronald Robinson often saw Besola playing with her shar-pei mix, Buddy, in her backyard.
They both said the woman was in a bad marriage and was trying to get on with her life and help her two sons.
"We didn't ever break bread, but she was a super-nice lady who kept to herself most of the time," Ronald Robinson said.
Marge Robinson said the two women chatted about gardening and the warm weather Thursday.
"She bought him that guitar for his birthday," she said. "He asked us to come over for cake and I told him that I would. I know he had mental problems, but I would never think he would do something like this."
