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They Were the Nice, Older Couple Next Door. Then the First Body Turned Up.

An Iranian couple has confessed to murdering and dismembering their son, years after killing a daughter and her husband. They are not sorry.

By Farnaz Fassihi

July 5, 2021

The older couple first came to the public eye on a winter night in Tehran, when their film director son invited them to the stage after a screening. They were frail and seemingly shy, and the younger man helped his mother up the stairs, then draped his arm around his father’s shoulder.

That was five years ago.

Now their son is dead, and Akbar Khorramdin, 81, and his wife, Iran Mousavi, 74, are back on the public stage, accused of his murder and, in a twist that has shocked and riveted Iranians, the killings of a daughter and a son-in-law over the course of a decade. The victims were drugged, suffocated, stabbed, and then dismembered, the authorities say.

The couple has confessed to the crimes, but if Mr. Khorramdin, a retired army colonel, and Ms. Mousavi, a homemaker, are remorseful, they have done a good job hiding it.

“I have no guilty conscience for any of the murders,” Mr. Khorramdin said in a television interview from detention. “I killed people who were very morally corrupt.”

Ms. Mousavi appeared no more contrite.