Perris man charged killing his wife, stepdaughter

A Perris man was charged today with the strangulation deaths of his wife and 6-year-old stepdaughter.

Michael Barbar, 52, faces two counts of murder with special circumstance allegations of committing multiple murders and lying in wait that would make him eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office will decide at a later date whether to pursue capital punishment.

Barbar was arrested in Deming, New Mexico, on Nov. 15 and will be extradited to California by the end of next week, said John Hall of the District Attorney’s Office.

Deming is a small town just east of the Arizona line, some 650 miles from Riverside.

Maysam Barbar, 43, and Tamara Barbar were found dead in their home in the 2800 block of Banner Place on Nov. 14. Sheriff’s deputies also found an unharmed 10-year-old girl in the house.

An autopsy showed that both victims had been strangled, and the child had “blunt force trauma to the head,” said sheriff’s Detective Dean Spivacke.

“We have reason to believe that he recently discovered the 6-year-old was not his biological daughter,” Spivacke said of a possible motive for the deaths.

Barbar is accused of waiting until his wife and her daughter went to bed before killing them. He is also suspected of giving his two teenage stepchildren, who also lived at home, money to stay out late on the night of the killings, according to Hall.

Tags: Detective Dean Spivacke, John Hall, Michael Barbar, perris, Riverside County District Attorney, SWRNN

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 5:46 pm and is filed under Courts, Crime, Local News, News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.