Authorities in Texas arrested a man on Thursday suspected of fatally shooting an Iranian graduate student in 2012, CBS News reported.
Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan, 56, was charged in the January 15, 2012 death of 30-year-old Gelareh Bagherzadeh.
Bagherzadeh was studying molecular genetics technology at the University of Texas's MD Anderson Cancer Center, according to KHOU-TV. She was driving home to Houston, where she lived with her parents, when she was shot and killed.
Police said she was on the phone with her boyfriend, who heard a loud thud and then a screech while talking to her. After being shot in the head, Bagherzadeh crashed her car and died at the scene.
For over two years, the case remained open. Eventually police investigated motives, including Bagherzadeh's political activism. She was allegedly against the Iranian government and supported gender equality -- something she shared with Irsan.
William Orr, one of Irsan's neighbors, told KHOU-TV that he saw FBI officials search Irsan's home following her death after Orr reported seeing him bury something in his backyard in the middle of the night.
Irsan's son-in-law, Coty Beavers, 28, was shot and killed in the apartment he shared with his wife eleven months later. According to The Houston Chronicle, Irsan did not give his daughter, Nesreen, permission to marry Beavers.
"Gelareh was this Westernized girl from a Muslim country," Cory Beavers, Coty's identical twin, told The Chronicle. "(Irsan) thought it was her influence making Nesreen leave home."
