Man found guilty of first-degree murder for killing girlfriend's husband with ax

LANSING — Jacob Ficher left 24 ax wounds in the head, face and neck of his girlfriend's husband. He told a jury he hadn't meant to, that he only wanted to scare the man. 

The jury found him guilty Tuesday of first-degree murder. 

Ficher faces a mandatory life in prison sentence for a murder that Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Bill Crino called "horrific, brutal and ghastly." 

Witness testimony showed that Ficher hid inside a Holt home, waiting for Ammar Al-Yasari to return from work. He covered his face with a mask, wore gloves and had a camp ax in his hand. 

"There are absolutely no words to describe the brutality of the injuries inflicted by (Ficher) on Ammar Al-Yasari," Crino said during closing statements Tuesday. 

In all, Ficher struck Al-Yasari 24 times on the head, face and neck with the ax. Seventeen of the strikes would have been “catastrophic” and "fatal almost immediately," Ingham County Medical Examiner Patrick Hansma said in an earlier hearing. 

Ficher said he never planned to kill Ammar, that "killing him would be too good for him." He took the ax with him so his threat would be taken seriously. 

He wanted to scare Ammar Al-Yasari because Ficher's girlfriend, Bdour Al-Yasari, had told him her husband was physically, emotionally and sexually abusing her, Ficher testified. 

"A discussion wasn’t going to push him away from the actions and the things he was doing," Ficher said. "He needed to be scared, and he needed to be really scared."

But Crino said the evidence contradicted Ficher's statements. Ficher bought the camp ax and a bottle of bleach at Kroger several days before Ammar was killed. He did "everything he could possibly do" to destroy physical evidence left in the house, Crino said. 

"This is not a heat of passion act," Crino said. "Hate is the underlying motive for this crime." 

Ficher was found guilty Tuesday of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Jurors took less than three hours to deliberate. 

His attorney, Stephen Cornish, had asked the jury to find Ficher guilty of voluntary manslaughter. He said Ficher went to the Al-Yasari's home to stop an "abusive man" from hurting his wife. 

"What he did was wrong...but it's not murder in the first-degree," Cornish said. "I don't know if (Ammar) was really beating his wife, but Mr. Ficher thought he was." 

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Contact reporter Kara Berg at 517-377-1113 or kberg@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @karaberg95.