I’m glad the police are fully investigating the death of Shaima Alawadi,

who family members say died because of a "hate crime." Maybe that's the truth, or maybe it isn't: it's too early to know.

Cases like this aren’t always as clear as they first appear.

Everyone remembers Susan Smith, right? And then there are other cases, like this one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/nyregion/husband-is-charged-in-wifes-killing-in-new-jersey.html?pagewanted=all

BOONTON, N.J. — After his wife had been shot to death on the street and he had been wounded, Kashif Parvaiz told the police here in her quiet hometown in New Jersey that three men had accosted them and, before opening fire, called them a name that is offensive to Muslims in America: “Terrorist.”

That prompted detectives to treat the case as a bias crime.

SNIP

By all accounts the marriage had not been going well. Ms. Noorani, prosecutors said, recently sent her brother a text message about Mr. Parvaiz, 26, that said, “Can’t talk to him cuz he abuses me ... I’m so tired of this. ... Someday U will find me dead, but it’s cuz of Kashi ... he wants to kill me.”

According to the authorities, her prophecy came true. They said Friday that Mr. Parvaiz had confessed to having “contracted” with a friend to kill her and wound him, apparently in hopes of fooling investigators into thinking he, too, was a victim.
In that way, Mr. Parvaiz’s story seemed to echo accounts like those of Charles Stuart, who said he and his pregnant wife had been shot by a black robber, in Boston in 1989, and Susan Smith, who said a black man had stolen her car and kidnapped her children when she had actually drowned them, in South Carolina in 1993. Both Mr. Stuart, who later committed suicide, and Ms. Smith, who was convicted, fanned racial fears by blaming blacks for their crimes.