Tair Rada, who was killed at school, with her mother and father(Picture: BBC)
December 6, 2006, was supposed to be a regular day for 13-year-old Tair Rada, a popular and straight-A student at a school in Katzrin, Israel. She had school in the morning, a dance class with a friend in the evening and dinner with her family. But she never made it home.
Tair was found slain in a cubicle in the school toilets, killed by an assailant in the middle of the day. It was broad daylight. Students had been going in and out all day without realising there was a body behind one of the locked doors. Nobody had seen anyone or anything.
It’s the last place a parent would expect a brutal murder and Tair’s mother Ilana Rada couldn’t fathom how the one place you send your child unthinkingly, confident of safety, had been her daughter’s final resting place.
‘It’s every parent’s worst fear to send your daughter to school one day and never see her again,’ she told Metro.co.uk via an interpreter.
‘I felt sick. I suppressed the fact she died for almost a year. All I felt was anger and disappointment towards the city hall, the school, and everyone that should have looked after her but didn’t.’
Within a matter of days after the murder, police had settled on their prime suspect, Ukrainian national Roman Zadorov, who had been carrying out maintenance work in the school. After initially protesting his innocence, he confessed to the crime. In the eyes of the officer, the case had been solved.
Tair was found slain in her school’s toilets (Picture: BBC)
But doubt Roman was the killer set in fast. As soon as he was named in public, Ilana questioned if he had really carried out the murder. There was no forensic evidence linking him to the crime scene, no motive, and no history of violence.
‘Police came to my house two weeks after Tair was killed and I asked them all sorts of questions yet they never once mentioned Roman to me. Just a few hours later they held a press conference and said Roman was the killer for the first time,’ she explained.
‘At this point, I suspected something was going on because how did this all happen so fast? And how come nobody told me anything? It was hard for me to accept it because of the lack of evidence. They didn’t have anything. That is the point where their lies – and my doubts – started.’
On Roman’s confession alone, the police were able to convict him of the crime. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on September 14, 2010. But Ilana, and the country, remained unconvinced.
Pressure had been put on Roman to admit to killing Tair. While being held in custody, police paid an informant whose fee shot up dramatically if they secured a confession. Understanding little Hebrew at that point, Roman went along with it as he was told it would result in a lesser sentence.
Her killer is still on the loose 17 years after she was murdered (Picture: BBC)
He also re-enacted the events of the crime although crucially, as explored in documentary Shadow of Truth, now available on BBC iPlayer, he mislocated the crime scene and was instead guided by officers.
But why would an innocent man, and one who had become a father for the first time on the week of the murder, confess to a crime he never committed? Roman told the documentary makers he never thought he would either, but the pressure and police tactics broke him down.
Partly due to the documentary, which was first broadcast in Israel in 2016, which exposed the flaws in the police investigation, there was a retrial. Roman was eventually found innocent and set free in March. He spent 13 years behind bars.
Ilana said she has ‘always been angry’ at Roman for giving the false confession and effectively obstructing the path of justice. The killer is still loose.
She said: ‘It rocked my world. But I’m not judging him: I don’t know what I would have done in his shoes. That said I never felt any sympathy, understanding or compassion for him.’
Roman was wrongly imprisoned for murdering Tair (Picture: BBC)
Ilana and Roman have crossed paths since he was released as they both live in the same small town. They have not, however, spoken since the trial.
‘We both fought battles but they were separate battles,’ she said. ‘He fought for his innocence, and I fought, and am fighting, to find out who murdered my daughter.’
Shadow Of Truth offers an alternative suspect, a woman known as A.K. Six years after Tair’s murder her boyfriend, known as A.H, contacted the police and told him she had confessed to the crime. He said he’d seen the murder weapon and her clothing, all covered in blood.
A.H claimed A.K was disturbed and said she had a she-wolf living inside of her called Mildew, who wanted human blood and flesh. Under Mildew’s ‘orders’, she had dressed as a student, walked into the school, waited for her victim in the toilets, killed, changed her clothing, and left.
He served more than a decade behind bars before being released (Picture: BBC)
As police investigated the pair were placed under house arrested and, during this time, A.K visited her new boyfriend and tried to kill him. When officers arrived, she bit one of them, later telling detectives she did so because she ‘didn’t want to go empty handed’ and she needed ‘something, some morsel of flesh.’
She also told them she was miserable as she was ‘starving’ and saw everyone around her as ‘walking sandwiches’. A.K was placed in a psychiatric unit. She was released and then re-admitted several years later after she was found plotting to kill her neighbour with a knife.
A.K and A.H gave testimony in Roman’s retrial. It was behind closed doors and the public was barred, but the judge allowed Ilana to be presented while they were questioned.
Does she believe either one could be responsible for her daughter’s death? ‘The judge pointed at evidence that ties A.K to the murder and they also pointed out weird stuff about A.H. They said the investigation relating to them should be re-examined or re-opened,’ she replied.
‘There are also other directions I would like examined just for my peace of mind.’
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After Roman was released, the case into Tair’s murder was reopened, which is some progress. However, a new investigation needs to be signed off. It’s a decision that needs to be made by the prosecutor, police and state attorney. Ilana hopes it will happen within the next few months.
And she hopes even more, nearly two decades after the atrocious crime was committed, Tair’s killer will finally be brought to justice.
Shadow of Truth episode five, produced by Fremantle company Silvio Productions, airs on BBC Four on Monday 14th August at 10.30pm with all episodes now available to stream on BBC IPlayer.
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Tair was killed 17 years ago but her murderer is still on the loose.