Mourad "Moni" Samaan killed himself and his 2-year-old daughter, Madeleine Layla Samaan-Fay following a bitter custody battle that began even before the child was born, Samaan's father said Monday.

In an exclusive interview with The Bee, Dr. Makram Samaan said his son and granddaughter – found inside his son's sport-utility vehicle on Saturday evening in El Dorado County – died of carbon monoxide poisoning from the exhaust pipe. (Authorities haven't confirmed the cause of death.)

The girl's mother, California Deputy Attorney General Marcia Ann Fay, 46, has declined to comment after several requests by The Bee.

Makram Samaan – a psychologist who helps couples mediate disputes and divorces – held his hands to the heavens and cried: "I've helped thousands of people and saved a lot of families, but I failed my son – I did not see it. I did not see it! Why should it not be me?"

Samaan, who wrote his master's thesis on suicide, said he knew his son Moni was in distress, but had no inkling how much.

He blamed the courts for driving his son over the edge.

"We need to take marriage and divorce out of the courts," said a sobbing Samaan at his Fair Oaks home overlooking Lake Natoma.

The courts turn love into hate, Samaan said. "One has to win and one has to be defeated. That isn't marriage, that isn't family – it doesn't matter what the dispute is."

Samaan – a Coptic Christian from Egypt – described his son Moni, a 49-year-old engineer for Hewlett-Packard, as a devoted, loving father. "He potty-trained his daughter," he said. "He taught her how to swim and kayak and bought her a small guitar and they'd play and sing together."

"He taught her how to speak three languages," Samaan said, gazing tearfully at a photo of his joyful, curly-haired granddaughter riding her magenta bicycle. "Only in America can a little girl say, 'I love you, Grandpa' in English, Arabic and Spanish."

On Saturday, Aug. 6, Moni Samaan was spending the day with his daughter when he learned that a Sacramento County judge had awarded her mother full custody. He and Madeleine had been visiting friends on a court-approved visit in Oregon.

Samaan, 85, said his son called him to say he was scared of losing his daughter. "He said to me, 'I'm always going to be a defendant.' " Samaan tried to reassure him, saying that patience and kindness would ultimately win out.

But that night, his son took off with his granddaughter. Fay – who was scheduled to pick up her daughter that Sunday morning – reported her missing Aug. 7.

After a call from the FBI, which had issued an Amber alert, El Dorado County sheriff's deputies – with the help of a California Highway Patrol helicopter – searched a wooded, 40-acre property near the town of Grizzly Flat where they found Moni Samaan's Toyota 4Runner containing the two bodies.

Investigators found the vehicle in a clearing beneath pine trees, some 500 yards up a winding dirt road off String Canyon Road, said El Dorado County Sheriff's Lt. Brian Golmitz. The parcel was jointly owned by Moni Samaan and his younger brother Nabil.

Dr. Samaan said his son Moni graduated from American River College and UC Davis and had a long career with Hewlett-Packard.

He loved windsurfing, fishing and kayaking and sailed solo from Hawaii to California, said Samaan, himself an avid sailor. "He saved me from drowning in the Red Sea."

About four years ago, "he said he met a beautiful woman on the Internet, she's good, she's an attorney," Samaan said. "They got married in March 2006."

The couple separated before Madeleine was born December 2008. He said Moni learned of his child's birth from his brother and sister-in-law.

Samaan said perhaps his son died for him to start a movement to take marriage disputes out of the courts. "The mother and father are mother and father forever," he said. "We need to save America by saving the family."

Well-wishers placed stuffed animals outside the mother's house Monday. A note pinned to a teddy bear read, "I'm so sorry about your loss. Let's hope Madeleine is safe and taken care of in heaven."

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