Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Previously on Foundry Tuesday, San.
Speaker 2: Francisco, the tech executive is dead.
Speaker 1: He was stabbed in San Francisco south of Market Street.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the latest reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee,
Speaker 3: the founder of cash App. I would bet dollars to
Speaker 3: dimes that the story is very similar to a case
Speaker 3: we had in La recently where a young woman was
Speaker 3: basically stabbed for no reason by a psychotic homeless person.
Speaker 1: I hope your mom gets stabbed and let's see if
Speaker 1: you say we should wait and see.
Speaker 2: Our homicide investigators develop information that identified the suspect as
Speaker 2: thirty eight.
Speaker 4: Year old Nima Momenti.
Speaker 5: We can confirm that mister Lee and miss Momenti knew
Speaker 5: each other.
Speaker 1: It was the morning of April thirteenth, nine days since
Speaker 1: the killing of Bob Lee. It was early, about four
Speaker 1: or five am, still dark out. That's when Chris, who
Speaker 1: asked us not to use his last name, heard a
Speaker 1: commotion outside his window.
Speaker 5: I was awakened to a megaphone just outside demanding that
Speaker 5: someone come out of the building.
Speaker 1: Chris lives in a big warehouse style loft in Emeryville.
Speaker 1: It's about a fifteen minute drive across the Bay Bridge
Speaker 1: from San Francisco when there's no traffic, and really the
Speaker 1: only time when there'd be no traffic on the Bay
Speaker 1: Bridge would be the middle of the night or very
Speaker 1: early in the morning.
Speaker 4: Do you remember looking out.
Speaker 5: The window and seeing a lot of police, A shocking
Speaker 5: number of cops or this area.
Speaker 4: At least a.
Speaker 5: Number of them had helmets on, they had large rifles,
Speaker 5: and they were wearing body armor.
Speaker 1: He remembers seeing about twenty cops. There may have been more.
Speaker 4: It was just like you've seen the movie come out
Speaker 4: with your hands up.
Speaker 1: I didn't know exactly what was going on.
Speaker 5: The best I could figure is that there'd been a lot.
Speaker 4: Of catalogic converter effects. Thought maybe the police had acquired
Speaker 4: somebody in the building. But I mean, that was the
Speaker 4: best I could come up with.
Speaker 5: I never, in my wildest dreams thought that, you know,
Speaker 5: they were after a resident of the building.
Speaker 6: They served a search and arrest warrant at his apartment
Speaker 6: at a very early time of their choosing.
Speaker 1: This is my anonymous source in the police department. Because
Speaker 1: we're protecting his identity, we're having a voice actor read
Speaker 1: what he told me.
Speaker 4: So from what I know.
Speaker 6: Once the SWAT team began calling out to him, he
Speaker 6: came out very fast and surrendered very immediately, just dressed
Speaker 6: as if he was either.
Speaker 4: Sleeping in his clothing.
Speaker 6: Or was just expecting this to happen.
Speaker 4: Because of my advantage point, I really couldn't see who
Speaker 4: it was.
Speaker 1: Chris again, the building resident.
Speaker 7: I could sort of guess that it was a male
Speaker 7: based on his build, but I had no idea who
Speaker 7: it was.
Speaker 1: Curious and not sure what to do, he turned where
Speaker 1: any of us might go looking for answers.
Speaker 7: So I got on the Facebook group for the building
Speaker 7: and I started to piece together from what everyone was
Speaker 7: saying exactly what was happening. I learned that it was
Speaker 7: Nima that they did in fact arrest, and then both
Speaker 7: through that Facebook group and through the morning.
Speaker 5: News, I learned that he was being accused of murdering
Speaker 5: Bob Lee.
Speaker 4: And that was you know, that was pretty shocking to hear.
Speaker 1: The man arrested that day was named Nima Momenti. He
Speaker 1: was thirty eight years old, he ran a small IT company,
Speaker 1: and most surprisingly, police said he knew Bob Lee. Did
Speaker 1: the officers find anything interesting in his apartment?
Speaker 4: We've heard that his apartment was kind of weird.
Speaker 6: Apparently he liked knives and had some kind of weird
Speaker 6: mall ninja knives.
Speaker 1: What's mall ninja?
