text: Morrad Ghonim sped out of the parking lot with his young bride bleeding to death in the passenger seat next to him. On the way to a hospital, he barreled through a red light. 
   
   Through frantic screams, he told the California Highway Patrol officer who pulled him over that someone had just shot his wife, Vicki, through the window of the family’s burgundy Honda as they left a park in La Mirada. He didn’t get a look at the shooter’s face, he said. As her body went limp, their 6-month-old son watched from the back seat. 
   
   It was July 23, 1992, and Ghonim had just become a 19-year-old widower. 
   
   Detectives followed a few leads, but the investigation went cold. A breakthrough nearly two decades after the shooting would lead investigators to a drug dealer with a wild story — and a courtroom drama that ended Monday. 
   
   The morning after the shooting, Ghonim and a pair of somber detectives went to see Vicki’s parents. 
   
   He told them that he and his wife had taken their baby to Creek Park. It was a special place for the sweethearts — Morrad, 19, and Vicki, 17 — who sometimes had sneaked away from class at John Glenn High School to spend time there together. 
   
   Soon after they got to the park, Ghonim said, he heard a group of people catcalling his wife. He figured they were gang members. Vicki, whose loving but feisty personality sometimes got the best of her, screamed something back. 
   
   Ghonim said he got a bad feeling and ushered his family toward their car. As they settled into the Honda, he heard gunfire. The shooter had been hiding behind bushes, he said, so he never got a look at who had attacked his wife. 
   
   Police had collected a clump of clothes from the park that night, including a sweatshirt a witness recognized as one worn by a man jogging nearby right after the gunshots rang out. But detectives could never determine whom the items belong to. 
   
   Ghonim eventually remarried a woman from Jordan — his parents’ homeland. He and his new wife had five children. They raised Vicki’s son together. He fell out of touch with his dead wife’s family. 
   
   About a decade ago, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department received grant money to reopen old cases and look at genetic evidence. 
   
   Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times Defense attorney Alan Eisner delivers an opening statement in the trial of Morrad Ghonim, who is charged with hiring Leon Martinez to stage a robbery and kill his wife in 1992. Defense attorney Alan Eisner delivers an opening statement in the trial of Morrad Ghonim, who is charged with hiring Leon Martinez to stage a robbery and kill his wife in 1992. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times) 
   
   They tested a pair of black pants found in the bushes at Creek Park and turned up DNA from Leon Martinez, who was serving prison time for burglary. 
   
   At first, Martinez tried to pin the murder on a dead friend. But he eventually admitted to shooting Vicki Ghonim. It wasn’t the botched carjacking that authorities long had suspected. No, he told detectives, he was a hired hit man. 
   
   And his client was Morrad Ghonim. 
   
   Now a businessman living in Antigua with his third wife, Ghonim was extradited last year. He recently sat at the defense table in a Norwalk courtroom — his graying temples framing heavy eyes. 
   
   As Martinez entered to testify, Ghonim cleared his throat and glared. 
   
   The two had met through a mutual acquaintance in 1992, Martinez said. After Ghonim bought crack cocaine from him that same day, Martinez said, Ghonim asked if he knew anybody who would kill for money. 
   
   Martinez had recently traded drugs for a .22-caliber revolver, so he said he would do it. 
   
   They didn’t get into many details, Martinez said, but Ghonim told him that he wanted it to look like a robbery. They settled on a price: $20,000. 
   
   “He just wanted her dead,” Martinez said. 
   
   When he saw the burgundy Honda pull into the parking lot that evening, Martinez was high on cocaine. But he said he remembers walking up to the window and pulling the gun from his pocket. He stood a foot away, he said, and fired at Vicki’s head. 
   
   As she pleaded with him not to hurt her baby, he shot her again and again. The last time, he said, he put the gun directly to her eyes and pulled the trigger. 
   
   As her body slumped over, Martinez testified, Ghonim handed him an envelope of cash, reaching over his wife’s body. 
   
   “It doesn’t get more premeditated and deliberate,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Villa said during the trial. 
   
   After taking the money, Martinez said, he jogged away, shedding his top layer of clothes near some bushes. He then headed to a nearby Del Taco, where he waited for a friend. 
   
   During Martinez’s testimony, Ghonim scribbled notes. Sometimes he stared down, shaking his head. 
   
   Villa urged jurors to consider Martinez’s testimony along with that of his former friend, Deanna Woody, who had picked him up the night of the murder. 
   
