Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Previously on Tuesday.
Speaker 3: Boom.
Speaker 4: Heys, please, Hey, who did this to you?
Speaker 5: They're saying he took a kitchen knife from his sister's
Speaker 5: apartment to his car with Bob, got in the car,
Speaker 5: went somewhere else, and then attacked him.
Speaker 4: It just didn't make sense.
Speaker 5: Didn't make sense to me.
Speaker 6: All of a sudden, his name became a household word
Speaker 6: for the worst of reasons, and it just pissed me off.
Speaker 2: Nima Momenti's murder trial started on October fourteenth, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: a year and a half after the killing. I was
Speaker 2: there for the entirety of the trial. It would ultimately
Speaker 2: run for eight weeks. Nima showed up to court every
Speaker 2: day in a suit. He was seated alongside a large
Speaker 2: group of defense attorneys. He listened intently and took notes.
Speaker 2: If you didn't go in knowing he was on trial
Speaker 2: for murder, you might think he was one of the lawyers.
Speaker 7: Well, he certainly doesn't seem, you know, sad. The way
Speaker 7: he walks in, he struts in, I mean he always
Speaker 7: struts in, you know, kind of confident of himself.
Speaker 2: This is Paul Kroda, a seasoned photojournalist in the Bay Area.
Speaker 2: He took photos of Nima showing up at his arrayment
Speaker 2: with his chest puffed out and arms swinging. He also
Speaker 2: took photos of Nima in his jail cell.
Speaker 7: When I met him in jail, Yeah, he was upbeat,
Speaker 7: a bat attitude. You know. He poses for me in
Speaker 7: the jail cell, and he gave me several different looks.
Speaker 7: He's almost proud to be him, you know, even though
Speaker 7: what he did. You know, he's proud to be him.
Speaker 2: The New York Post published these photos under the headline
Speaker 2: quote bone chilling photos show cash app founder Bob Lee's
Speaker 2: allege killer Nima MOMENTI smiling in jail. By the way,
Speaker 2: Nima has sued the photographer and the New York Post,
Speaker 2: among other outlets that published these photos. As of this recording,
Speaker 2: that lawsuit is still pending. For the first year and
Speaker 2: a half, that smile, that strut were the only insights
Speaker 2: we had into how Nima felt about any of this.
Speaker 2: He never gave a statement. He also turned on my
Speaker 2: request for an interview. Here's omit to lie. The lead prosecutor.
Speaker 8: Prior to his arrest. As dramatic as it might sound.
Speaker 8: Is when I personally started preparing for this as a
Speaker 8: self defense case and for my cross examination of this
Speaker 8: lying story. He would tell where he had to defend himself.
Speaker 8: How did you know that there's only two defenses? Really
Speaker 8: who done it? The other defense is self defense. Knowing
Speaker 8: that we had him driving Bob under the bridge and
Speaker 8: as the last person with him, he wasn't going to
Speaker 8: be able to claim somebody else committed this crime. He
Speaker 8: was going to have to claim, yes, I stabbed him,
Speaker 8: but I did so because I was in fear of
Speaker 8: my own safety.
Speaker 2: The evidence was stacked against Nima. After the police found
Speaker 2: Bob bleeding out on the sidewalk, they followed a trail
Speaker 2: of blood to the murder weapon, a kitchen knife that
Speaker 2: had been tossed over a fence. When investigators tested the knife,
Speaker 2: they found Bob's DNA on the blade and Nima's on
Speaker 2: the handle. The brand of the knife also matched a
Speaker 2: set from Kazar's kitchen. Then there was all the video
Speaker 2: video of Bob and Nima leaving the apartment together, of
Speaker 2: Bob climbing into Nina's car, of the car pulling into
Speaker 2: an empty lot under the Bay bridge, of the car
Speaker 2: speeding off from the scene of the crime of Bob
Speaker 2: stumbling away before collapsing. I mean it was a lot.
Speaker 2: The prosecution charged Nima with first degree murder. They argued
Speaker 2: that by driving Bob to a secluded location and bringing
Speaker 2: a knife with him, Nima showed premeditation. If they convicted
Speaker 2: Nima a murder one, they would be able to put
Speaker 2: him away for twenty six years. It looked to many
Speaker 2: like it should have been a pretty straightforward case.
Speaker 9: This should have been a three week trial.
Speaker 2: This is Brad Cohen, one of Nima's defense attorneys.
Speaker 9: It was ridiculous. This was the crazy case. I thought that,
Speaker 9: and it was off the rails, and I think that
Speaker 9: this should have been a three week trial that turned
Speaker 9: into a three month trial.
Speaker 2: The trial of Nima, MOMENTI was anything but a straightforward proceeding.
Speaker 2: The jury heard from a parade of unreliable narrators, their
Speaker 2: stories filled with frustrating plot holes. They followed twists and turns.
Speaker 2: They watched not one but two secret videos. There were
Speaker 2: salacious details about drug use and around the clock partying.
Speaker 2: It became a media circus. Here's lead prosecutor omit to lie.
Speaker 8: I felt it from the first day in court at
Speaker 8: the arraignment, when I was walking through to see reporters
Speaker 8: trying to get into the courtroom, where I couldn't really
Speaker 8: get out of the courtroom because reporters were blocking the exit.
Speaker 2: Despite the international attention, almost nothing has been reported about
Speaker 2: the people who would ultimately decide Nima's fate.
Speaker 4: The jury.
Speaker 2: The jurors included a restaurant owner, a costco greeterer, a
Speaker 2: Harvard graduate. A few of them worked in tech. One
Speaker 2: of them was knowledgeable about drugs and had colorful stories.
Speaker 2: San Francisco is a small town, so I've run into
Speaker 2: a few of them out and about, and I've been
Speaker 2: surprised when I've approached them that they seem so standoffish,
Speaker 2: almost scared. It turns out the jury made a pact
Speaker 2: not to say anything to the press, so until now
Speaker 2: we haven't known what mattered to them at the trial.
Speaker 2: At what points did they say, Oh, this seems good
Speaker 2: for Nima, or oh, this seems very bad for Nima.