Speaker 6: Remember in Mall's they had all those weird shops that
Speaker 6: sold the curvy swords and the dragon things and all
Speaker 6: the crystals and all that stuff. That's kind of like
Speaker 6: mall ninja stuff, right, the knives that have points and
Speaker 6: blades all over them that clearly are for looks and
Speaker 6: would never be actually functional, things like that.
Speaker 1: By morning, the news had broken and the media were
Speaker 1: clamoring for any information they could get on the suspected
Speaker 1: killer of Bob Lee.
Speaker 8: Against phone call. This frantic phone call from Mike Duel
Speaker 8: from KCBS radio. He's a reporter there.
Speaker 1: Sam Singer occupies another unit in the same building. He
Speaker 1: wasn't home at the time, but a few hours after
Speaker 1: the police arrived, he got a call from a.
Speaker 8: Journalist and he's just Sam, Sam, the murderers in your building,
Speaker 8: and I'm driving work here and I said, what are
Speaker 8: we talking about here? And he goes, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 8: He says, this is brand new. Bob Ly's murderer has
Speaker 8: been arrested and he's in your building.
Speaker 1: Sometimes San Francisco feels like a very small town. Singer
Speaker 1: is friendly with many journalists. He's a well known public
Speaker 1: relations guy in the Bay Area. He specializes in crisis communications.
Speaker 1: He represented Chevron when they're oil refinery in Richmond, California,
Speaker 1: caught on fire, reportedly sending fifteen thousand people to the hospital.
Speaker 1: He represented the San Francisco Zoo when the tiger jumped
Speaker 1: out of its enclosure and killed a teenager. And now
Speaker 1: by chance, he had a role to play in San
Speaker 1: Francisco's next big story.
Speaker 8: And I said, okay, I said, just out of interest,
Speaker 8: what's his unit number? And he goes two toh one.
Speaker 8: I said, Mike, He's not just in my building, he's
Speaker 8: my next door neighbor. So Mike de wall in case, bsay,
Speaker 8: can we just come over right now? Can we want
Speaker 8: to interview you? Did you know him?
Speaker 6: We are executive Sam Singer never expected he would be
Speaker 6: next door neighbors with the man accused in the criminal matter.
Speaker 8: Total shock. I'm in the public relations of business. We
Speaker 8: don't normally wind up working next to killers.
Speaker 1: Remember what I said about San Francisco feeling like a
Speaker 1: very small town. Singer also happens to represent one of
Speaker 1: tech's most outspoken figures on crime in San Francisco.
Speaker 8: One of our other clients is Gary Tan of y Combinator,
Speaker 8: who immediately texted me when he saw that Nima was
Speaker 8: my next door neighbor and said, you live next to
Speaker 8: Bob Lee's accused killer.
Speaker 1: This is what it felt like in the days, weeks,
Speaker 1: and even months after Nima Momeni's arrest. Did you hear?
Speaker 1: Who is this guy? Do you know him? Where did
Speaker 1: he come from? Police said that Nima Momeni knew Bob Lee,
Speaker 1: but most of Bob's friends and family had never heard
Speaker 1: of him before. They were dumbfounded. I've been trying to
Speaker 1: answer these very basic questions, who is Nima Momente and
Speaker 1: why did he do it? What turned up was not
Speaker 1: the story I expected, but a larger human drama spanning
Speaker 1: continents about drugs and partying, machismo, love and violence. I'm
Speaker 1: sean Wen. This is foundering the killing of Bob Ley.
Speaker 1: Do you remember where you were?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 9: What my wife called me? Oh? Have you checked? The news?
Speaker 4: Said?
Speaker 9: No, Nima was in trouble.
Speaker 4: That's how I.
Speaker 1: Found out Alex Porshae again lives in the Bay Area,
Speaker 1: where he's part of a relatively large Iranian immigrant community.
Speaker 1: His wife used to run a small grocery store where
Speaker 1: Nima worked as a teenager.
Speaker 9: I was in this belief Nima was just as close
Speaker 9: as an adopted's son to my wife. The kids grow
Speaker 9: to like him.
Speaker 1: Through his attorneys, Nima Momeni turned down my request for
Speaker 1: an interview and also declined to make a statement. Like
Speaker 1: Alex Nina's family immigrated to the US from Iran.
Speaker 9: He was a likable kid.
