Kin grapple with alleged contract killing

By BETH WARREN, JEFFRY SCOTT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 10/29/06

As far as Sparkle Reid knew, her fiance's parents were dead. And in an odd way, her family said, that brought her comfort on her wedding day.

His parents had opposed her relationship with Rajeeve "Ricky" Rai because she was African-American and he was Indian, even going so far as to offer her $10,000 to break up with him, Reid's family said.


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Prosecutors say Chiman Rai, left, sought to have Sparkle Rai killed.

She believed Rai's story that his mother was crushed to death in an earthquake in India the year before and that his father died of diabetes a few months later, police said.

In fact, Rai's parents were alive on the day of the couple's wedding before a justice of the peace in Fulton County. And, when his 67-year-old father, Chiman Rai, found out days later that his son had married Sparkle Reid, investigators say he set in motion a murderous scheme to have her killed.

A month later, investigators said, a contract killer showed up at the door of the newlywed's Union City apartment, along with two women pretending to deliver a package.

When 22-year-old Sparkle Rai opened the door, the 300-pound ex-con attacked her with such savagery she didn't have time to throw up her arms and shield herself from his knife, a Union City detective said. She was stabbed at least 13 times in the back, neck, chest and ribs. She was strangled and her throat slit.

Her husband, then 20, found her bloody body when he came home from work, police said. The couple's 7-month-old daughter, Analla, was unharmed in the next room.

Rai was questioned through the night, but the break in the case came four years later when one of the women who accompanied the alleged hit man to Sparkle Rai's house was arrested on a drug charge by Atlanta Police. She told them she knew who killed Sparkle Rai — and that she and a friend witnessed the killing.

The women's stories led to what authorities now say was a murder plot concocted by Ricky Rai's 67-year-old father.

"I think almost from the beginning his family opposed their relationship," said Lt. Lee Brown, an investigator with the Union City police department. "They're Indian, and it was real taboo for him to marry outside the family, and it was even more taboo for him to marry a black girl."

Prosecutors say Chiman Rai paid $10,000 for the contract killing of his son's wife and should get the death penalty. Through his Decatur attorney, Michael McDaniel, Rai insists he had no hand in the killing. Some of his former colleagues and friends, who are African-American, say they believe him.

Rai, now in the Fulton County Jail, allegedly asked a former business associate to find a hit man. That associate contacted another middleman, authorities said. The alleged hit man, Cleveland Clark, 49, of Jackson, Miss., and his brother, Carl Clark, 43, who police said drove the getaway car after the murder, are in Mississippi prisons, serving time for separate robberies. Cleveland Clark also has served time for molestation, hostage-taking and shooting at police. The two will be brought to Atlanta on Tuesday for a hearing in Fulton County Superior Court.

Secrets raise suspicions

Sparkle Reid, a bubbly former cheerleader, met Ricky Rai in July 1998, in Louisville, Ky., where she had moved to live with her grandmother after flunking out of college in Georgia. She landed a job as a desk clerk at a Travelodge Hotel, where Rai was general manager. He hired her and, six months later, she was pregnant with his child.

Sparkle's father, Bennet Reid Jr., and stepmother Donna Lowry said that Rai's family seemed at first to approve of their 18-year-old son dating a black woman. "Her grandmother said Sparkle told her they liked her," said Lowry, a reporter for WXIA-TV.

The couple moved to Atlanta in May 1999. It's unclear when the Rai family began to have problems with the relationship. Reid and Lowry said their daughter told them Ricky's family offered her $10,000 to break up with their son.

In October 1999, Sparkle gave birth to a daughter Ricky Rai named Analla. He told his wife it was an Indian name meaning "fiery one."

Bennet Reid said his daughter was evasive when he asked about marriage and told him the Rai family "had an Indian woman set aside for [Ricky] to marry."

But, at some point, he told his wife his parents had died, police said.

Reid said he learned on their wedding day, March 21, 2000, that Ricky's parents were alive. A relative had overheard Rai on the telephone. He never trusted his new son-in-law after that.

Two days later, Rai was screaming at Sparkle's aunt for calling his parents in Kentucky and telling them about the marriage, according to a Union City police report.

Lowry said she believes news of the marriage provoked Chiman Rai to hire a hit man. "The wedding itself led to her death," she said.

