Inset: Ali Abulaban appears in court on May 13 in California, listening to playback of audio from the day his wife Ana Abulaban was murdered inside their home. Background: Trial video footage played for jurors features a confession from Ali Abulaban to his mother moments after the slayings. (Screengrabs via KUSI.)
Ali Abulaban’s mother sat in a courtroom this week in California and testified that she could not believe what she was seeing nor hearing when her son, a popular TikTok influencer known as “JinnKid,” called her, admitted to murdering his estranged wife and her friend and then sent her pictures of the corpses.
Dalal Warra, NBC affiliate KNSD reported, was the first witness to testify in the trial that got underway in early May.
“I recall saying, ‘That’s not funny Ali, that’s not funny.’ Then I received the picture, looked, deleted it right away and immediately fell on the ground,” she testified Monday.
Her son had called her only minutes after the slayings inside the luxury apartment, according to prosecutors. Abulaban once shared the home with his estranged wife Ana Abulaban, 28, until she had kicked him out.
Prosecutors say she and her friend, Rayburn Cardenas Barron, 29, were both killed when Ali Abulaban burst into the unit on Oct. 21, 2021, fully enraged. As Law&Crime previously reported, in a highly emotional jailhouse interview with local Fox affiliate KSWB last year where he sobbed and at times slammed his fist onto a jail counter, Abulaban admitted to spying on his wife in the days before she died by sneaking into the apartment and installing an app on their 5-year-old daughter’s iPad so he could listen in on what was happening inside the house.
“Oh my God, I caught her, I caught her. Oh my God, oh my god. There’s a man, there’s a man. And then guess what I hear like a f—— nightmare? R&B music,” he said.
He said he was “screaming” on the ride over: “Don’t have sex, Ana … Don’t do it.”
When he got to the home, he said he found his wife and Barron on the couch, kissing. He would not say what happened in the next few moments.
Ana Abulaban and Ali Abulaban in a video dated Aug. 19, 2021.
Abulaban has long denied that he ever told his mother that he killed his wife or her friend and in court, KNSD reported Monday, the once popular TikToker had no reaction as his mother testified.
Warra told the court that her son’s father was abusive physically and verbally to her and her children when Abulaban was young. She had been dragged down a flight of stairs in front of her children, she said, or locked herself behind bedroom doors so Abulaban’s father wouldn’t be able to get her.
When asked by prosecutors Monday why she did not tell San Diego police that she knew it was her son who pulled the trigger in October 2021, Warra testified: “It’s not about honesty. I was emotionally distraught. I was in shock. People in shock, they don’t communicate well.”
Prosecutors noted to jurors that Ana Abulaban had been punched and pushed before by her husband but no police charges were filed. It was Warra, they said, who urged her daughter-in-law not to file a temporary restraining order.
When pressed directly at trial about whether her son had ever admitted to punching his wife in her face, Warra only replied: “She hit him too.”
She also reportedly rejected declarations from prosecutors that her son was discharged from the U.S. Air Force for allegedly hitting his wife in the face.
She didn’t believe it, she said, “because I know how they were together.”
Abulaban is expected to testify at the trial soon. Unlike the stoicism he presented when his mother testified, during opening statements he was often emotional and could be seen wiping what appeared to be tears from his face. His attorneys have not denied that he participated in the shootings but instead are anchoring their defense on how Abulaban ended up where he did.
Drug abuse — cocaine, namely — and a history of childhood abuse and an undiagnosed bipolar disorder were a perfect storm that culminated in the shooting at the apartment, his attorney argues. The defense also reportedly told the jury during opening statements that Abulaban was “simply out of his mind” that day and it was as though he was “in the passenger seat of his body.”
A psychologist called by the defense on Monday testified that Abulaban has since been diagnosed formally with bipolar I disorder and has a number of other unspecified personality disorders including narcissistic features.
His wife’s best friend, Cassie Conroy, told reporters after Abulaban was interviewed in jail that he was nothing but selfish.
“He’s a bad guy, there’s nothing good about him. He’s selfish. That’s call I can say is selfish,” Conroy said.
Jurors heard audio of Abulaban making the alleged confession to his mother just a week ago, according to local Fox affiliate KUSI. They also saw video from the morning Abulaban entered the apartment to install the listening device on his daughter’s iPad. He hid it behind a bed in the main bedroom. That was around 9 a.m.
It was close to 3 p.m. when surveillance footage from the apartment complex showed Ana Abulaban and Barron going into the apartment complex together and Ali Abulaban entering the building’s parking garage before going inside the complex.
It was security footage from a neighbor’s camera which caught audio of him entering the apartment, a series of at least six gunshots that followed, his confession to his mother and his screams of “Ana! Ana! Ana!”
The slain woman’s friends described a history of violence that plagued the couple’s relationship since as far back as 2015 when the couple lived in Japan before moving to Virginia and then to San Diego. KUSI reported that friends described Ali Abulaban as deeply jealous and unfaithful, allegedly starting an affair with another woman in the apartment building. There were also questions of his wife’s fidelity, defense attorneys have argued.
Prosecutors said in the days before he killed his wife, Abulaban used Google to search “decapitated heads” and “how to plant a listening device.”
For help with domestic violence issues, the National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233 or text BEGIN to 88788.
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