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Courts & Crime

How man's plea for missing wife turned into a murder charge

Diana Moskovitz - Miami Herald

April 07, 2010 01:37 PM

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. — All Munawar Toha wanted, he said, was for his wife to come home.

"Your children miss you,'' he pleaded through tears Monday. "Please come home.''

Hours later, Coral Springs police found her body, inside the family's silver Daewoo Nubira at the bottom of a lake.

Then they charged her suspected killer -- her husband.

And part of the crime was captured by a surveillance camera.

The tape shows a car pulling into the parking lot near where Toha worked. Although it was dark, detectives say the man on the tape is 63-year-old Munawar Toha.

The man gets out of the car, opens the trunk and takes out a bicycle. Then he gets back into the car and drives it to the lake's edge. The man gets out, comes back around to the back of the car, and pushes it in.

The car's tail lights flash as the rear snaps up in the air, then slowly fade away as the car sinks underwater.

The man hops on the bicycle and pedals away.

Inside the car, police say, was the body of 41-year-old Surya Sari-Prihatin Toha.

Both natives of Indonesia, they married in 2000. He was from Coral Springs, a suburban town north of Fort Lauderdale; she was from Jakarta, according to marriage records.

They moved into a single-family home in the 8200 block of Northwest 40th Street, a typical Coral Springs street lined with shady trees and well-kept homes.

Since 1999, Toha has been an employee with Florida's Department of Transportation, said Sonyha Rodriguez-Miller, a turnpike spokeswoman. He worked as a tolls technician at the central repair depot in North Broward County, she said.

For a few years, the couple had a business dubbed Fortune Empire, LLC, that dealt in motorcycle repair and maintenance, according to state business records. But the Tohas apparently never made their fortune and the business shut down in 2008.

Toha told police that on March 23, his wife had left to drop off their two sons at Hunt Elementary School and then disappeared. He reported her missing the next day.

Police didn't believe him, saying Tuesday that his body language and actions were inconsistent with those of a grieving husband.

Just about every unit in Coral Springs police helped work the case, Detective Scott Myers said. But, more than a week later, investigators still hadn't found his wife.

On Saturday, police released a picture of Surya Toha and asked the public for help.

Although it was their day off, Myers, Detective Brian Koenig and Detective David Young followed a hunch and visited Crystal Lake, in the 4100 block of Powerline Road. It's also close to where Munawar Toha worked.

"We evaluated and felt that would be a logical place,'' Myers said.

They went out in Koenig's personal boat. They didn't see anything in the water, but they did spot the surveillance cameras nearby.

On Monday, the day of Munawar Toha's tearful plea for help, Myers said police got the footage showing the methodical way in which Surya Toha's body was disposed.

After watching the video, divers went out to the lake Monday night and found the car under about 30-feet of water. Surya Toha was found in the passenger seat, although investigators aren't sure if that's where she was the entire time.

Her body was taken to the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office, where an autopsy will be done to determine exactly how she died.

WFOR-CBS4 television in Miami reported the victim had a bag over her head.

While police spoke about their case Tuesday, Surya Toha's family stayed away from the cameras, too distraught to speak.

Toha was charged with premeditated murder and booked into Broward County's main jail, where he was held without bond.

Before Tuesday, Toha had no criminal history in Florida, according to state records. His only troubles in Broward Circuit Court was a 2008 traffic ticket.

The Toha children are in the care of Surya Toha's sister.

Reached Tuesday afternoon, Toha's attorney, Jeffrey Dwyer, declined to comment other than to say, "My client is very concerned for the welfare of his children.''

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