Police: Katrina hero plotted ex-wife's murder

Published Aug 10, 2012 at 2:00 pm (Updated Aug 10, 2012)

A Syrian-born man who is represented as the hero-rescuer in Dave Eggers' best-selling nonfiction work Zeitoun, which chronicles the eerie aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the nightmarish side of the American justice system, has been accused of plotting to murder his ex-wife, her son and another man. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, 54, faces charges of offering $20,000 to a fellow jail inmate in exchange for the killings. Zeitoun also faces a domestic abuse battery charge after he allegedly beat his wife, Kathy Zeitoun, on a New Orleans street. In Zeitoun, which won an American Book Award in 2010, the protagonist was described as a compassionate man paddling a canoe through Katrina's floodwaters, helping people and animals, before being arrested on false charges of looting. He then was thrown into prison on suspicion of being a terrorist.