Elyas Abulazam was born on August 28, 1976 in Central Israel.

You know, back in Michigan, if I met someone with a name spelled like his, I'd call him

Elias. But Abulazam was an Israeli Arab and it is my understanding that Elias is the

proper pronunciation of his name. He grew up comfortably middle class with his Christian

Arab family in Israel, but the people of his hometown did not have good things to say about him.

They described him as a young man who used drugs, gotten to fights, and had unsteady employment.

He was unreliable. In 1995, seeking a fresh start with relatives, Elias moved to the United States.

According to Israeli media after his arrest, Elias was 20 years old when he decided to leave

Israel due to arrests for drugs and violence. He would receive a green card, but he never became

a US citizen. When he arrived in the US, Elias lived in Virginia where he worked as a mental

health technician at Piedmont Behavioral Health Center in Leesburg. While employed at Piedmont,

he worked with troubled children. And his coworkers described him as a gentle giant,

a man who displayed remarkable patience and restraint when dealing with mentally unstable and violent

teenagers. They would marvel at how he diffused situations where it would be easier for the six-foot

inch, 280-pound man to physically subdue the child. In 1997, Elias married Don Castello.

They would separate in 2000 and be officially divorced in 2002, not much is known about their

relationship. On July 30, 2004, Elias married again, this time to a woman named Jessica Herth.

A couple met in Texas while Elias was their visiting family.

After he was arrested for his many crimes, his former in-laws said they were shocked by news

of the arrest. They always viewed him as a very nice man. And despite how he seemed to them,

Elias and Jessica divorced in 2007 due to him being verbally and physically abusive toward his wife.

Like much of his life before his crimes, not much is known about Elias' time after his divorce and

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