The trial has begun for a central Pennsylvania man accused of having killed and burned the body of his wife, who disappeared more than eight years ago.
Hap Seiders, 66, of Silver Spring Township was charged seven years after prosecutors allege he killed his 53-year-old wife, Rabihan, and incinerated her body in the fireplace of their Cumberland County home, PennLive.com reported.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Courtney Hair LaRue said the couple’s “volatile” relationship was defined by “power and control.” After he was charged with domestic violence in 2011, the prosecutor said, she got into a home safe, took valuable coins and hid them from her husband in a safe deposit box to try to regain some control over her life.
Hap Seiders, a coin dealer, then “lured” Rabihan back into the relationship in hopes of finding the coins, she said. The woman then disappeared, last seen at a drug store near their home in March 2012. Prosecutors alleged she was killed and her body burned “to bones and ashes.”
“Because he could not control her, he erased her,” LaRue said, citing closed blinds at the home for days after the disappearance and black smoke emanating from the chimney. She also cited a drop of blood on the carpet, her DNA on a knife and bone fragments found in the fireplace.
But defense attorney George Matangos called the allegation of Rabihan’’s death shaky, saying there was no DNA to show that the bone fragments belonged to the victim or are even those of a human female.
“The government can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rabihan is dead,” Matangos said.
He told the jury that the woman saw his client as a “mark” after the two met at a casino in Atlantic City where she worked as a masseuse. After a “whirlwind” romance, she moved in days later, and during their relationship stole $3 million worth of Hap’s property, including gold bullion worth $1 million that has not been recovered, Matangos said.
“She wasn’t a woman in trouble,” he said. “She was a woman who had a plan.”
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