Speaker 1: To understand anything about Nima killing Bob, the violent act
Speaker 1: at the center of this story, it's important to understand
Speaker 1: the role of violence in his coming to America in
Speaker 1: the first place. According to court documents, Nima Momeni, his mom,
Speaker 1: and his younger sister arrived in the US in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine. Nima was about fifteen, his sister was a
Speaker 1: year younger. An anonymous source told me that in Iran,
Speaker 1: the Momentis were very rich. Their dad was and still
Speaker 1: is a dental surgeon in Tehran. He also has a
Speaker 1: business doing chemical imports and exports. I reached out to
Speaker 1: him via his professional INSTADT grand Page, but have not
Speaker 1: heard back the Momentius in Iran did not have a
Speaker 1: happy life. According to court records, Nima's mom, Manas, said
Speaker 1: she suffered domestic violence and abuse from her husband, and
Speaker 1: Nima's sister, Kazar, has also alleged sexual abuse from her dad.
Speaker 1: So Nima, his mom, and his sister left behind their
Speaker 1: comfortable life in Iran to come to the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: They settled in Albany, a city just outside Berkeley. For
Speaker 1: their first few months here, the three of them shared
Speaker 1: a single bedroom in the home of one of Mana's
Speaker 1: childhood friends. Nima and Kazar enrolled in high school as
Speaker 1: poor kids with foreign accents. Although Nima was a year older,
Speaker 1: they were placed in the same grade level.
Speaker 9: As they were growing up, they had a very very
Speaker 9: close relationship as they had no choice as a brother
Speaker 9: and sister. If us Are ever asked him for help,
Speaker 9: I'm pretty sure he was there, one hundred and fifty percent.
Speaker 9: I'm very sure of it.
Speaker 1: All three banded together to make ends meet. They worked
Speaker 1: for Alex Porshagen's wife. Nima worked at her grocery store,
Speaker 1: Manas worked at her catering business as well as a
Speaker 1: flower shop. Kazar would sometimes babysit for the couple's young children.
Speaker 1: After some time, they managed to move out of their
Speaker 1: friend's bedroom and into their own apartment.
Speaker 9: They were economically a disadvantage. Mana's worked very hard to
Speaker 9: keep this family afloat. She did not have a husband.
Speaker 9: She was not taking government assistance. She's a very proud woman.
Speaker 1: Alex said that as far as he knew, Nima was
Speaker 1: a good kid. He worked hard, he was polite, but
Speaker 1: Alex could also sense an impatience in Nima.
Speaker 9: Hey, remember when Nima I was working for my wife.
Speaker 9: At one point he was complaining that he didn't have
Speaker 9: privacy because they lived in such a small resident I
Speaker 9: think they had a one bedroom. Maybe the mother and
Speaker 9: a daughter had taken the bedroom and he had to
Speaker 9: live in the corner of the living room. And I
Speaker 9: told him, I said, you're not the only one. They
Speaker 9: all went through these hardships, so get used to it
Speaker 9: and learned only to make your life better.
Speaker 10: The only thing I really knew about him was that
Speaker 10: he sold lead and I would buy weed off of him.
Speaker 1: This is Thomas. He grew up in Albany and went
Speaker 1: to high school with Nima. He asks me not to
Speaker 1: use his last name, because some of the things he
Speaker 1: described were illegal.
Speaker 10: The main things is stead out were his clothing style,
Speaker 10: which I remember he wore like those big like chinko jeans,
Speaker 10: and you know, and he always dressed in like darker
Speaker 10: black clothes.
Speaker 1: And how did you know he so? Like how did
Speaker 1: you learn that?
Speaker 10: Friends just told me he was always kind of soft spoken,
Speaker 10: quiet kind of guy, not like playful or joke around
Speaker 10: or anything. He was just more like, here's the money,
Speaker 10: here's the weed.
Speaker 1: Enjoy How how was it do you remember?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 8: The week was good?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he had good weed. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: Thomas and Nima weren't exactly close, but he had a
Speaker 1: story for me that seems relevant to what would happen.
Speaker 1: Later one afternoon in January of two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: Thomas's friends came by.
Speaker 10: They were all like juiced up, like like you know,
Speaker 10: we just tried to rob Yeman, like and then you
Speaker 10: pull out a knife and cut us.
Speaker 1: Thomas would be the first to admit that the details
Speaker 1: of this story are fuzzy, but he remembers the broad strokes.
Speaker 1: And I found a police report which confirms that there
Speaker 1: was a fight that involved weed and that Nima used
Speaker 1: a knife on the other two kids.
