Potomac Killing Casts Spotlight on Son's Romance

Greg Gagne, a spokesman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the judicial immigration agency, said court docket records show that immigration officials were seeking to deport Ahmad Mizani after the conviction. Gagne said the status of the immigration case could not be determined from the records he has access to. A spokeswoman for the prosecuting agency, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to comment.

Ahmad Mizani also declined to comment, as did David Rothwell, his attorney in the immigration case.

"Aramis has been through a lot," Levy said. "Having had everything and then everything taken away."

After graduating from high school, neither Makki nor Mizani embarked on a solid career path.

Makki, whose father is a well-known ear, nose and throat surgeon and whose sister recently graduated from law school, attended Montgomery College sporadically during the past five years. He has received 62 credits and has not declared a major.

Makki is passionate about tennis and the stock market, two interests in which his parents indulged him. His father, Khosrow S. Makki, once gave him $600,000 to invest in stocks, according to a close relative. Khosrow Makki has declined to comment.

Mark Makki made smart investments, which he tracked closely online, often with his mother by his side, said the relative, who asked not to be identified because he fears police retaliation.

"He has a knack for picking good companies," Makki's friend Vaziri said, and he entertained the idea of getting into real estate.

But relatives feared that the youth was not reaching his full potential.

According to Makki's friends and relatives, Seyed-Makki saw her son's girlfriend as the main cause. Over the years, her distaste for the girl intensified. She wanted a college-educated bride for her son, people close to the family said. She disliked the fact that Mizani took legal narcotics to numb her back. And she felt disgraced by Ahmad Mizani's criminal record.

According to the Makkis' relative, the victim unloaded her anger on the girl's father a few times at his Derwood store, Shaaheen Oriental Rug Co., where she demanded that he forbid his daughter to see her son. He never did.

"She thought that Mark was not successful, that he was being denied a good education because of the girl," Makki's relative said. "She does [legal] narcotics. Being from a Persian family, we are very cautious about the bride."