Rowena Irani-An Update

0:00 Hi guys. I'm Courtney and I'm Lisa, and welcome to the next chapter in the Book of the Dead, brought to you by Dark Cast Network indie Podcasts with a twist. Hello. Hello. So today's episode is going to be a little bit different. It's more of a mini episode, a bonus jonas if you will. If you recall, in the last chapter we released, I mentioned that I would have more information regarding the murder of Rowena Irani, and I do so. I was reached out too by a close family friend of hers, and Misbah has given me permission to share some of what was in the email, and again I appreciate her greatly for reaching out to me correcting my pronunciation. The email she sent me was incredibly kind and very validating for me to read. But in regards to Rowena, the first thing I want to mention is I had called Rushad Rowena's brother, and Dane Owens, the man that was convicted of killing her friends. And that was partially

1:34 because in the media the different articles that I was reading, no one had a clear understanding of how they were acquainted. So a few articles had said they were friends and they weren't. In fact, Misba said she wouldn't really call them friends because they weren't. They were polite to each other reluctantly, and she said that was more in the way that you know some people will do when they don't really want to get to know the other one. But the only time she had recalled Rushad ever really interacting with Dane willingly was at a Fourth of July party that Dane had thrown at his parents' home in twenty thirteen. He was around Dane because Muspa, Rowena and Misa's sister of Sean were friends with Dane. So Rushad hung around Dane because based on his sister and the other women's judgment of Dane, you know, they were friendly with him. He trusted their judgment, so he tolerated him, I think at best. Now. According to Muspa, the way that Dane came into Rowena's life was because he was friends with off Sean. Rushad and av Sean worked at the disability services at Wichita State Universe, and Dane worked there as well.

3:01 He was working on his college undergrad while he was also enlisted in the Army National Guard. Now. She said that this was in twenty twelve and Rowena was eighteen and Dane was going to be twenty four, so you know, that was a bit of an age gap. It was. There's no denying that, and at least in my opinion, that's a bit of a red flag for an almost twenty four year old to be interested in an eighteen year old girl. But Mspa did say that she remembered feeling that Dane was too old for Rowena, and she said that Dane was definitely interested in her, and Rowena was interested in him as well. But Rashad and Avshan kind of convinced Rowena that she should really focus on school not really worry about dating right then and there, and she did. She continued on with her plan, focusing on school, focusing on what she needed to do to further her education. Now, af Sean, Mispa, and Rowena were all very close with each other. They all commuted to school together, they spent a lot of time together, so they had this very strong relationship, and they spent time with each other's families. But because they spent so much time together, that means they were also spending a lot of time with Dane because again he worked in the disability services as well, and she thought that, you know, it was creating a good friendship with him. Now, in the original

4:35 recording, I did say that Dane had moved, and I was really fuzzy on the details he had moved he had come back, And Mispa said that she was a little bit confused as well, like the timeline was a little bit convoluted in regards to Dane. She said that in twenty thirteen, he said that he was moving to Arizona. He was going to live with someone he had been deployed with until he kind of figured out his own living situation. And she said she doesn't know if that's really what he did, or if that's what he was just kind of telling them, But he did eventually come back to Kansas if he left at all, and enrolled at Kansas State. Now, in twenty fourteen, off Shan and Rashad graduated from Wichita State, and so she says that that was around the fall semester, and that's around the time that Rowena had started working at Disability Services herself, and that by that time Dane was no longer working there. Now, at the time that Rowena was in Kansas State and Dane was in Kansas State. Mispa says that she knows that they were in contact, but she's not one hundred percent sure if they were actually seeing each other, you know. She said, from what she understands, they weren't seeing each other. But in September of twenty sixteen, they had gone to the state Fair, all of them, the whole group, and that everything had seemed fine between Dane and Rowena at the time, but by the end of the month, Dane had written that letter talking about marrying Rowena and having kids with her, and Rowena had broken

6:05 it off. Now, this is the part of the email where she adds a lot more context for me in regards to what happened in the days leading up to Rowena's murder. And she said that Dane had come down to Wichita to have surgery on his rotator cuff, and he was expecting to have help from his parents, but they had made plans to go out of town and they had basically said, we're not going to change our plans because you're having the surgery, but stay at the house while we're gone so you can recover. Now, Mispa says that she was supposed to go check on him, and she said that basically, she was very nervous to do so. She was very hesitant to do so because she did not want to be alone with him. He had a history being emotionally manipulative, which was clear as day when looking back at the original recording. He was emotionally manipulative with Rowena.

7:04 I'm sure he was emotionally manipulated with Mispa and her sister as well. In fact, because of the way he was acting in regards to Rowena breaking things off with him and his refusal to accept it, av Sean has said basically she was going to take a step back from their friendship. He needed to figure out his feelings, he needed to work on moving on, and she felt that she needed to remove herself from that situation now. On that Saturday, the day after his surgery, Mispa talked on the phone with Deane. He said he was doing fine, and she told him basically, look, my brother has things going on with baseball. He's got games, so I'm probably not going to make it over to check on you and see if there was anything I can do for you. He told her that that was fine, he understood that. Sunday, Mispa said she was feeling very nervous and very anxious. She really didn't understand why she was having this feeling, but she was nervous, and she was with her boyfriend and she explained to him, look, I'm having all these feelings. I really don't want to go over to Dane's house. And her boyfriend told her, then don't go.