Speaker 2: But now, for the first time, one of the jurors
Speaker 2: spoke to me anonymously. So on today's episode, we're going
Speaker 2: to walk through the trial of Nima. MOMENTI we'll focus
Speaker 2: on four key components, two testimonies and two pieces of evidence.
Speaker 2: These were some of the most dramatic moments of the trial,
Speaker 2: and I think they'll help you understand what it was
Speaker 2: the jury was being asked to consider and will ultimately
Speaker 2: matter to them. We'll hear from the prosecution and the
Speaker 2: defense team will get the official narrative of how Bob
Speaker 2: Lee died, and we'll try to understand why he died,
Speaker 2: what his accused killer may have been thinking, and what
Speaker 2: this trial meant for San Francisco. I'm sean when and
Speaker 2: this is foundering the killing of Bob Lee. One of
Speaker 2: the most frustrating things about Bobley's death is that the
Speaker 2: supposed inciting incident, the thing that prosecutors would claim got
Speaker 2: Nima so mad, was a very specific moment that neither
Speaker 2: Nima nor Bob was actually present for. Let me explain.
Speaker 2: It was the last day Bob was alive, April third,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. Bob and Kazar spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time together that day, from morning till night, along with
Speaker 2: another guy, Bob's friend, an alleged drug dealer. His name
Speaker 2: is Jeremy Boyven. Jeremy Boyven declined to be interviewed for
Speaker 2: this podcast, but I want you to remember him because
Speaker 2: he'll be an important figure later on. It's three in
Speaker 2: the afternoon and they're all hanging out at Boyven's apartment,
Speaker 2: which is in a luxury high rise. There are lots
Speaker 2: of drugs around, and Kazar is taking several of them.
Speaker 3: On April third, the day before Bob Leae's death, she
Speaker 3: was under the influence of cocaine nitrous oxide also known
Speaker 3: as whippets, as well as LSD and GHB.
Speaker 2: I just want to point out this is a Monday afternoon.
Speaker 2: At around five pm, Bob heads out, leaving Kazar and
Speaker 2: jeremy boyfriend behind. Hours pass that night, around nine pm,
Speaker 2: Bob gets a call. It's Kazar's brother Nima. He's upset.
Speaker 2: We mentioned this phone call in the previous episode. Nima
Speaker 2: was interrogating Bob, asking questions like, what were you guys doing,
Speaker 2: What was going on with my sister?
Speaker 4: What did she take?
Speaker 2: How about the girls getting naked? Later, Bob's friend, who
Speaker 2: had overheard the call, testified on the witness stand. He
Speaker 2: said it was really strange, we weren't there, and the
Speaker 2: idea that it was girls getting naked was so far
Speaker 2: from the vibe and situation that I saw and experienced.
Speaker 2: Here's Prosecutor Dane Reinstead.
Speaker 10: The murder was not a question of what it actually
Speaker 10: happened to Jeremy boyfriend's apartment. That's maybe this subject of
Speaker 10: another criminal case. But what mattered for purposes of our
Speaker 10: case and our trial was what Nemo MoManI thought had
Speaker 10: happened in Jeremy Boyfn's apartment.
Speaker 2: It appears that after Bob left Boyven's apartment, Kazar had
Speaker 2: a girlfriend join her. Jeremy Boyven served them both GHB,
Speaker 2: the so called date rape drug, which they drank voluntarily.
Speaker 2: Kazar said that he described it to her as ecstasy
Speaker 2: that last fifteen minutes, so she took three shots of it,
Speaker 2: then she passed out. When she came to, she was
Speaker 2: upset and confused. She suspected that she may have been
Speaker 2: sexually assaulted. The details of the alleged assault are fuzzy.
Speaker 10: She testified herself that she was very unclear on the details.
Speaker 10: That at one point she woke up and her pants
Speaker 10: were part way pulled down. She believed she'd been sexually assaulted,
Speaker 10: but I think she herself because of her lack of
Speaker 10: consciousness or hazy memory around it didn't know exactly what
Speaker 10: had happened.
Speaker 2: In some text messages, Nima refers to what happened to
Speaker 2: Kazar as rape, and he may have thought that Bob
Speaker 2: was involved, because remember, Nima wasn't there. He couldn't have
Speaker 2: known what time Bob left the party or when exactly
Speaker 2: his sister took JHB. After Nima and Bob spoke on
Speaker 2: the phone, Bob said Nima a text inviting him to
Speaker 2: a strip club. At twelve thirty am, two hours before
Speaker 2: the stabbing, Bob heads over to Kazar's apartment in Millennium Tower.
Speaker 2: At two am. Bob is seen on camera leaving with Nima.
Speaker 2: About half an hour later, Bob was dying on the street.
Speaker 9: What the hell happened here?
Speaker 2: This is Brad Cohen, one of Nima's defense attorneys.
Speaker 9: These guys are getting along, they're two good buddies in
Speaker 9: the elevator. They look like they're having fun. They're talking
Speaker 9: to each other, they're laughing. The guy's saying, hey, do
Speaker 9: you want to go to a strip joint? And the
Speaker 9: next thing in thirty minutes later, someone's stabbed and dead
Speaker 9: and the other guy's getting charged.
Speaker 2: The footage of the actual stabbing is very hard to see.
Speaker 2: It's dark and grainy, taken from a nest camera in
Speaker 2: a nearby apartment window. Bob and Nima are just pixelated blobs.
Speaker 2: Bob is wearing black and Nima is wearing white. You
Speaker 2: can see them standing around for several minutes, and then
Speaker 2: very quickly, the figure in white advances three or four
Speaker 2: times towards the figure in black. It's just a few
Speaker 2: quick movements. This is the best glimpse we get into
Speaker 2: the altercation between the two men. It leaves room for
Speaker 2: some ambiguity.
Speaker 9: Self defense looked plausible.
Speaker 2: Cohen, it should be said, is a high profile attorney
Speaker 2: known especially for representing hip hop artists. He's obtained federal
Speaker 2: pardons for Lol Wayne and Kodak Black from President Trump,
Speaker 2: whom he's also represented. They actually go pretty far back.
Speaker 2: Here's Cohen competing on season two of The Apprentice.
Speaker 4: My plan backfired.
Speaker 9: Mister Trump thought that that was a stupid decision.