   In 1998, Woody said, a tearful Martinez had confessed to her. She said she didn’t tell police until after a detective contacted her in 2009 because she feared for her life and her family’s safety. 
   
   She also testified that a few days before the slaying, she had seen Martinez with a man who she thought looked Middle Eastern. She said the man asked her if she was single and told her that he was having problems with the mother of his child — a student at John Glenn High. He said they were planning to split up. 
   
   The man also told Woody, whose child had recently had a heart transplant, that he too had had an operation on his heart, she testified. 
   
   But the defense pointed out that Woody had been unable to pick out Ghonim’s photograph from a lineup. And Martinez had changed some details while on the witness stand. 
   
   During previous interviews and court appearances, he’d said that Ghonim had paid him a lot less — putting the amount at $500 one time and $10,000 at another. Earlier, he’d told authorities that he had met Ghonim on numerous occasions to sell him drugs before he was asked about killing Vicki. 
   
   Pressed by the defense, Martinez said, “My memory ain’t that good at all.” 
   
   And in several recorded phone calls Martinez made to his wife from behind bars, he said he had talked to the prosecutor about the case and was considering lying about Ghonim’s role in the killing. 
   
   “I could tell by the way the D.A. is acting that they need me,” he told her. “If I could make up a lie to convict this other guy, they’re going to do that.” 
   
   In another call, he said the detectives and attorneys wanted him “to basically sit and make a story up.” ||||| NORWALK >> A judge on Friday ruled there was enough evidence to try an Antigua man accused of hiring a drug dealer to kill his wife at a La Mirada park in 1992. 
   
   The judge also denied the defense’s motion to dismiss the charges against 43-year-old Morrad Ghonim. 
   
   He ordered Ghonim to return to court Feb. 16 to be arraigned. 
   
   Leon Martinez, the convicted shooter, testified Thursday at the preliminary hearing that Ghonim hired him for $10,000 to kill Victoria Ghonim, 17, in a staged robbery while the couple were at Creek Park in La Mirada on July 23, 1992. He said he only received $5,000. 
   
   Martinez told others that he was hired for $500, according to Sgt. Howard Cooper of the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau who testified Friday. 
   
   But Dmitry Gorin, one of Ghonim’s attorneys, questioned the motive of Martinez and Ghonim’s second wife. 
   
   The defense pointed out that Martinez, who previously faced a sentence of life in prison without parole for the killing, will now get 28 years to life after testifying against Ghonim. 
   
   “So essentially this is a 20-year-old murder that comes down to the credibility of a convicted killer and an ex-wife who hates Mr. Ghonim, wants to see him in prison and promised to send him to hell,” Gorin said. 
   
   Gorin said the ex-wife went to the police with her version of the story. 
   
   He thinks it will be hard for a jury to find Ghonim guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He said no one identified his client as the Middle Eastern man who talked to a witness and was seen with Martinez. 
   
   “We didn’t hear evidence of a real motive,” Gorin said. 
   
   The attorney asked how Ghonim, who was a teenager in 1992, could have had access to that type of money. 
   
   The defense also argued that there was a lack of physical evidence. 
   
   Gorin asked Cooper if Ghonim was tested for gunpowder residue. He pointed out that Morrad Ghonim was inside the car when Martinez shot Victoria Ghonim six times. Gunpowder residue could end up on someone who was near a shooter, Gorin said. 
   
   “To my knowledge, the results of the test were negative,” Cooper said. But the detective said hands and wrists are usually tested for gunpowder residue. Ghonim’s clothing wasn’t tested, according to Cooper. 
   
   The other version of what happened at Creek Park two decades ago comes from Ghonim. 
   
   Ghonim told investigators he and his wife went to the park with their baby son. They went for a walk. When they reached a wooden foot bridge, he told detectives they started hearing catcalls from a group east of them. 
   
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   Cooper said Ghonim couldn’t describe the people in the group but knew it was composed of males and females. 
   
   “He said Vicky started saying something to the group,” Cooper said. 
   
   Ghonim told his wife to shut up, and they returned to the car. As he was putting their son in the back seat, he heard his wife arguing with the group through the partially open window. 
   
   “He heard gunshots as he places the key in the ignition,” Cooper said. 
   
   Ghonim told detectives he never saw the shooter. He raced out of the park, noticed his wife had been shot and drove around looking for a hospital but was unsuccessful. He reportedly drove to a medical facility in La Mirada, but it was closed. 
   