8:24 If you feel like that, don't go, which we love, We love that validating her feelings. Now, Mispa had told Dane over text that she just had a bad feeling, a weird feeling about coming over, and he texted her back. From what she remembers, she remembers him saying, have a good rest of your week. And she believes that that was kind of the last straw for him. You know, he had lost his core group of friends that he had built at which testage he felt that they all abandoned him in the breakup, and he didn't understand that just because she was uncomfortable being around him in that moment didn't mean that she didn't want to be friends with him any longer. It just meant that in that moment, she was uncomfortable and that was something that he was either refusing to understand or just not understand it. She said that that night, he uploaded a meme of the punisher on Facebook with the quote it's a mistake to push a man to violence when violence is what the man has dedicated his life to perfecting. And she said sometime during the next day, on October third of twenty sixteen, he had deleted everyone off of social media and went on to murder Rowena Mispa did say that based on the information that Michael Higgins had given to the police,

9:54 and again that's what I cover in the original recording, that she did believe one hundred percent he did struggle with PTSD. He was very lost, you know, he really struggled before any of this happened. Not that that excuses anything that he did, and she's very clear that that's not what she's saying, and I believe that that's not what she's saying. She's just confirming the fact, Yes, he did struggle with post traumatic stress disorder. He had a lot of demons, but that does not excuse the actions that he made at all, and it doesn't There are people out there that struggle with mental health disorders and struggle with PTSD have seen horrific things due to war and the things of the like, and they don't do the things that he did.

10:48 So I wanted to share that with you guys, because it adds a lot of context that I was not able to give in the original recording. And she did give me permission to share this with you. Regards to Rowena, she said she was really funny. She had an incredibly dry sense of humor, very sharp wit, and she couldn't always keep her emotions off of her face, so she was very open with her emotions. She felt her emotions. Mispa said she loved country line dancing and singing in the shower, even though she was a terrible singer. And she would drive up behind me Spa on campus in the golf cart while she had her headphones in and honk just to scare Mispa. So clearly she had a sense of humor. She liked to kind of prank, for lack of a better word, her friends.

11:43 Sometimes she would intentionally drive across Mispa's path and Musba would do it back to her, you know, cutting each other off in the golf carts, and they would flip each other off, you know, teasing each other she loved her long hair. She was very proud of her long, beautiful hair. And she said that she would get grumpy with Misbah when miss Bah would cut her own hair, and she did that pretty often, so Rowena would get upset with her, like why did you cut your hair? She said her hair was very curly, so she would scream and run out of the rein to keep her hard work from going to waste when she would straighten it and spend all that time straightening her hair. And for the women out there with long, thick hair, you know how long it takes to straighten, and you would probably react the same if it was raining after that happened, or after you spent so long doing that. Lisa said she it took her like two hours to straighten her hair, but she wore straight every day because that's how she liked it. She said. Rowena loved to run and work out every morning before school, and she was just starting her life and she just wanted to be a kid for a while while they had the time. She said, if she had her way, Rowena would be living in Hawaii with a couple of dogs and running her own practice. And reading that hurt my heart. To know that she had this beautiful life that she wanted to live and these goals that she wanted to achieve, and that was taken from her

13:13 because a man could not handle the fact that she rejected him. And it's sad that that is an all too familiar story to MISPA, thank you so much for the email that you sent me, for giving me more context, and for sharing more of Rowena with me. It means so much that you put your trust in me to do that and to share the real Rowena with me. I hope I did her story justice. And for anyone else out there that has wanted to reach out regarding a case I've covered, you know, if someone you have loved or someone you have known and you want to clear or if I something or give me more information or anything like that, My dms are always open. My email is always open. You know, there is you can email directly. There is a contact form on my website.

14:13 You can always reach out. You know, I take what I do seriously. I take the stories that I tell seriously. So if there's something that I've gotten wrong, or there's something that you want to clarify or share, please do Please do not hesitate because it means a lot to me to make sure that the stories I'm telling are accurate. You know, whether it's something small or something big, you know you can always reach out and tell me again, MISPA, thank you and I will see you guys on Wednesday for another chapter. Bye guys, thank you so much for listening to this chapter of the Book of the Dead, and don't forget that you can always connect with us on Instagram, you can connect with us on Twitter, and you can absolutely connect with us on Patreon. We also have a marchore as well that we have frequent discount codes coming out for so that you guys can get March hand drawn by myself at a better cost. We hope you have a lovely rest of your week and just remember, please be kind and don't forget to always stay safe, stay curious, and stay vigilant. Bye guys, Bye,