Ex-Queens woman admits killing daughter

Twenty years after shoving her 4-year-old daughter to the floor and cracking her skull, a former Queens woman admitted Friday that she killed the girl whose existence she once denied.

Khairual Abdul pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of Jennifer Shafiq, after months of negotiations that lasted even during the plea itself. In return for the plea, State Supreme Court Justice C. Randall Hinrichs will sentence her to 4 1/3 to 13 years in prison -- much less than the 25 years to life she got after she was convicted of second-degree murder. That conviction was overturned by an appellate court.

"The plea results in accountability and finality," prosecutor Dari Schwartz said outside court. "The defendant finally acknowledged her daughter's life. Her memory can rest in peace."

Abdul seemed reluctant to enter the plea, first asking for more time to think it over. But Hinrichs told her the time had come to choose between the plea and a second murder trial.

Then, she balked at admitting what she did.

"I didn't kill Jennifer, but I'm going to plead guilty to it," she said at first, but after Hinrichs rephrased his question to her, she conceded that her actions in December 1990 caused the girl's death.

Her husband, Parmjit Singh, drove Jennifer's body to Manorville and buried her by the side of the Long Island Expressway. The bones were found in 1996, but the couple weren't arrested until 2005. Singh pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and is serving a prison sentence of 2 1/3 to 7 years.

Abdul told police in 2005 that she was not the child's mother and that Singh killed Jennifer.

During questioning by Schwartz on Friday, Abdul admitted in a barely audible voice that she shook her daughter and shoved her to the floor after the girl urinated on herself.

Abdul balked again when Schwartz asked if the bones by the highway were Jennifer's.

"I'm not sure if it was my daughter, but if you say so," she said.

At Abdul's trial, the defense made an issue of whether the bones were Jennifer's, noting that the FBI lost some of them.

Defense attorney Mary Elizabeth Abbate said they weren't contesting the issue now. After getting a nod from appellate attorneys in the courtroom, Schwartz said that was enough to sustain the plea.

"The plea today brings a just end to a truly disturbing case," District Attorney Thomas Spota said in a statement. "Unfortunately the passage of time favored the defendant and hampered investigators' ability to recover more damning evidence."

Abbate said her client almost certainly will be deported as soon as she serves her sentence.