Speaker 6: I was the only individual who went to the board
Speaker 6: when without a bag.
Speaker 2: Nima was in fact represented by five lawyers, a testament
Speaker 2: to how seriously his family took this case. The defense
Speaker 2: argued that Bob was sleep deprived and on cocaine, which
Speaker 2: made him a radic. They said that Bob pulled a
Speaker 2: knife on Nima, but Nima grabbed Bob's hand with the
Speaker 2: knife still in it, and redirected it back towards Bob.
Speaker 10: Because Nima MoManI had killed the only witness, there wasn't
Speaker 10: somebody who could say exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: These are the prosecutors. Again, did self defense ever feel
Speaker 2: plausible to you?
Speaker 8: Um plause? Like, did I believe it might be self defense?
Speaker 8: Is that you're asking like that?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: While the DNA on the knife and the security footage
Speaker 2: suggests that Nima killed Bob, it still leaves open the
Speaker 2: very big question why here's Cohen?
Speaker 9: I think that the state had no motive. They were scrambling.
Speaker 9: They knew that self defense was definitely an issue here
Speaker 9: because these two guys are getting along in the elevator.
Speaker 9: There's no real fight between them. Nobody's arguing, No one
Speaker 9: testified there was this big fight, big blowout.
Speaker 2: The juror I spoke to said that at the start
Speaker 2: of the trial, the entire jury was confused about the motive.
Speaker 11: They said, none of us could agree. Why the hell
Speaker 11: Nima would kill Bob. Why wouldn't you kill Jeremy. That's
Speaker 11: the guy your sister said raped her. Why go after
Speaker 11: Bob when he wasn't even there.
Speaker 2: Jeremy Boyven has not been charged with sexually assaulting Kazar,
Speaker 2: and as a reminder, he declined to be interviewed for
Speaker 2: this podcast. Whether or not they knew it, the state
Speaker 2: had an uphill battle ahead of them. Can you tell
Speaker 2: me what you.
Speaker 8: See the motive as to me, it's not convoluted at all.
Speaker 8: I think it's very simple.
Speaker 2: Oh me to lie again. The lead prosecutor on.
Speaker 8: The case, Nima Momeni, believes Bob Lee contributed to his
Speaker 8: little sister being sexually assaulted or raped, and that pissed
Speaker 8: him off. That made him angry, That made him act
Speaker 8: as one would when they are pissed off and angry.
Speaker 8: That's the motive for to lie.
Speaker 2: There was no shortage of evidence pointing towards Nima as
Speaker 2: the aggressor.
Speaker 8: It was him driving bobly to the location, him clearly
Speaker 8: being the last person with Bob, and the text messages
Speaker 8: from Kazar to Bob where she said that her brother
Speaker 8: came down very hard on Bob and that he handled
Speaker 8: himself with class.
Speaker 2: Which brings us to the first of our four key
Speaker 2: components of the trial, the testimony of Nima's sister, Kazar MOMENTI.
Speaker 2: For the Press, Kazar was the star of the show.
Speaker 2: She was cast as a glamorous van fetale who somehow
Speaker 2: drove her brother to kill Bob.
Speaker 12: Somehow, everyone in this trial seems like they're made from TV.
Speaker 2: This is a photographer, Jong Hoo Kim, who I met
Speaker 2: in the courthouse. Specifically, he had been asked to take
Speaker 2: photos of Kazar. Can you say which outlet sent you
Speaker 2: out there?
Speaker 12: I was working for Zuma Press with the photos going
Speaker 12: to the New.
Speaker 2: York Post, okay? And what kind of photos were they
Speaker 2: asking you get?
Speaker 12: In this particular case, the specific quest was for full
Speaker 12: body photos of Kazar. MOMENTI why full body glamour.
Speaker 2: The first day of Kazar's testimony, she showed up to
Speaker 2: court wearing oversized sunglasses, stiletto pumps, and the perfectly tailored
Speaker 2: blue silk dress. The Daily Mail said it was Valentino.
Speaker 2: A source close to Nima's defense team told me that
Speaker 2: from Nima's arrest onward, the family was instructed to dress
Speaker 2: like they were attending a funeral, Kazar dress like she
Speaker 2: was going to a movie premiere.
Speaker 12: A lot of the media has focused on her as
Speaker 12: an interesting character because visually there's a lot to work
Speaker 12: with there, and I think in terms of her testimony,
Speaker 12: it's become quite drama filled and salacious.
Speaker 1: Out to the latest out of Sam Francisco.
Speaker 3: In day four of testimony and the murder trial for
Speaker 3: tech executive and cash app founder Bob Lee.
Speaker 2: Kazar was there to support her brother, that much was clear,
Speaker 2: but she was also a critical witness for the prosecution
Speaker 2: since her testimony could provide a motive. Here's Omit Lai,
Speaker 2: the lead prosecutor on this case.
Speaker 8: She set this emotion. She told her brother things happened
Speaker 8: to her. Those things upset her brother. She's not to
Speaker 8: blame for Bob being killed. It's nima MOMENTI but she,
Speaker 8: in my mind, set this all in motion.
Speaker 2: But she was an uncooperative witness leading up to the trial.
Speaker 2: She refused to speak with the authorities. Here's the other prosecutor,
Speaker 2: Dan Rihinstead.
Speaker 10: She had declined to ever speak with us. She had
Speaker 10: declined to speak with the police. It meant that to
Speaker 10: a large extent, we were going in blind as to
Speaker 10: what exactly was she was going to say.
Speaker 3: Huzzar MOMENTI was soft spoken. Initially. She placed her clutch
Speaker 3: and some oversized sunglasses on the witness stand.
Speaker 2: Cameras and recording devices were banned from the courtroom, so
Speaker 2: I have a voice actor reading the transcript.
Speaker 13: Prosecution, have you followed the news, Cuzar, I've stopped watching
Speaker 13: the news. Prosecution, have you heard the claim that your
Speaker 13: brother killed Bob Lee but in self defense?
Speaker 4: Czar? I have stopped watching the news.
Speaker 10: I remember asking her at the very beginning, when was
Speaker 10: it that you first found out that your brother was
Speaker 10: the one that killed Bob? And that was the answer
Speaker 10: to which she said, well, my brother wasn't the one
Speaker 10: who killed Bob.