   He later got stopped by an officer in Norwalk. 
   
   Ghonim was first arrested in 2010 for the murder but later released. 
   
   Detectives arrested him last year in Antigua and Barbuda, where he had been living. 
   
   The district attorney’s office charged him with murder with the special circumstance allegations of lying in wait and murder for financial gain. It is also alleged that a handgun was used to commit the crime. 
   
   He faces death or life in prison without parole if convicted as charged. 
   
   The prosecution has not decided yet whether to seek the death penalty. 
   
   Ghonim is being held without bail in county jail. ||||| LA MIRADA >> A jury on Monday convicted a former La Mirada man of hiring a hit man to kill his 17-year-old wife at a La Mirada park 24 years ago. 
   
   Jurors found Morrad Ghonim guilty of the July 23, 1992 first degree murder of Victoria Ghonim, Shiara Davila-Morales, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, said 
   
   Davila-Morales said the jury also found true the special circumstance allegations that Ghonim solicited his wife’s murder and killed her by means of lying in wait, that he killed her for financial gain and that a handgun was used to commit the crime. 
   
   The 43-year-old Ghonim will be sentenced Dec. 19 at Norwalk Superior Court, Davila-Morales said. 
   
   The Ghonims and their baby son headed to Creek Park in La Mirada on July 23, 1992. At the time, authorities were told that a man walked up to the family car, tried to rob the couple and shot Victoria Ghonim several times. 
   
   But robbery was not the motive behind the shooting. 
   
   The prosecution said Morrad Ghonim hatched a plot to kill his wife and hired Leon Martinez to do it. 
   
   Martinez, who admitted to dealing drugs in 1992, testified at the preliminary hearing in January that Morrad Ghonim offered him $10,000 to kill Victoria Ghonim. He claimed he only got paid $5,000. 
   
   Ghonim wanted it to look like a robbery, according to Martinez. 
   
   Martinez said he walked up to the car’s passenger side and demanded money. The couple’s son was in the backseat. 
   
   “She said, ‘Don’t hurt my baby.’ I had no intention of hurting the baby,” Martinez said during the preliminary hearing. 
   
   He shot Victoria Ghonim several times, including once in the head. 
   
   Martinez threw his pants, sweatshirt and a baseball jersey underneath a bush, got rid of the bullet shells then called someone for a ride. He promised the driver a dinner at Sizzler. 
   
   He wore a trench coat when his ride picked him up. 
   
   The murder remained a cold case until 2009 when DNA on the clothing left behind matched samples taken from Martinez while he was in prison on an unrelated case. He was arrested in 2010, and tried twice. 
   
   A jury convicted Martinez last year of killing Victoria Ghonim. 
   
   Detectives also arrested Morrad Ghonim in 2010 but he was later released. Then in 2015, investigation arrested him in Antigua and Barbuda where he was living with his current wife, a former Miss Dominica. 
   
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   Morrad Ghonim remains in custody at the Pitchess Detention Center North Facility in Castaic without bail.
target: – On July 23, 1992, Morrad Ghonim watched his 17-year-old wife die. The couple had taken their 6-month-old son to Creek Park in La Mirada, Calif. Ghonim said he felt uncomfortable after a group of people called out at his wife and he wanted to leave, reports the Los Angeles Times. But as they made to drive off, a gunman approached the passenger door, demanded money, and murdered his wife. Now, 24 years later, a jury has decided who was responsible for Vicki Ghonim's death: then-19-year-old Morrad Ghonim. The 43-year-old, who was extradited from Antigua last year, was on Monday found guilty of first-degree murder. The man who pulled the trigger, however, was Leon Martinez. Police got to Martinez by way of grant money earmarked for cold cases, reports the Whittier Daily News. A DNA test of pants found near the scene led them in 2010 to Martinez, who said Ghonim hired him and even reached over his wife's body to hand him payment. A friend of Martinez's relayed meeting a man days before Vicki's death who said he and his child's mother—a student at John Glenn High, as Vicki was—were having issues and planned to separate. In late January, the Daily News painted a picture of a confident defense, given that in exchange for testifying, Martinez will not serve life without parole for the murder, but instead 28 years to life. "This is a 20-year-old murder that comes down to the credibility of a convicted killer and an ex-wife who hates Mr. Ghonim ... and promised to send him to hell," said one of Ghonim's lawyers, noting that Ghonim's second wife talked to police. Ghonim could be handed life without parole at his Dec. 19 sentencing.