Omid Barak

Omid Barak (1986 – 7 February 2011), known as The Highway Killer (Persian: قاتل بزرگراه), was an Iranian serial killer who strangled ten women from 2006 to 2008. Most of his killings occurred in the city of Karaj and the surrounding areas.

Barak was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the killings, and was subsequently executed in 2011.

Early life Barak was born in 1986 in Qazvin. He was one of four children born to a labourer and a nurse's aide. According to later interviews, Barak claimed that his parents fought so often that they rarely paid attention to either him or his siblings.

Due to the family's difficult financial situation, Barak dropped out of school at age 13 and lived on the streets for the following five years before being drafted into the Army. After serving two years, he quit and moved to Astaneh-ye Ashrafiyeh, where he found a job as a labourer.

In 2005, Barak married a local woman. He would eventually start working as a taxi driver. He was arrested after a woman accused him of attempted kidnapping. A police unit was quickly dispatched to the crime scene, with one of the investigators determining that she had been strangled with a cloth, likely at another location, before being dumped at the crime scene. About a month later, the body of another woman was found in similar circumstances, followed by a third victim in April, who was found strangled with her own headscarf near Qezel Hesar. The belief that a serial killer was operating in the area was cemented with the discovery of a fourth victim in May, with an autopsy determining that she had suffocated to death. Apparently realizing that they were onto him, Barak fled to another city but was arrested on 10 July 2008. However, days prior to his execution, he suddenly changed his stance and said that he had only moved the bodies, pinning all of the killings on his wife with the excuse that he was only trying to protect her.