Speaker 13: Prosecution, are you learning today for the first time that
Speaker 13: your brother has killed Bob Kazar? My brother has not
Speaker 13: killed Bob Lee, and I don't know anything else about
Speaker 13: the case.
Speaker 10: By that point, it had been clearly telegraphed that it
Speaker 10: was a self defense claim and that Nemo was in
Speaker 10: fact the one that he had killed Bob. It was
Speaker 10: just a matter of how he had killed him, and
Speaker 10: the fact that she appeared not to be up to speed.
Speaker 10: With that being the narrative that the defense was putting
Speaker 10: forward was surprising, not the answer I expected.
Speaker 2: The back and forth between Rhinestead and Kazar continues this way.
Speaker 2: It's repetitive and evasive. She says more than once that
Speaker 2: she knows nothing and remembers little, blaming the cocktail of
Speaker 2: drugs she was on.
Speaker 13: Prosecution, was your brother also doing cocaine with you?
Speaker 4: Kazar?
Speaker 13: I did not see him do any Prosecution you texted
Speaker 13: him no, bitch. Blow messed up your mind and makes
Speaker 13: you act lunatic. Kazar, I don't know why I sent
Speaker 13: that text message. Prosecution reading her text rape case, Nima,
Speaker 13: you're fucking psychotic. No one enjoys that company. You scare me, Kazar.
Speaker 13: We're brother and sister. We bigger when we talk. I
Speaker 13: have no idea what this is about.
Speaker 2: The other reason the prosecution needed Kazar was that she
Speaker 2: sent several potentially incriminating text messages shortly after Bob was killed,
Speaker 2: including texting Bob, sorry, Nima came down way hard on you,
Speaker 2: and texting Nima, Nima, you scare me. Sometimes.
Speaker 10: Kazar was a hostile witness to us, certainly, but one
Speaker 10: that we affirmatively wanted to put on in our case,
Speaker 10: primarily to authenticate the text messages that she had sent,
Speaker 10: but also to provide some of the context and color
Speaker 10: around what had happened leading up to the murder.
Speaker 8: What Dane did with Kazar, and really within the first
Speaker 8: ten to fifteen minutes while I'm sitting there, I'm a
Speaker 8: spectator like everyone else. That was one of the few
Speaker 8: moments that I thought, I think, I think we're fine.
Speaker 8: Not only did he so calmly and methodically, kind of
Speaker 8: surgically take her apart and get all those text messages
Speaker 8: that we wanted in the defense looked like their heads
Speaker 8: were going to explode.
Speaker 9: Listen, she testified the way she testified.
Speaker 2: Brad Cohen again from the defense team.
Speaker 9: Oh, she's going to answer everything for the defense and
Speaker 9: nothing for the state. Well, it's her brother.
Speaker 2: A source close to the defense told me that after
Speaker 2: Kazar's testimony, because she turned out to be such an
Speaker 2: unreliable witness, Nima's lawyers distanced themselves from her. After her
Speaker 2: three days on the witness stand, we didn't see Kazar again,
Speaker 2: not even on the day of the verdict. So the
Speaker 2: first key component of the trial, Kazar's testimony seemingly not
Speaker 2: helpful to Nima, which brings us to our second key component,
Speaker 2: a secret video recording made by the cops. The prosecution
Speaker 2: wanted the jury to pay attention to Nima's behavior after
Speaker 2: the stabbing, and for this they introduced new evidence, a
Speaker 2: video of Nima made six days after Bob was killed,
Speaker 2: but before Nima was arrested Ohmed to lie. The lead
Speaker 2: prosecutor was at the police station when he saw it
Speaker 2: for the first time.
Speaker 8: I remember Sergeant Goff calling saying, Hey, I'm headed back
Speaker 8: from South Bay. You got to see this.
Speaker 2: Sergeant David Goff is an undercover cop who had been
Speaker 2: following Nima since the day after Bob was killed. GoF
Speaker 2: had recorded something he wanted to show the prosecutors, and.
Speaker 8: He wouldn't even really explain it to us. He just
Speaker 8: wanted us to see it. The homicide inspectors do not
Speaker 8: have these fancy offices. They're all kind of in cubes,
Speaker 8: cubicles next to each other. So we were standing and
Speaker 8: Sergeant Goff put in the video and we just pressed
Speaker 8: play and you kind of, I think a couple of
Speaker 8: times says he said, just wait, just wait, like just
Speaker 8: just wait for it. Wait for it.
Speaker 2: That day Goth followed Nima from a sandwich shop to
Speaker 2: a parking lot, which happened to be at his criminal
Speaker 2: defense attorney's office. He filmed Nima standing there chatting with
Speaker 2: a private investigator who worked for his attorney. In the video,
Speaker 2: Nima's talking, talking, smoking a cigarette, and then he makes
Speaker 2: three quick horizontal jabbing motions. Then he seems to mimic
Speaker 2: throwing something in the air. His gestures map onto the
Speaker 2: evidence pretty neatly. Bob was indeed stabbed three times, and
Speaker 2: the knife was tossed to the other side of a fence.
Speaker 8: I think I laughed inside, you know, thinking like this
Speaker 8: is absurd. I have never, and probably never will see
Speaker 8: a murderer re enacting the crime that he had committed
Speaker 8: a few days before, on a bright sunny day in public,
Speaker 8: and then throw the murder weapon.
Speaker 10: And I think equally important is what he's not showing, right.
Speaker 10: He doesn't reenact any kind of a struggle. He doesn't
Speaker 10: reenact any sort of washine or a redirecting in any way.
Speaker 2: In other words, Nima's movements on the video don't resemble
Speaker 2: a struggle where he's defending himself. The jury member I
Speaker 2: spoke to told me that in the deliberation room. They
Speaker 2: weren't completely convinced by the jabbing motion Nima made that
Speaker 2: it looked like it could have been a stabbing movement
Speaker 2: or a punch, But when Nima appears to toss an
Speaker 2: invisible knife, that felt unmistakable to them. The juror told
Speaker 2: me quote that was goddamn suspicious. Interestingly, the juror also
Speaker 2: had this to say about the undercover cop.
