Family Of Four Murdered In Jersey City

[Pharo Of Egypt]

ATM Videos May Lead To N.J. Family's Killer

NEWARK, N.J. -- For the first time since an Egyptian family was tied up and murdered in Jersey City in January, Hudson County authorities say they're confident they'll be able to catch whoever did it.

Surveillance videos from an automated teller machine may lead authorities to the killer of the Armanious family, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said Tuesday.

Someone using Hossam Armanious' debit card removed thousands of dollars from several of his accounts during a string of ATM visits in the days following the murders of Armanious, his wife and their two young daughters.

The suspect used the Bank of America card at ATMs in Jersey City and midtown Manhattan starting on Jan. 15, the morning after the four were found stabbed to death inside their home, and continued for five days, DeFazio said.

The prosecutor said Tuesday investigators were able to identify the make and model of a car that drove up to an ATM in Jersey City, and were working on reading the license plate number from the ATM video.

"I think we're going to get someone with this, I really do," DeFazio said.

The withdrawals, during which Armanious' personal identification number was entered, provide new evidence to support the theory that robbery was the motive for the killings.

Members of the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox community to which the Armanious family belonged have blamed the killings on Islamic extremists. Friends of the family have speculated that Armanious might have angered Muslims with his postings in an Internet chat room frequented by Christians and Muslims.

Hudson County prosecutors and the FBI, while never dismissing the religion angle, have focused on a financial motive. DeFazio said that while religion still has not been ruled out, such a motive "is looking less and less likely."

The killings, in which family members were bound and gagged and stabbed repeatedly in the head with knives from their home, have exacerbated tensions between Muslims and Christians in Jersey City and elsewhere in northern New Jersey.

Some in the area's Coptic community refuse to believe that robbery was the primary motive, and continue to push for the killings to be classified and investigated as hate crimes. Although there was evidence of robbery at the house, a large amount of jewelry remained untouched

http://www.wnbc.com/news/4245090/detail.html