By Lisa Redmond
Lowell Sun
DEDHAM — When Mary Doyle saw the letter from the Norfolk County Sheriff’s Office informing her that her former boyfriend and tormentor would be released from jail this month -- more than a year and a half early -- she feared for her life.
“Now, I will be even more afraid that Tahmouress “Tom” Sadeghi may do bodily harm to me or my children,” Doyle wrote in a letter to Norfolk County officials.
The January letter indicated that Sadeghi, 58, whose family lives in Lexington, was being considered for transfer to the Electronic Incarceration Program on or after Feb. 10.
EIP is a pre-release security-status program in which the inmate is still in the “custody” of the Norfolk County Sheriff’s Office, but could live at home wearing an electronic-monitoring bracelet.
“Inmates participating in this program are expected to engage in community programs and activities that require greater responsibility ...” the sheriff’s office letter states.
But the only thing Doyle wanted was for Sadeghi to serve his entire 30-month sentence behind bars.
She got her wish, for now.
Despite letters from Sadeghi’s family, friends and co-workers who praised him as a good father and citizen, David Weber, spokesman for Norfolk County Sheriff Michael Bellotti, confirmed that “after a thorough evaluation of all the information,” Sadeghi would remain behind bars.
Doyle, of Lowell, credited letters she and victim Charles Roux sent to Norfolk County, pleading with officials not to release Sadeghi. But she said it was prosecutor Stephen Loughlin’s letter that “cinched it.”
“His letter was very emphatic that Sadeghi should not be let out on a EAP because it was Judge Jane Haggerty’s intention that he was to serve the entire 30-month sentence,” Doyle said.
During his trial last year in Lowell Superior Court, Sadeghi, who has a record of domestic assault in New Hampshire, was portrayed by Loughlin as an obsessive former lover whose fits of anger triggered Doyle to end her three-month relationship with him. They worked together at Raytheon where Sadeghi was an engineer who worked with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
On April 2, 2005, shortly after the breakup, Doyle failed to return Sadeghi’s calls, so he drove by her Lowell home. The lights were on, and an unfamiliar car was in her parking spot.
Charles Roux of Tewksbury stopped by to see Doyle, an old friend, but hadn’t been there long when the doorbell rang three times. Thinking it was mischievous children, Roux went outside and was confronted by Sadeghi. Roux didn’t know the man who stood before him, but Sadeghi knew Roux was Doyle’s former boyfriend.
Sadeghi started to do a “boxer’s shuffle” and armed with a box cutter, lunged at Roux, who was unarmed. The blade went under Roux’s arm, cutting to the bone and severing a major artery.
Roux was rushed to the hospital, where the blood loss was so severe he had to be resuscitated twice. If not for the quick work of emergency personnel, Loughlin said, Roux would have died. As a result of complications due to the blood loss, Roux lost 80 percent of the vision in one eye and has limited use of one arm.
Defense attorney Steven Rappaport had argued this was a case of self-defense, where Sadeghi pulled a knife fearing what a drunken, larger man would do to him. Sadeghi testified Roux stabbed himself when he lunged at Sadeghi.
The jury found Sadeghi guilty of armed assault to kill, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing serious bodily injury. Haggerty sentenced Sadeghi to 2 1/2 years in prison, followed by five years probation, psychiatric evaluation and treatment, batterer’s treatment and anger-management counseling, and 300 hours of community service.
Less than a month after Roux’s testimony helped put Sadeghi behind bars, he was back in court to defend himself against allegations of threats and harassment outlined in a restraining order that Sadeghi’s family sought against him. Judge Herman Smith rejected the restraining order.
While relieved at their victory to keep Sadeghi behind bars, Doyle said her battle with her former boyfriend is far from over. Sadeghi is up for parole in April.
“We will be at the hearing,” she said.
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