Speaker 11: All the women were going, oh my god, Sergeant Goff,
Speaker 11: there's no way he can do plain clothes work. How
Speaker 11: do you not notice you're in a public parking lot
Speaker 11: and there's a guy who's really hot in a car
Speaker 11: filming you.
Speaker 2: Anyway, the defense made a motion to suppress this video,
Speaker 2: arguing that was protected by attorney client privilege. Ultimately, the
Speaker 2: judge decided that the video was fair game. The defense
Speaker 2: was furious about this ruling. Here's Cohen that.
Speaker 6: A conversation with an attorney or an attorney's employee in
Speaker 6: a parking lot that's empty, where there's no one around
Speaker 6: except for a police officer who was spying on this
Speaker 6: attorney client privileged conversation, and to be able to use
Speaker 6: that I think is unusual.
Speaker 9: I think that's going to come flying back on.
Speaker 2: Appeal coming up next will answer one of the biggest
Speaker 2: questions looming over the trial. Would Nima take the stand?
Speaker 2: That's after the break. When the defense called Nima MOMENTI
Speaker 2: to the stand. There were audible gasps throughout the courtroom.
Speaker 2: Because often defendants don't testify in their own we didn't
Speaker 2: know for sure whether we'd hear from him until that
Speaker 2: very moment. Under oath, Nima told the story of the
Speaker 2: night Bob died. He said that at two in the morning,
Speaker 2: he and Bob left Kazar's place together looking for the
Speaker 2: next party. They were heading to a strip club. Bob
Speaker 2: brought a beer into the car they were driving, and
Speaker 2: as Nima tells it, bob'spilled the beer, which is why
Speaker 2: they pulled over.
Speaker 13: Nima, we were outside. He wanted us to go back
Speaker 13: to his place to grab more stuff. I was resistant,
Speaker 13: just trying to avoid it to get out of it.
Speaker 13: I made what you call a bad joke now that
Speaker 13: I look back on it. Defense, what was that, Nima?
Speaker 13: If it was my last night in town, I would
Speaker 13: go hang out with my family instead of fucking around
Speaker 13: in strip clubs.
Speaker 2: It was Bob's last night in town because he was
Speaker 2: supposed to fly back to Miami the next day.
Speaker 4: Defense, How did he take that? Nima? Not good at all?
Speaker 4: It just set him off, Nema.
Speaker 3: Moment he testified that it was Bob Lee who attacked
Speaker 3: him with a knife. He said over a bad joke
Speaker 3: that he had made. Nima said that he told Bob
Speaker 3: if it were.
Speaker 4: Defense, what does mister Lee do? Nima?
Speaker 13: He's yelling, cussing at me, starts going around, circling, moving
Speaker 13: around me, and gets in my face.
Speaker 3: He says. Bob Lee went from zero to one hundred
Speaker 3: after hearing that, hold a knife from his pocket and
Speaker 3: attacked him.
Speaker 13: Nima, I was scared for my life. I had to
Speaker 13: defend myself. Defense. Were your actions in response to that emotion?
Speaker 4: Nima?
Speaker 3: Yes, I just reacted, He described and demonstrated, redirecting the
Speaker 3: knife back at Bob and says at some point Bob
Speaker 3: just walked away unresponsive to Nma, asking him, Hey, what
Speaker 3: was that?
Speaker 4: What just happened?
Speaker 3: He said he had no idea that Bob Lee was
Speaker 3: fatally injured.
Speaker 2: So the defense hinged on Bob Lee having the murder weapon,
Speaker 2: the knife on him all along and attacking Nima with it.
Speaker 2: I do remember thinking that at least part of Nima's
Speaker 2: account sounded plausible. I'm just speaking as myself here, as
Speaker 2: someone who had been following this story. I thought that
Speaker 2: when Nima described this bad joke that he supposedly made
Speaker 2: to Bob that he should be hanging out with his
Speaker 2: family instead of with Nima, who would eventually kill him.
Speaker 2: The substance of this joke felt real to me.
Speaker 9: If you're going to make something up, you wouldn't make
Speaker 9: that up right. That's why when he told me that,
Speaker 9: I was like, sounds very credible to me, because you
Speaker 9: don't know what sets people off.
Speaker 1: So far, momenty is coming off as calm and a
Speaker 1: rather credible witness. His own defense attorneys have been telling
Speaker 1: us that he's been dying to tell his side of
Speaker 1: the story, and today marks his first chance to do
Speaker 1: just that.
Speaker 2: The San Francisco Standard wrote that quote Momenti's testimony appears
Speaker 2: to undermine the prosecution's narrative. It was convincing, or at
Speaker 2: least satisfying in a way. The prosecution's explanation of what
Speaker 2: went down never quite achieved. Meanwhile, the DA's office was
Speaker 2: following all of this coverage.
Speaker 8: So a lot of the articles talked about what Nima
Speaker 8: said and how this version may have been believable, And
Speaker 8: so I'm reading that kind of you know, seething and
Speaker 8: almost salivating.
Speaker 2: So the next day to lie came in hot.
Speaker 8: I can be in your face a little bit, and
Speaker 8: I was, and I repeated it a few times. He's
Speaker 8: a murderer. He's a dumb murderer. He's not a smart murderer.
Speaker 8: It's for Nima MOMENTI to hear, I think you're not
Speaker 8: just a murderer, but you're a dumb one. So when
Speaker 8: he gets up there, he's a little more likely to
Speaker 8: snap at me, like he repeatedly did.
Speaker 2: It didn't take long for Nina to start getting sarcastic
Speaker 2: with the prosecution. For instance, the prosecutor asked Nima if
Speaker 2: it was a coincidence that the police were never able
Speaker 2: to recover the jacket that he was wearing the Knight
Speaker 2: Bob was killed.
Speaker 13: Nima, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to save it.
Speaker 13: I hadn't talked to an attorney. If you guys would
Speaker 13: like to go back and gather new evidence, we can
Speaker 13: help you with that, no problem.
Speaker 2: Once Nima got riled up, he stayed riled up. He
Speaker 2: responded sharply, saying things like, quote and you've done a
Speaker 2: great job finding the things you want, and I think
Speaker 2: you're mistaking the timeline here.