Speaker 10: So my recollection of that is that they went to
Speaker 10: meet Nema to buy weed off of him, and they
Speaker 10: tried to just steal the weed. I think one of
Speaker 10: my friends might have punched him, and then like Nima
Speaker 10: pulled out a knife, and I the details are a
Speaker 10: little fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure one of my friends,
Speaker 10: the one who I think actually hit him, got like
Speaker 10: sliced on his side right here, and it wasn't a
Speaker 10: deep cut. It was more of a surface wound. And
Speaker 10: I feel like my other friend turned to like maybe
Speaker 10: get away and got sliced on like backside.
Speaker 1: That Nima would be carrying a knife didn't surprise Thomas.
Speaker 10: Most of us carried a pocket knife with us, just
Speaker 10: just because you never know, for whatever reason andy to
Speaker 10: have it. I almost always had a pocket knife on me,
Speaker 10: but you know, never pulled it out on anybody.
Speaker 1: Did it change how you all saw Nima. Were they
Speaker 1: hurt by the cuts at all?
Speaker 10: I don't think they were hurt by the cuts. I
Speaker 10: think we just basically were like, oh, well, if you
Speaker 10: try to rob me, he might stab you. I mean,
Speaker 10: that's basically what we deducted from that situation.
Speaker 8: Very yeah.
Speaker 10: It was basically like, okay, well, they can't buy weed
Speaker 10: off of him anymore. They can't go with me to
Speaker 10: go buy weed off of him anymore.
Speaker 11: Prosecutors say video footage shows Lee and Momini leaving the
Speaker 11: Millennium Tower during the early morning hours of April fourth
Speaker 11: and getting into Momini's car. Court documents say defendant not
Speaker 11: only drove victim to a secluded area, but also brought
Speaker 11: a kitchen knife with him.
Speaker 1: In the motion to detain Nima without bail, prosecutors alleged
Speaker 1: that he drove Bob to what they called a secluded
Speaker 1: area in the opposite direction of his hotel. There, Nima
Speaker 1: stapped Bob three times with a kitchen knife. One of
Speaker 1: those stabs pierced Bob's heart.
Speaker 11: This was a planned and deliberate attack.
Speaker 12: They're saying. He took a kitchen knife from his sister's
Speaker 12: apartment to his car with this, you know, with Bob
Speaker 12: got in the car, went somewhere else, and then attacked him.
Speaker 1: David is one of Nima's closest adult friends. He also
Speaker 1: asked to withhold his last name. He said he couldn't
Speaker 1: reconcile the prosecutor's case with the Nima he knew, but
Speaker 1: not for the reasons you might think.
Speaker 12: He wouldn't have a kitchen knife in his car. He
Speaker 12: would have something like a bowie knife in his car,
Speaker 12: you know, for just in case.
Speaker 1: As a kid, Nima may have carried a knife for
Speaker 1: self defense, but as an adult he developed a fondness
Speaker 1: for them more generally.
Speaker 12: Because I mean that he likes that stuff. He likes,
Speaker 12: like fantasy shaped blades with like you know, kers, or
Speaker 12: maybe cutouts in it, or some decorative handle, you know, elements.
Speaker 12: He enjoyed that stuff. He would like display them in
Speaker 12: his you know, in his living space.
Speaker 1: David met Nima at work and they became good friends.
Speaker 1: He painted the picture of Nima as someone who had
Speaker 1: an interest in weapons, including guns.
Speaker 12: He did get into shotgunning and other stuff with me.
Speaker 1: But what struck me talking to David was how much
Speaker 1: Nima sounded like a normal guy. He liked boats.
Speaker 12: He had this little sailboat with an outboard motor.
Speaker 1: He liked going out.
Speaker 12: Yeah, he definitely liked to go to struggles. I mean
Speaker 12: it was his idea to go like, oh, you guys,
Speaker 12: come with me, let's go.
Speaker 1: He liked burning Man one year David was retrofitting a
Speaker 1: car for the festival, a hand me down Saturn made
Speaker 1: to look like a bearded dragon, and then.
Speaker 12: He fully jumped in and helped me build the car,
Speaker 12: you know, dedicated a bunch of his time to it,
Speaker 12: and then drove with me out to the Plaia. And
Speaker 12: so that was his first burn in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: Can you speak to his relationship with drugs.
Speaker 12: He likes them.
