Sankranthi recalled that around 10:30 the night before, her husband had mentioned seeing Grewal leaving the neighborhood in a taxi. That had surprised her because Kaur hadn't told her Grewal was in town.
Phoenix police arrived at Redwood Lane about 30 minutes after the call, around 12:30 p.m.
AP/Wide World
Raju Grewal and Navi Kaur were married in 2005 but spent little time together as man and wife.
Michael D. Ratcliff
Navi Kaur was murdered inside her home in suburban Ahwatukee.
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Officer Kwan Jin found Navi Kaur's lifeless body in the tub. He and another officer called their supervisor and checked the rest of the home to make sure no one else was there. Then they closed the front door behind them and waited for homicide detectives and other officers to show up.
By law, no one would be allowed back inside the home, now a crime scene, until homicide detectives secured a search warrant from a judge, a process that would take about five hours.
By then, Grewal already was sitting in the Newark airport, eager to hightail it out of the States that evening on Continental Airlines Flight 82.
It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to know that Raju Grewal was the prime suspect, the only suspect in his wife's murder.
When the homicide investigation began in earnest shortly before 3 p.m., Sergeant Palombo asked his detectives to investigate their best lead: Grewal's U.S. Airways itinerary.
Someone soon contacted Phoenix Detective Eric Davis, who works at Sky Harbor for the city airport's Drug Enforcement Bureau. Davis' first job was to contact U.S. Airways to find out if Raju Grewal was scheduled to fly somewhere from Phoenix or if he already had flown out.
A U.S. Airways official said Grewal wasn't scheduled to fly anywhere on that airline, though the official did confirm that the suspect had flown from Vancouver to Phoenix on U.S. Airways a day earlier.
Palombo assigned Detective Lois Weiss to look into Grewal's recent credit-card use. She learned that the suspect had bought a one-way ticket the previous night for a Continental flight from Phoenix to Newark.
It was now nearing 6 p.m. in Phoenix.
Working his phone out of Sky Harbor, Detective Davis tried to learn from Continental officials about Raju Grewal's whereabouts. But reaching anyone in command at the airline was time-consuming.
Finally, about 6:30 p.m., a supervisor at Continental confirmed to Davis that Grewal had boarded Flight 1034 early that morning. The plane landed at 3 p.m. in Newark, which was noon in Phoenix.
The supervisor told Davis that Grewal then had bought a ticket for Continental Flight 82 from Newark to New Delhi, scheduled for an 8:45 p.m. (5:45 p.m. in Phoenix) departure. He also said the plane had taken off on time, about 45 minutes earlier.
Davis immediately called Palombo back at the crime scene.
The careful sergeant asked a detective to check the Continental Web site to ensure that Flight 82 truly was airborne.
Turns out, it wasn't.
The pilot had returned to the gate at the last minute to drop off luggage, which delayed the departure to New Delhi by about half an hour.
"We tell Continental that their computer is showing that the plane is still on the ground," Palombo says. "Time is moving. We're trying to get answers, but we're not getting them."
The sergeant called Port Authority police at the Newark airport for assistance: "I tell them, `I need to track down what gate this plane is at. We have a murderer onboard and we need to get him off before they leave."
About the same time, Detective Davis finally got through to Continental Airlines operations and spoke to a supervisor known to police as "Raul." (New Times was unable to obtain the supervisor's full name.)
A few days later, Davis would write in his police report, "[Raul] said the plane took off about two minutes ago. I asked him if it could be ordered to return to the airport. He said he would let the corporate offices in Houston, Texas, know about this. He said this matter was out of his control other than to notify them.
"I asked Raul if he could communicate to the plane's captain that there is a man on board who is homicidal and suicidal so the captain would be aware of the potential danger this man could pose to the people on board. He said he had no way to directly communicate with the plane, but some kind of communication could possibly be made with the plane from the corporate office if it was deemed appropriate. He said he thought that since [Grewal] made the flight, he probably thinks he is home free.
"Raul speculated that it might be better to not notify the crew, because they might then act differently around Grewal, tipping him off that they knew what he had done. I told him I thought the captain would want to know about this man on his plane."
Davis called Sergeant Palombo as soon as he hung up with Raul. Palombo says he tried to use his powers of persuasion on Raul three times over the next several minutes.
"I told him, 'Look, I can't be any more crystal clear to you. This isn't a guy on a watch list. This is a known lunatic. This guy has admitted killing his wife and he's attempted suicide at the scene twice. And he's on your plane. You need to get it down!' He kept saying that that kind of decision was above him, and he'd pass it up the chain of command. Then in another conversation, he told me that the captain had received a 'non-verbal communication' advising him of the situation. That was it."