Speaker 8: He was constantly interrupting me. He was at times criticizing me.
Speaker 8: I know there was at least one occasion where his
Speaker 8: own lawyer or lawyers told him I think you know,
Speaker 8: shut up, like just answer the questions like they from
Speaker 8: across the courtroom had to control him.
Speaker 11: My source on the jury said Nima's testimony was the
Speaker 11: most damning. Oh my fucking god, he did it.
Speaker 4: He did it.
Speaker 11: It's so obvious. My bullshit meter was red flagging. His
Speaker 11: story keeps changing. He was so belligerent and stand offish
Speaker 11: with the prosecution's questions. Did that guy do something to
Speaker 11: hurt you because you hate his guts? I never saw
Speaker 11: someone so unwilling to answer the simplest of questions. He
Speaker 11: was like, why are you asking that question? Someone who
Speaker 11: was innocent wouldn't say that.
Speaker 2: The prosecutor got Nima to react basically exactly the way
Speaker 2: he wanted him to.
Speaker 8: Dane and I've cross examined murderers in the past. It's
Speaker 8: easy to cross these individuals when they're lying like it's
Speaker 8: a lot easier when they are liars. It's even easier,
Speaker 8: in my opinion, when they think they are smarter than you.
Speaker 8: And I think he thought that he could out charm
Speaker 8: and out smart me.
Speaker 2: Here's Cohen from Nima's defense team.
Speaker 9: I think that he held up well to a certain point,
Speaker 9: and then he got frustrated. I think with the state,
Speaker 9: I think that the state did a good job in
Speaker 9: trying to get him to be confused or get him frustrated,
Speaker 9: or asking the same question over and over and over
Speaker 9: again to the point where he would be like, hey,
Speaker 9: I already answered D and he'd seen combative.
Speaker 2: The trial was nearing its conclusion, Nima's team had one
Speaker 2: more piece of evidence they wanted to enter, one final
Speaker 2: element they thought would make it obvious to the jury
Speaker 2: that Bob had the knife fall along and Nima was
Speaker 2: only acting in self defense. During closing arguments, one of
Speaker 2: Nima's other attorneys, Sam Zanganay, played a new video recording.
Speaker 5: Zangana showed the jury surveillance video, he says, shows Lee
Speaker 5: with a friend snorting cocaine from a knife hours before
Speaker 5: he was killed.
Speaker 9: Here's Cohen very clearly in the video that we showed,
Speaker 9: no one has an excuse for what is in his
Speaker 9: hand that he's holding that clearly looks to me like
Speaker 9: a knife that he's snorting cocaine off of.
Speaker 2: I watched the video. Bob does look like he's snorting
Speaker 2: cocaine off of something.
Speaker 9: This thing's three inches long. It's not a key. He's
Speaker 9: holding it like this, and it's like, I am one
Speaker 9: thousand percent in my opinion, sure that that was a knife.
Speaker 9: He's holding it like a knife and he's snorting cocaine
Speaker 9: with it.
Speaker 2: After we saw the video, I stepped out into the hallway.
Speaker 2: One journalist called it a mic drop moment. A court
Speaker 2: observer said to me, so Bob had the knife all along,
Speaker 2: And I remember thinking, Wow, if some people in the
Speaker 2: gallery were persuaded that Bob maybe had the knife, what
Speaker 2: does the jury think or other?
Speaker 14: Top story right now in the hands of the jury,
Speaker 14: deliberations have begun in the high profile murder trial of
Speaker 14: Nima MOMENTI how long.
Speaker 2: Did the jury deliberate for?
Speaker 10: It's eight days, he or nine.
Speaker 8: I think it felt like a month, the longest I've
Speaker 8: ever had.
Speaker 11: They told us to take our time.
Speaker 2: My source on. The jury talked me through their deliberations.
Speaker 11: The first few days were a waste. There was screaming
Speaker 11: and shouting and crying. We didn't get anything done.
Speaker 9: And at one point, you know, we could hear them
Speaker 9: yelling in the back, and another point one of the jurors
Speaker 9: came in and said, listen, I don't want to even
Speaker 9: be on this jury anymore. There's so much yelling, pounding
Speaker 9: on the table.
Speaker 11: Disappointed that that room was not sound proof, the whole
Speaker 11: yelling part. Everyone has been holding two months of secrets,
Speaker 11: two months of their thoughts. You can't talk to anyone,
Speaker 11: you can't watch the news.
Speaker 2: My source said that the jurors took the instructions from
Speaker 2: the court very seriously. They didn't discuss the case with
Speaker 2: each other or with their families for the extent of
Speaker 2: the trial. While the jury talked, the legal teams were restless.
Speaker 2: How did you feel and what were you doing with
Speaker 2: yourselves while they were deliberating.
Speaker 10: Pacing and you were trying to read the tea leaves
Speaker 10: on every note that we get from the jury during
Speaker 10: the course of the liberations and thinking about Okay, what
Speaker 10: does this mean? How does this signal? They may be
Speaker 10: thinking or leaning on X, Y or Z issue.
Speaker 2: In the hallways, we the press were trying to read
Speaker 2: the tea leaves too. We were kind of going nuts.
Speaker 2: One day, one of the jurors forgot to buckle his belt.
Speaker 2: What did that mean? Was he looking dishovel because he
Speaker 2: was stressed. There was one guy sitting on the bench alone.
Speaker 2: He looked like he had been crying, and we were
Speaker 2: wondering was he a holdout?
Speaker 11: There was a holdout who wanted to review every inch
Speaker 11: of evidence.
Speaker 2: That's my source on the jury again, they said that
Speaker 2: there was one massive point of disagreement in the deliberation room.
Speaker 2: That final video the defense showed of Bob seemingly snorting
Speaker 2: cocaine off of some object that for almost everyone on
Speaker 2: the jury, they simply did not believe that object was
Speaker 2: a knife.
Speaker 11: We know, no fool is going to snort off a knife.
Speaker 11: People don't carry bare knives in their pockets. That's just stupid.
Speaker 11: They're going to accidentally stab themselves when they sit down.
Speaker 2: But my source told me that there was one person
Speaker 2: on the jury who was convinced that Bob must have
Speaker 2: had the knife all along.