Speaker 1: This was something I heard from other people too, that
Speaker 1: Nima was a heavy cocaine user and it impacted his work.
Speaker 12: The reason he stopped providing IT services for that first
Speaker 12: company where I met him was because there was a
Speaker 12: day where there was a problem in the morning and
Speaker 12: he couldn't be reached, you know, because I think he'd
Speaker 12: been up at night and then he was sleeping, and
Speaker 12: then you know, the fact that he was not on
Speaker 12: call during business hours was a problem.
Speaker 1: Losing your job because of drug use is usually considered
Speaker 1: a sign of a serious problem. Nima did, however, figure
Speaker 1: things out. He started his own IT business. I do
Speaker 1: want to distinguish Nima's job from Bob's job for a second.
Speaker 1: Early news reports first identified Nima as a tech executive.
Speaker 11: Suspect is another tech executive who knew.
Speaker 1: As if he was in the same milieu as Bob.
Speaker 1: That wasn't really true. He ran a small IT firm.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he had employees, sometimes it was just him. He
Speaker 1: helped set up servers for small businesses. He wasn't an
Speaker 1: engineer or a programmer or designer. He wasn't a rocket scientist.
Speaker 1: He was the guy who gets the Wi Fi working
Speaker 1: for rocket scientists. He worked in tech, but it's really
Speaker 1: not the same thing. One thing that is without question
Speaker 1: is that all three of the momentis Nima, his mom,
Speaker 1: and his sister came up in the world. His mom
Speaker 1: became a dental hygienist. Nima's small business seemed to be
Speaker 1: doing okay, but just okay. His sister, Kazar, became the
Speaker 1: most wealthy by marrying a renowned plastic surgeon.
Speaker 10: I do remember that he had a sister.
Speaker 1: That's Thomas again, who went to high school with.
Speaker 10: Nimaad And I don't even really know why I felt
Speaker 10: this way, that I felt like he was very protective
Speaker 10: of his sister.
Speaker 12: I met her originally, when you know, Nima invited her
Speaker 12: to my birthday party years ago.
Speaker 1: Here's Nina's friend David.
Speaker 12: After that, I would refer to her, you know, as
Speaker 12: Nima's hot sister, right like I was happy to have
Speaker 12: a pretty girl at my party. She was fun, cool, whatever,
Speaker 12: Nima's hot sister.
Speaker 1: David was shocked when he heard about Nima being arrested.
Speaker 1: He had always been a good friend and good to
Speaker 1: David's son. They all went voting together. But after getting
Speaker 1: over the shock, he had one thought.
Speaker 12: If Nima did this or is actually involved in this,
Speaker 12: it probably has something to do with because our Wow,
Speaker 12: that's the only way you can really make his blood.
Speaker 8: Boil like that.
Speaker 1: Rooted in childhood and their father's alleged abuse. When this
Speaker 1: protective sibling bond was carried into adulthood, it would have
Speaker 1: lasting consequences. That's after the break Kazar MOMENTI is about
Speaker 1: a year younger than her brother Nima. As of this recording,
Speaker 1: she's still married to a prominent plastic surgeon and lives
Speaker 1: in a Millennium Tower, the tallest residential building in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: It's a ritzy place. Past residents include professional athletes Joe
Speaker 1: Montana and Kevin Durant. It's also famously crooked, like literally
Speaker 1: it's tilted to one side and sinking an expensive architectural disaster.
Speaker 1: Kazar has a reputation as a party girl. She's glamorous.
Speaker 1: She was a fixture at The Battery, a private social
Speaker 1: club in San Francisco. She was also friends with Bob Lee,
Speaker 1: who called her Tina, a name she went by among
Speaker 1: non Iranians. Whenever I talk to anyone about Nima, old friends,
Speaker 1: former colleagues, acquaintances, the conversation always led back to Kazar.
Speaker 1: She was and is central to his life.
Speaker 12: They both will jump into the other's fight. So, like,
Speaker 12: what I've seen is if Nima's arguing with somebody and
Speaker 12: she's there, she'll get in the middle and get in
Speaker 12: the face of the other person.
Speaker 1: And what has he been like, Like, how does he
Speaker 1: express his anger?
Speaker 12: He'll raise his voice, he'll you know, he'll puff his
Speaker 12: chest and get loud and curse. And I've seen that.
Speaker 1: What does that say about Nima and his relationship with
Speaker 1: his sister.
