Kabary Salem guilty of 1st degree murder in 2019 strangulation death of daughter

Update – Kabary Salem was formally sentenced by Lebanon County Court of Common Pleas Judge Bradford Charles on Wednesday, Nov. 26, to life in prison.

---

A jury took slightly over three hours Friday afternoon to find 57-year-old Kabary Salem guilty of premeditated first-degree murder for the October 2019 strangulation death of his 25-year-old daughter, Ola Salem.

The conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

Prosecutors from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office claimed that Salem strangled his daughter to death after a violent argument on Oct. 23 or 24, 2019, in Palmyra. The two were working to re-open a restaurant.

The commonwealth presented testimony, medical evidence, video recordings, and GPS data from Salem’s rental car to establish that Salem drove his daughter’s body to a secluded cul-de-sac in a Staten Island, New York, park, spent a few minutes there to drag the body to a wooded area, and then immediately drove back to Lebanon County.

GPS evidence showed Salem’s car stopping just 30 feet from where the body was found later that day.

Salem testified that he and Ola argued in his car on the night of Oct. 23, that he removed her from the car, and that he last saw Ola when she entered a black car and was driven away. He told the jury that he decided to drive to Staten Island to look for his daughter, who he believed might be in the area of the park, based on her previous activities.

When he got to the park, Salem told the jury that he was attacked near the cul-de-sac by three to five unknown men, and that he fought them off with a shovel he had in his car.

Later that day, while meeting with Staten Island police, he failed to tell them about his trip to the park and that he was attacked there, or that his assailants may have been his daughter’s killers.

Earlier Friday, prosecution and defense attorneys gave closing arguments to the jurors, who had heard three full days of testimony in the Lebanon County courtroom of Judge Bradford Charles.

Lead prosecutor Brian Zarallo focused the commonwealth’s case on Salem’s suspicious early morning drive to Staten Island, his failure to tell police about the supposed encounter with assailants in the park, and the fact that days later he fled to the Middle East, where he was eventually apprehended.

Zarallo drove those points home Friday morning in an animated, occasionally boisterous, closing argument.

Defense attorney Jay Nigrini argued throughout the trial and in his closing that there wasn’t a single piece of direct evidence that Salem killed Ola, and that Salem had tried repeatedly to care for his paranoid daughter, who had a history of mental illness and alcohol abuse, facts which the prosecution did not dispute.

Judge Charles has set sentencing for the afternoon of Nov. 26. Salem faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison and will remain in jail without bail until sentencing.

After the verdict, Zarallo said he was forbidden from speaking to the media by Attorney General policy, directing questions to the AG’s media office.

Nigrini said after court adjourned that he was disappointed by the verdict, but respected the jury’s hard work during the week long trial. He added that an appeal was possible, and that it could focus on the sufficiency of the prosecution’s evidence and certain pretrial evidentiary rulings made by the judge.