Speaker 11: He thought he was smarter than the cops. And the prosecutors,
Speaker 11: and he wanted to do his own investigation. He thought
Speaker 11: he could prove that Bob had the knife. He was
Speaker 11: sitting at the laptop that had the surveillance videos, asking
Speaker 11: how do I rewind? How do I slow down? How
Speaker 11: do I zoom in? He was at that for many hours.
Speaker 11: The court specifically told us we aren't supposed to do
Speaker 11: our own investigation, so we were screaming at him, what
Speaker 11: are you doing. You're not a cop, You're not a detective.
Speaker 2: My source said that finally one of the other jurors
Speaker 2: zoomed in on a piece of police body camera footage
Speaker 2: that showed a cop pulling something out of Bob Lee's pocket.
Speaker 4: It looked like it.
Speaker 2: Could have been a key or a USB stick. Couldn't
Speaker 2: this be what Bob had been using to snort cocaine
Speaker 2: out in the halls of the courthouse. Sam zanganay Nima's
Speaker 2: lead attorney, was usually sort of a cocky guy who
Speaker 2: likes to joke around, but by day six of jury
Speaker 2: deliberations even he seemed worn down.
Speaker 15: I mean, these guys are committed. I gotta give it
Speaker 15: to him. They're really in there working hard. That's all
Speaker 15: you can really ask them to do in.
Speaker 1: Your experience, can you provide any context? Is to how
Speaker 1: unusual or maybe on brand it might be for a
Speaker 1: deliberation like this to take this long.
Speaker 15: I've never had a murder case take longer than two days.
Speaker 15: The longest delibration I've ever had was ten days, and
Speaker 15: it was a federal case, and it was like two
Speaker 15: million documents. I'm sorry, guys, I'm just emotionally drained, as
Speaker 15: you can imagine.
Speaker 2: The juror I spoke to said they poured through the
Speaker 2: text messages, They watched the videos again and again, dozens
Speaker 2: of times.
Speaker 11: Everyone wasn't sleeping well every time we'd meet. Did you
Speaker 11: sleep no? Did you eat no? Some of us had nightmares.
Speaker 11: Some people had dreams that they were on the witness stand.
Speaker 11: One person said they dreamed that Bob walked in. He
Speaker 11: looked like a walking corpse because we had looked at
Speaker 11: that Morgue photo again and again. Some people got freaked out.
Speaker 11: Is he a ghost? Is he here right now?
Speaker 16: House?
Speaker 17: Nina?
Speaker 15: I mean, imagine when you have other people deciding your fate,
Speaker 15: waiting an hour is an eternity.
Speaker 2: Nima's attorney, Sam Zanganay again.
Speaker 15: Imagine waiting six days, and I'm sure that all the parties,
Speaker 15: including the leads, I feel for them. I feel for
Speaker 15: everybody in a case like this, you know, especially in
Speaker 15: this time where you're waiting right, it's not an easy thing.
Speaker 9: It's a gut wrenching thing.
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 2: After this, Zanganay flew home. Three out of five of
Speaker 2: Nima's lawyers returned to Florida and they didn't come back. Eventually,
Speaker 2: the holdout came to agree with the rest of the jury.
Speaker 2: Nima had the knife. Then the question became is Nima
Speaker 2: guilty of first degree murder? To meet that bar, the
Speaker 2: killing had to be three things. Willful, premeditated, and deliberate.
Speaker 11: Let's figure out all the evidence. Let's figure out what
Speaker 11: we agree on. Wilful means the defendant meant to kill.
Speaker 11: You look at the evidence and say, okay, did the
Speaker 11: defendant mean to kill? If you were angry at someone,
Speaker 11: you would not stab them in the chest. That's wilful.
Speaker 11: We check that off. The next requirement premeditated, meaning you
Speaker 11: planned the act in advance. There's a knife at the scene.
Speaker 11: We felt it like premeditated. People don't randomly.
Speaker 18: Bring a knife premeditated check third requirement deliberate defendant considered
Speaker 18: scenarios four and against the act and chose to act anyways.
Speaker 11: That was the hardest part. There was no evidence that
Speaker 11: says that we're not in his head. There's no manifesto,
Speaker 11: there's no video of him pacing in the hallway deciding
Speaker 11: whether or not to do it. Did the suspect think
Speaker 11: about every scenario and decide to murder? Can any of
Speaker 11: us say we saw any evidence that tells us that shit.
Speaker 2: No, At the end of these six they still weren't
Speaker 2: all in agreement. Then my source on the jury told
Speaker 2: me a different front. Duror told a personal story about
Speaker 2: how her father had been incarcerated. She told everyone she
Speaker 2: believed that he had actually been wrongfully convicted, and she said,
Speaker 2: if there had been one person on the jury like
Speaker 2: the holdout, maybe things would have turned out differently. She
Speaker 2: drew on the whiteboard a picture of a seesaw. There
Speaker 2: were eleven people on one side and just one person
Speaker 2: on the other.
Speaker 11: It took all of the air out of the room.
Speaker 11: We've been shamed. At that point, we were like, fuck,
Speaker 11: let's vote.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: After seven days of deliberation spread out across three weeks.
Speaker 2: We finally heard.
Speaker 3: Within the past hour, we learned jurors have reached a verdict.
Speaker 2: Here's amet to lie.
Speaker 8: When the verdicts are read, what happens is the forms
Speaker 8: go to the judge. The first page is first degree murder,
Speaker 8: the second page is second degree murder, and then all
Speaker 8: the way down Judge Gordon. She kind of sifted through
Speaker 8: that first page pretty quickly and looked at that second
Speaker 8: page more closely. I leaned over to Dane and said,
Speaker 8: it's a second, like it's not a first, it's a second,
Speaker 8: because she took some extra time there. Once I saw that,
Speaker 8: I was actually pretty calm.
Speaker 14: Ranking news out of San Francisco, California in that high
Speaker 14: profile murder case involving a Bay Area tech executive, here's
Speaker 14: your headline in this one. A jury has just found
Speaker 14: Nimo Momenti guilty of second degree murder in the killing
Speaker 14: of cash app founder Bob Lee.