Speaker 12: Well, it's very it's very close and you know, very
Speaker 12: connected and well, I would say codependent. I think it's
Speaker 12: sort of like they've been in the trenches together with
Speaker 12: their childhood and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Text messages between Nima and Kazar paint the clearest picture
Speaker 1: of their relationship. I obtained several months of texts dating
Speaker 1: back to before Bob's death. Most of them are rather
Speaker 1: sweet and mundane. Kazar since Nima photos of her hair
Speaker 1: after she had their mom come over and color it.
Speaker 1: Nima responds, when you want it done right, get mom
Speaker 1: to do it, or do it yourself. They recommended movies
Speaker 1: to each other. They asked what each other was having
Speaker 1: for dinner. They made fun of mutual friends. They made
Speaker 1: plans together on a whim. They argued over whose house
Speaker 1: to hang out at. In one of the text messages
Speaker 1: that made me laugh, Nima was complaining about the ultra
Speaker 1: exclusive clubs that Kazar liked to hang out at. He wrote,
Speaker 1: battery and Millennium shit getting old. Maybe just me, but
Speaker 1: I'm never comfortable around people in either of those places.
Speaker 1: So pretentious and douchey. But the texts occasionally reveal more
Speaker 1: complicated aspects of their lives. We've asked voice actors to
Speaker 1: read them, and just a quick note. Like anyone's texts,
Speaker 1: Nima's and Khazars are filled with typos, so the actors
Speaker 1: are reading a cleaned up version of the messages.
Speaker 4: What time are you going to moms today?
Speaker 2: No, I have to meet a friend to pick up something.
Speaker 1: In one set of messages from March of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: Kazar seemed to confess that she was cheating on her
Speaker 1: husband Dino.
Speaker 2: I left my ring with a friend and grabbing lunch
Speaker 2: with him.
Speaker 4: Okay, are you fucking serious? You took off your ring
Speaker 4: and left it at his fucking place and now doing
Speaker 4: lunch with him today? Did you tell anyone else? Does
Speaker 4: Mom and Dino know?
Speaker 2: Wow? So happy I shared this with you. I made
Speaker 2: a mistake.
Speaker 4: Pretty fucked up, Haz.
Speaker 1: During Nima's eventual murder trial, Kazar's extramarital relationships would come
Speaker 1: up frequently, and it was explained to us that she
Speaker 1: and Dino were in an open marriage. In another exchange,
Speaker 1: Kazar appeared to accuse Nima of stealing her cocaine.
Speaker 2: Did you take the rock that was left at my house?
Speaker 2: I had got that to last me for a month.
Speaker 2: I can't keep paying for blow and give it to people.
Speaker 1: Throughout the texts, the siblings were often arguing about cocaine
Speaker 1: and accusing each other of taking too many drugs, But
Speaker 1: the most telling exchange I read from the months before
Speaker 1: Bob's death actually had to do with Kazar and Nima's father.
Speaker 1: About six weeks before Nima killed Bob, text messages showed
Speaker 1: that he had a plan to confront their about abusing Kazar.
Speaker 1: Their dad lives in Iran. Nima made a plan to
Speaker 1: meet him in Turkey.
Speaker 4: Ps I contacted this big law firm in Istanbul to
Speaker 4: go over and prep for everything before I go talking
Speaker 4: to them tomorrow and still have to apply for visa. Lol.
Speaker 2: Just don't I rather you be safe here with me? Plus,
Speaker 2: I really want to let the pass go. It's my decision.
Speaker 2: Thank you and love you. But I'm much rather you
Speaker 2: be safe here and healthy with me than go chasing after.
Speaker 4: That bullshit Hazi Haz Trust me. I got this.
Speaker 2: Turkey has no jurisdiction on a crime that did not
Speaker 2: happen on their soil.
Speaker 4: We'll go into it more. Since we already have Interpol
Speaker 4: records in him, I'm going to use that to get
Speaker 4: him on Turkey soil. Otherwise, in the airport, Nima.
Speaker 1: Didn't make it to Turkey. He made plans, but got
Speaker 1: arrested for killing Bob before he was able to make
Speaker 1: the trip. What I take from all of this is
Speaker 1: that Nima will go to great lengths to feel like
Speaker 1: he is defending his sister. He would fly to the
Speaker 1: other side of the world. He would involve lawyers, get visas,
Speaker 1: reach out to Interpol, even if she asked him not to.
