Murdered: Sparkle Rai

*Editor’s Note: This story is quite old…it happened about 8 years ago! I just feel that it’s important to also post stories regarding racism amongst minorities. It’s really sad that this man’s grand daughter will grow up knowing that he was responsible for the murder of her mother. May she rest in peace….

Original Article Found at AJC

The man accused of stabbing a woman to death in a reputed murder-for-hire later said that he should have harmed her baby as well, according to testimony delivered today in Fulton County Superior Court.

A woman testified she watched Cleveland Clark kill 22-year-old Sparkle Rai inside Rai’s Union City apartment. Clark said he didn’t hurt Rai’s daughter, but “he said he should have thrown the (expletive) over the rail” of the balcony, said the witness, now 23.

The woman was testifying in the death penalty trial of Chiman Rai, a Mississippi businessman accused of hiring Clark through middle men to kill his daughter-in-law.

Prosecutors said 68-year-old Chiman Rai, a native of India, had Sparkle Rai killed because he didn’t want his son married to an African-American woman. The slaying occurred in 2000, a month after Sparkle and Rajeeve “Ricky” Rai married.

The woman who testified this morning was a teenager at the time of the killing. She said her best friend, Clark’s cousin, recruited her to help create a ruse to get Clark into Sparkle’s Union City apartment. The witness said she thought they were being recruited to transport drugs for a $5,000 fee but learned too late that the job was really murder.

The woman, who broke down in tears when shown pictures of Sparkle’s bloody corpse, testified that Clark nearly botched the killing because he tried to strangle Sparkle.

As they were leaving the apartment the seemingly lifeless Sparkle gasped, which caught Clark’s attention.

“Cleve was walking out the door with me and (Sparkle) started coming back to life,” the witness said. “He went back to the kitchen and got a knife and stabbed her and he was still stabbing her when I left.”

After the killing, the woman, who had been attending classes at Lovejoy High School earlier in the day, said she assured Clark that she would keep quiet about the crime.

“It was a pinky promise,” she said, showing jurors how she and Clark had interlocked little fingers when she made her vow.

Four years later, she was arrested in a high-speed chase with Atlanta police. She reportedly told police she could help them solve a killing, which led investigators to the bizarre motive for the murder that had stumped them for years.

Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford issued an order Wednesday that the media not identify either the woman or Clark’s cousin because they are in jail and don’t want to be known as snitches.

The 25-year-old cousin testified Wednesday that Sparkle Rai never screamed after the two young women asked to use her bathroom and Clark slipped in behind them. Clark asked the victim “where the dope was” but she didn’t seem to know what he was talking about, the cousin said.

Chiman Rai reputedly believed Sparkle had led his son, Rajeeve “Ricky” Rai, then 20, into thievery and drugs. In reality, investigators said, the younger Rai and his wife worked in menial jobs without any connection to the drug trade.

The cousin testified Wednesday that her friend took possession of Sparkle’s infant daughter, Analla, who had started crying and took the baby fromo the room in an attempt to calm her. Clark wrapped a cord from Sparkle’s vacuum cleaner around her neck and started strangling her with it, the cousin said.

“She was gagging and blood started coming out of her mouth,” the witness said, noting that Sparkle reached out during her murder.

“In what direction was she reaching?” asked prosecutor Eleanor Ross.

“Her baby,” the cousin said.