Acquaintances 'in shock'

Ricky Rai moved to a Chicago suburb. He rode motorcycles, went to bars and Bears games and boasted of dating different women, said Chicago businessman Salil Gandhi,

who met Ricky Rai not long after Sparkle's death. Gandhi and his friends were "dumbfounded and in shock for several days" after learning about the killing.

"We met him within a couple of months of this horrible thing happening,'' Gandhi said. "He didn't show any of the emotions you would expect."

Gandhi, whose parents are from India, is married to an Indian woman. He knows many Indians who are happy

in mixed-race marriages, he said.

"But most of our parents would prefer we marry someone from India. And, for the uneducated Indians who aren't as worldly or metropolitan, who might have come from smaller villages, marrying a black person would be about as bad as it could get," Gandhi said.

Ricky Rai recently married an Indian woman who is also Hindu, like Rai's family. They live in Naperville, a suburb of Chicago.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said the new bride and her family didn't know about his first marriage, his baby or his wife's brutal death.

Attempts to reach Ricky Rai and his family were unsuccessful.

Some feel Rai's not guilty

Black professionals who worked with Chiman Rai in Mississippi said they don't believe he is behind a racist murder.

The senior Rai, who grew up in India, brought his family to the United States in 1970 and settled in Jackson. He taught at Alcorn State University, a historically black college south of the city.

Retired Alcorn dean Norris Edney, who supervised Rai, said he was an excellent teacher who never showed signs of bigotry against blacks.

After a decade, Rai left teaching and operated a small supermarket in Jackson. A black businessman there said Chiman Rai couldn't be behind a race-fueled murder.

"I really don't believe he did it," said Jimmie King, owner of King Brothers Trading Post across the street from Rai's former grocery store.King, who has sold tires in the crime-ridden Georgetown community for years, said Rai often helped poor black residents there.

Police said he also ran into legal trouble. In 1985, Rai was sentenced to five years of probation for trafficking in food stamps.

More than a decade later, officers raided his store and hauled away televisions, bicycles and other items they believed were stolen. He was not prosecuted but Rai soon decided to get a fresh start in another state, King said.

The Rais left Mississippi in 1998 and relocated to Kentucky, where Rai operated a 100-room hotel near Louisville's main airport.

Authorities arrested him there last month.

Sparkle's family can now at least hope for justice.

Analla is now 7 years old. She's in the first grade and living with Sparkle's stepmother and father. They said she knows nothing about Ricky Rai, only that her mother was killed by "bad men."

Clark, the alleged hit man, has a violent past, and once took Mendenhall, Miss., police officer Chris Seghini hostage. Clark was sentenced to prison, but Mendenhall said "he got off way too easy."

Prosecutors believe Rai hired Clark through middlemen he knew from years of running a business in a rough neighborhood in Jackson. Now the two men from far different worlds and cultures could spend the rest of their lives in Georgia — on death row.

Which only proves that we should listen to and learn from our brothers and sisters on the other sides of the oceans and as they should do the same to us. The more information we share with each other, the more it is known worldwide .......

So true Kunjufu.I'm a world travelor but India is a place I have no inking of visiting.Indians wear it on their sleeve , their hatred for us.



I pray the poor womans family gets soem type of justice.

I'm tired of hearing this same old bullsh#t:

They hate us

They hate us

They hate us

F-king bullsh#t. First of all, who cares if they hate us? Secondly they don't hate us. We're not Millwall for godsake.

Stop pullin this paranoia shit. Young people reading this website probably have very low self esteem reading all this 'They hate us' 'They think were worthless' BS.

If anything...its us that should hate them OK?

Enough with the victim syndrome on BNV PLEASE!!!

Stick-up wote: I'm tired of hearing this same old bullsh#t:

They hate us

They hate us

They hate us

F-king bullsh#t. First of all, who cares if they hate us? Secondly they don't hate us. We're not Millwall for godsake.

Stop pullin this paranoia sh*t. Young people reading this website probably have very low self esteem reading all this 'They hate us' 'They think were worthless' BS.

If anything...its us that should hate them OK?

Enough with the victim syndrome on BNV PLEASE!!!


Bravo stick up. I have made similar postings over and over again on blackchat that some of us (especially black women) are passionate about whingeing with regards to hatred from others. Hatred is a 2 way street hence when you get it, give it back without making any apology. Justify it.