New Yorker charged with murder of his daughter in Palmyra in 2019

PALMYRA, Pennsylvania – A New York man has been charged with murdering his daughter in Lebanon County and dumping her body in a Staten Island park in 2019, investigators with the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office say in charging documents.

Kabary Salem, 56, is charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of 26-year-old Ola Salem, whose body was discovered near a walking path in Bloomingdale Park on Staten Island on October 24, 2019.

An autopsy showed she died from strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head, investigators said in charging documents. Investigators believe Kabary Salem killed his daughter when the two visited Palmyra to work on a restaurant he had purchased, which is why he is being charged in Pennsylvania.

According to Special Agent Nathan Nickel, who filed charges against Kabary Salem on June 24, the case was referred to the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office by Lebanon County District Attorney Pier Hess Graf on June 19 of this year.

About four days after Salem was questioned by investigators in New York about the death of his daughter in October 2019, he reportedly fled the United States for the Middle East, where he remained until he was arrested by NYPD officers in December 2020.

In an interview with authorities in New York on October 24, 2019, Kabary admitted to Salem that he and his daughter had traveled together from New York to Palmyra five days earlier to paint a restaurant he co-owned. He claimed that his daughter began behaving erratically after she had an argument with him earlier in the day. Kabary claimed he saw her get into an unidentified black sedan sometime after 9 p.m. and did not see her again.

Using GPS data from the vehicle Salem rented to drive to Palmyra, investigators determined that the vehicle was located at Salem's restaurant and a nearby hotel on October 23. Hotel surveillance video showed that two people were in the vehicle that evening, according to investigators.

GPS data then showed Salem's vehicle leaving the hotel and stopping at a Lowe's store, where surveillance footage showed Salem, now alone, purchasing a shovel.

On October 23 at 10:45 p.m., GPS tracking data indicates that Salem's vehicle returned to the hotel. Hotel surveillance footage at the time showed that he was alone in the vehicle.

GPS data shows that Salem's vehicle left Palmyra at about 2:20 a.m. on Oct. 24. Investigators used the GPS data to track the vehicle to Bloomingdale Park at 4:49 a.m., where it stopped “at the exact spot” where Ola Salem's body was later discovered, the complaint states.

GPS data showed the vehicle left the park about 10 minutes after arriving and returned to Palmyra, arriving at the Knights Inn at 7:33 a.m. Surveillance footage from a Wawa supermarket along the route showed Kabary Salem was alone in the vehicle, investigators said.

Investigators concluded that Ola Salem was dead approximately eight hours before her body was found, consistent with the assumption that her murder occurred at a time when Kabary Salem was in Palmyra according to GPS records, according to the prosecution.

Investigators found a DNA sample under the victim's fingernails and later compared it to a DNA sample from a cup that Kabary Salem drank from during his questioning by police on October 24, 2019. According to investigators, the samples were later found to be a match.