Convicted murderer takes stand in retrial

Thirteen years after Mohammed Haroon Ali wrapped his hands around the neck of his girlfriend inside a San Mateo rehabilitation program, the convicted killer told jurors in his retrial yesterday he still doesn’t know why.

"It just made no sense what I did,” Ali said during testimony often punctuated by audible sobbing and short breaks allowing him to collect himself.

Ali, 36, took the stand in his own defense late yesterday morning, detailing personally for the first time how he says Tracey Biletnikoff, 19, was strangled by his hand in a manic state described earlier by doctors as fueled by bipolar disorder and emotional distress. Ali, dressed in a dark suit and green shirt, began his day of testimony outlining his move from Fiji as a teenager, a series of relationships which prosecutors have used to argue a previous history of violence on his part and eventually the circumstances of Feb. 15, 1999 when Biletnikoff confronted the recovering drug and alcohol abuser about a relapse.

"I grabbed her shoulders ... I tried to move her,” Ali said, explaining his desire to leave an office at the Friendship Hall where Biletnikoff was telling him he had to restart the Project 90 rehabilitation program from scratch following a weekend of drugs and alcohol.

"I was just angry,” he said, recalling how he tried pulling her from the door and that his hands moved to her neck. The next thing he remembered, he testified, was that "she was on the floor” with white froth at her mouth and "I couldn’t believe I did it.”

Ali said he used a Project 90 van to drive his girlfriend’s body to a relative’s home and then to a parking lot at Cañada College in Redwood City where he pulled off her jeans to replicate a sex crime and pulled her by the ankles down the ravine. Ali said he also took a black T-shirt from his home and wrapped it around Biletnikoff’s neck to further divert attention from his crime.

The T-shirt found on Biletnikoff is a critical decision for jurors as District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe has argued Biletnikoff was actually still alive after Ali manually strangled her and he knowingly turned his shirt into a ligature to finish off the job. Defense attorney Peter Goldscheider wants jurors to believe Ali’s version which bolsters his argument the death was less than a first-degree murder and he should be found guilty of a lesser charge.

Ali was convicted of first-degree murder in 2001 and sentenced to 60 years to life for that crime and a previous kidnapping of a former girlfriend. Ali did not testify in that trial. In 2009, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction, ruling that Wagstaffe had improperly removed at least one black individual from the jury pool for racial discrimination reasons.

During his time in prison, the defense said Ali was diagnosed with bipolar disorder which played a role in the strangulation. The defense also said Ali was mentally distressed because, days before, a former girlfriend pregnant with his child told him she wanted nothing to do with him.

During cross-examination at the end of the day, Ali conceded during this period he was also still involved with a 16-year-old girl he had formerly impregnated and even exchanged Valentine’s Day gifts. However, he insisted he and Biletnikoff loved each other.

Ali and Biletnikoff, the daughter of former football star Fred Biletnikoff, met in 1997 at respective substance abuse programs that overlapped in San Mateo. Ali was even named a counselor in Project 90 with access to the group van he later used to transport Biletnikoff’s body from the Friendship Hall in San Mateo, where she died, to the ravine. The weekend before her Feb. 15, 1999 death, Biletnikoff spent time with a childhood friend while Ali went drinking in San Francisco and continued on a bender up and down the Peninsula involving alcohol, heroin and cocaine. That Monday, he confessed his relapse to Biletnikoff who drove him from her East Bay home back to Project 90’s meeting space at the Friendship Hall.

Inside the office, Ali said he asked Biletnikoff for her car keys so he could return to San Francisco because he did not want to start over. Then "it came to the point that what really got me angry is when she called me a loser,” he said.

Biletnikoff was angry also because he told her of his former girlfriend being pregnant, an admission that came the same day the couple had unprotected sex. Ali claimed Biletnikoff hit him a few times but he never struck her. In a different segment of testimony, he said a wound on her head was caused after her death because he dropped the body while moving it from the van to the ravine.

After leaving the body, Ali fled to Mexico in her car and was arrested coming back into the United States. Ali said he returned because he dreamt of Biletnikoff, the same reason he later confessed to authorities about the strangling.

Under cross-examination, Ali admitted having never told anybody including the defense psychiatrist that he staged the body to look like a sexual assault because he was afraid. Wagstaffe asked repeatedly why he kept such information to himself for 13 years but was willing to tell jurors.

"Is that because you’re making it up?” Wagstaffe asked.

"No, I’m not,” Ali said.

Ali remains in custody without bail. He continues his testimony this morning.

Michelle Durand can be reached by email: michelle@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 102.