Speaker 1: The questions prosecutors would eventually ask is if he would
Speaker 1: do all that. Would he also stab Bob Lee, especially
Speaker 1: if he was under the impression, even the mistaken impression,
Speaker 1: that Bob had done something to his sister. I found
Speaker 1: about half a dozen people who know Nima, and something
Speaker 1: that came up frequently was his generosity.
Speaker 12: In my experience, he's very nice and generous. Not always
Speaker 12: the best conversationalist, you know, but like he's very easy
Speaker 12: to be around, an excellent host, more free with his
Speaker 12: money than I was. And so he'd want to, you know,
Speaker 12: be going out to do things, and I'd be like, nah,
Speaker 12: I don't really want to. He's like, no, no, no, I
Speaker 12: got it, Come with me, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: David says that Nima would pay freely, but the phrase
Speaker 1: I got it, don't worry about it was a useful
Speaker 1: shorthand for many situations.
Speaker 12: That was a catchphrase of his don't worry about it.
Speaker 12: Don't worry about it. I've got this, don't worry about it.
Speaker 12: I'm not going to tell you don't don't worry about it.
Speaker 12: Just don't worry about it. You know, he shared, He
Speaker 12: shared what he shared, and like, I don't think he
Speaker 12: was hard to get information out of in general, but
Speaker 12: he chose what he was, you know, offering.
Speaker 13: All right, Hi, Hi, can you in yourself? Yes, my
Speaker 13: name is Ellen Hewitt. I'm a futures writer on the
Speaker 13: tech team at Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: A colleague of mine at Bloomberg, Ellen Hewitt reported on
Speaker 1: Nima right after he was arrested. She spoke with an
Speaker 1: anonymous source from Nima's past who had a different read
Speaker 1: on his personality.
Speaker 13: So this person said that Nima often came across as generous,
Speaker 13: and he would do things like use his boat or
Speaker 13: use his money to invite people to do things or
Speaker 13: bring them close to him. But this person observed that
Speaker 13: there was another layer beneath that, which is that actually
Speaker 13: Nima might have been fairly socially awkward, and that he
Speaker 13: was using his generosity as a means to bring people
Speaker 13: close to him, almost to pay them to spend time
Speaker 13: with him instead of having an actual connection with these people.
Speaker 1: Ellen's source said that behind closed doors, this veneer of
Speaker 1: generosity faded away.
Speaker 13: They really felt like, based on their observations of Nima
Speaker 13: and his close relationships, especially with women, that he had
Speaker 13: had severe trauma in his past, and that there was
Speaker 13: a darkness inside of him that had potentially not been
Speaker 13: addressed or that would come out in these unexpected ways,
Speaker 13: either in like verbal aggression or violent tendencies.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 13: This person said that Nima was a very serious drug user,
Speaker 13: and that he had been a heavy cocaine user for
Speaker 13: over a decade, and that his drug use was quite serious.
Speaker 13: Their observation was that it had exacerbated some of the
Speaker 13: underlying trauma and violent tendencies within him.
Speaker 1: Most of my sources had never seen Nima be violent. Yes,
Speaker 1: some of his interests were adjacent to violence. Of course,
Speaker 1: he was into guns and knives. One person said he
Speaker 1: had a shotgun stowed in a guitar case. He was
Speaker 1: interested in martial arts, you know, mall ninja stuff. But
Speaker 1: the people I spoke to felt like physically harming someone
Speaker 1: was still a leap from the person they knew. However,
Speaker 1: the record of Nima's history of violence goes beyond that
Speaker 1: fight that involved a knife and weed. In August of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, a little less than a year before
Speaker 1: Nima killed Bob, a woman called nine one one. She
Speaker 1: told the police that Nima was violent towards her, that
Speaker 1: he grabbed her by the arm and her waist and
Speaker 1: pushed her against the counter. She didn't want to press charges,
Speaker 1: but she did want the police to be present while
Speaker 1: she grabbed her things and left Nima's apartment. Part of
Speaker 1: the police report reads, she says he may be bipolar
Speaker 1: because one minute he will be fine and the next
Speaker 1: he will go off for no reason. Mission Local, a
Speaker 1: news site in San Francisco, also reported that Nima's phone
Speaker 1: number appeared on a website used by sex workers to
Speaker 1: warn each other about dangerous clients. Some of the complaints
Speaker 1: about Nima include quote definitely unsafe in nature, definitely a
Speaker 1: boundary pusher and rough snatched me by the hair after
Speaker 1: I said not to dangerous, uses a lot of coke,
Speaker 1: erraticant behavior, possessive, heavily armed. These comments were posted anonymously,
Speaker 1: they cannot be verified, but together with the police report
Speaker 1: and the source that my colleagues spoke to. They suggest
Speaker 1: a man prone to bursts of violence, which he hid
Speaker 1: from most people.