Speaker 11: Some of us said, first degree feels right. Obviously there
Speaker 11: was some planning, but we have to do what the
Speaker 11: law says, even though we feel we really want first degree.
Speaker 11: Second degree is okay too. If you don't meet all
Speaker 11: three scenarios, it devaults to second. That's what it says
Speaker 11: in the law. That's what it says in our packet.
Speaker 4: The verdict of.
Speaker 2: Second degree murder means that Nima faces a sentence of
Speaker 2: sixteen to life. If he had gotten first degree, he
Speaker 2: would have been looking at twenty six to life. After
Speaker 2: the bailiff read the verdict, it was chaos. Bob's family
Speaker 2: and friends filled half the courtroom and they crowded the hallways.
Speaker 2: TV crews were already set up for Bob Lee's family.
Speaker 2: The judgment came as a relief of vindication.
Speaker 4: We're happy with the results today. We're having that name
Speaker 4: on money, will not be on.
Speaker 7: The streets, no longer gets the opportunity to harm anybody
Speaker 7: else in the world.
Speaker 10: The burd burger will cut him away for a long time.
Speaker 4: Just in this case was.
Speaker 2: Extremely larger proof and just a Nima's word versus my
Speaker 2: brothers were which he's not pared or it would be.
Speaker 4: To be able to hear those things.
Speaker 2: Bob's brother and former told me that they felt robbed
Speaker 2: of the chance to grieve his death. They've been navigating
Speaker 2: waves of media coverage and then the trial itself. I
Speaker 2: think they seemed relieved that this part of the ordeal
Speaker 2: was finally over, that they could finally grieve their family member.
Speaker 2: But for Nima's family, it was a solemn day. Here's
Speaker 2: Nima's mom Mana's well.
Speaker 17: Definitely, it's very disappointing in.
Speaker 3: That moment when you heard the verdict and you were
Speaker 3: able to make eye contact with your son.
Speaker 4: At that moment.
Speaker 17: There's no reason, no I would rather do have I
Speaker 17: contact with the jurors because this is their decision. My
Speaker 17: son is not such a thing, such a person. He
Speaker 17: is the kindest person. Every mother would love to have
Speaker 17: a son like him. I know my son and he
Speaker 17: never does that.
Speaker 2: A source close to the family so that during the trial,
Speaker 2: Nima's mom expressed faith in the defense strategy. She maintained
Speaker 2: hopeful optimism and also maybe a bit of denial. The
Speaker 2: guilty verdict felt like yet another blow. From the moment
Speaker 2: news of bob Ley's death went public, there were so
Speaker 2: many things that distracted from Nima Momeni and Bob Lee
Speaker 2: and whatever actually happened between them that night. First, there
Speaker 2: was online misinformation. Was Bob killed by a homeless person?
Speaker 2: Did he die? And the mugging gone wrong? Did this
Speaker 2: happen because San Francisco is a ruined city. Elon Musk
Speaker 2: wade in. Then there were rumors that Kazar and Bob
Speaker 2: slept together, intense scrutiny on Kazar's clothes and the state
Speaker 2: of her marriage. Then there was reporting on Bob's drug use,
Speaker 2: Nima's drug use, Kazar's drug use. For all that, I
Speaker 2: was sort of impressed that the jury came together and
Speaker 2: after some brutal back and forth, agreed on a second
Speaker 2: degree murder because they determined that the prosecution didn't prove
Speaker 2: that the killing was in fact deliberate. It felt rather
Speaker 2: even handed to me. So this appears to be the
Speaker 2: rare true crime podcast that determines that the criminal justice
Speaker 2: system seemed mostly to work, at least in this case.
Speaker 2: But at the very end, there was one thing that
Speaker 2: caught me by surprise. It was the DA Brooke Jenkins
Speaker 2: response after the verdict. She celebrated the result, but immediately
Speaker 2: took us back in time to the initial wave of
Speaker 2: online outrage about Bob's death.
Speaker 16: We all know that after Bob Lee was murdered, Elon
Speaker 16: Musk took to Twitter to make an effort to really
Speaker 16: shame San Francisco and to make it seem like this
Speaker 16: was about lawlessness in San Francisco and about what's going
Speaker 16: on out in our streets, and we knew it something different,
Speaker 16: and I think today proved once again.
Speaker 2: I asked Jenkins in a later interview, why bring up
Speaker 2: Elon Musk after all of this.
Speaker 19: I felt that he was somebody who was incapable of
Speaker 19: admitting when he was wrong, and so I perhaps was
Speaker 19: still holding on to a little a few feelings about that,
Speaker 19: and this was like my last chance to sort of
Speaker 19: throw in his face, you were wrong, and you owe
Speaker 19: us another tweet to say that you were wrong, right,
Speaker 19: and that we do what we're supposed to do in
Speaker 19: this city when it comes to, you know, accountability.
Speaker 2: Her response reminded me that even for the DA, even
Speaker 2: though the killer was caught and put away, the Bob
Speaker 2: Lee murder trial still felt deeply tied to the city
Speaker 2: of San Francisco and its legacy. It's almost like a
Speaker 2: hangover from those initial days of wild online rumors. The
Speaker 2: conversations about San Francisco that Bob Lee's death said emotion
Speaker 2: that there was a dangerous city ruined by liberal leaders,
Speaker 2: even though the substance of those conversations had nothing to
Speaker 2: do with what killed Bob, They continued. The trial was
Speaker 2: able to deflate rumors about this specific story, but the
Speaker 2: narrative about dangerous, out of control liberal cities would live on.
Speaker 2: That's next time on Foundering. Foundering is reported, hosted and
Speaker 2: executive produced by me Sean Wen, Eric Mesiti's mental produced
Speaker 2: our show. Bart Warshaw is our audio engineer. Our story
Speaker 2: editors are Joshua Brustein, Tom Giles, Anne Vandermay, and Nicole
Speaker 2: Beamster Bower. Voice acting by Mark Laydorf. Production help from
Speaker 2: Brianna Breen and Jeremy Domas. Be sure to subscribe and
Speaker 2: if you like our show, leave her review. Most importantly,
Speaker 2: tell your friends you next time
Speaker 11: Mhm