Both in the police interrogation and in his testimony in court, the defendant refrained from giving a convincing explanation as to how he got the aforementioned license plate number and how he knew that it was a white Mitsubishi Outlander, and this is demanding. Moreover, the very search of a vehicle of this type testifies to the defendant's prior knowledge of the characteristics of the stolen vehicle, which he eventually used on the day of the murder. In addition, the proximity in time to the day of the murder when the search was carried out on the phone, and the distance from the date when the stolen vehicle was brought in from Israel, support the assumption that the purpose of the search and duplication of the license plates was related to the murder plans, and not to the activity of trading in the stolen vehicles of Ahmad and Muhammad. Of course, the screenshot in itself does not constitute conclusive evidence of the defendant's personal involvement in the murder, but in the absence of a reasonable and weighty explanation, it can strengthen the connection between the defendant and Mitsubishi, a relationship that began weeks before the murder and lasted until the day of his arrest, three days after the murder.
The paper clipper
As I noted in one of the previous chapters, following the arrest of the defendant and his cousins on August 29, 2022, his detective Parnas searched the Mazda used by the defendant and seized, among other things, "various documents in the driver's seat door compartment," which he put in an envelope and marked with his name "S.P. 6". All the exhibits he seized, including that envelope, were given to investigator Tali Vaknin [P/92]. In his testimony in court, Parnas confirmed that he had put the documents in an envelope without counting or marking them.
The next morning, 30 August 2022, at 6:30 A.M., while she was recording the exhibits, Vaknin came across the aforementioned envelope, opened it and photocopied the documents that were inside. Among the documents, Vaknin located a "torn note" (hereinafter: "the paper clipping"), on which it was written twice in handwriting "871-01-302", i.e., a record of the duplicate license plate number that was installed on the Toyota on the day of the murder. Vaknin wrote down a memorandum about her actions, and attached to it a photocopy of all the documents that were in the envelope [P/138 - Vaknin Photocopying Memorandum, P/144A - the original paper clipping].