Speaker 12: I wasn't surprised to learn that he was known in
Speaker 12: this network of sex workers, but I was surprised to
Speaker 12: learn that he had a bad reputation.
Speaker 1: This is David again, Nina's good friend.
Speaker 12: It's disappointing, very very disappointing, because I've never thought of
Speaker 12: him as someone who would escalate violence, you know, not
Speaker 12: bring a knife to a fistfight, right yeah.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors have suggested Momeni's sister was at the center of
Speaker 1: a confrontation between Momeny and Lee, who were seen together
Speaker 1: leaving Hussar Momente's apartment building prior to the stabbing. Police
Speaker 1: eventually released security footage from the night of the murder.
Speaker 1: It was not good for Nima and it put his
Speaker 1: sister Khazar in the spotlight. Video from Millennium Towers showed
Speaker 1: Bob and Nima leaving Kazar's apartment together at two three am.
Speaker 1: They climb into Nima's car, Nima drives and then pulls
Speaker 1: up next to an empty lot under the Bay Bridge.
Speaker 1: After parking for several minutes. Security footage showed Bob stumbling
Speaker 1: away from Nima's car and Nima's speeding off. The video
Speaker 1: shows him driving erratically back across the Bay Bridge to Emeryville,
Speaker 1: where he lived. He was home in thirteen minutes, about
Speaker 1: as long as it took for the police to find Bob.
Speaker 1: The morning of April fourth, at eight am, six hours
Speaker 1: after the attack, Kazar called Bob twice. Two hours after that,
Speaker 1: she texted, Bob.
Speaker 2: Just wanted to make sure you're doing okay because I
Speaker 2: know Nima came down way hard on you, and thank
Speaker 2: you for being such a classy man handling it with class.
Speaker 2: Love you.
Speaker 1: She sounds concerned, but there's no indication she knows he's dead.
Speaker 1: At ten pm April fourth, twenty hours after Nima stabbed Bob,
Speaker 1: Kazar texts.
Speaker 2: Nima, Nima, I'm a bit conflicted about you.
Speaker 4: Cozi, call me when you're sober. No, Nima, that stuff
Speaker 4: messes up the mind.
Speaker 2: I don't even want to talk about it.
Speaker 4: Getting ready, I'll talk to you later.
Speaker 2: No, bitch, blow messed up your mind and makes you
Speaker 2: act lunatic. The Bob thing hit hard.
Speaker 1: These texts would eventually be raised at trial as Evan
Speaker 1: Kazar understanding her brother's role in Bob's death, though she'd
Speaker 1: later deny it. When police recovered the knife later that day,
Speaker 1: Nima's DNA was on the handle and Bob's was on
Speaker 1: the blade. And as a friend, what position does that
Speaker 1: put you in?
Speaker 9: Like?
Speaker 1: How do you think about that?
Speaker 12: So I guess ultimately I'm more interested and why rather
Speaker 12: than whether?
Speaker 8: Why?
Speaker 1: Why? This is what everyone from Bob's family, to Nina's
Speaker 1: friends to complete strangers on the other side of the
Speaker 1: world wanted to know why.
Speaker 12: For how much the activities of all the people involved
Speaker 12: have been mapped and tracked over these days, with all
Speaker 12: of the texts and videos and everything. I couldn't imagine
Speaker 12: Nima getting so upset that he would kill somebody really
Speaker 12: for any reason. But then, you know, I think about it.
Speaker 12: I think there's one reason.
Speaker 1: The text messages between Kazar and Nima also provide a
Speaker 1: possible motive. He texts Kazar referencing Bob.
Speaker 4: I don't know what he ended up doing at the
Speaker 4: bar or strip club. I just came home and started
Speaker 4: preparing for the rape case against both of them. As
Speaker 4: I told you, let's talk when you're calm and we
Speaker 4: can coordinate plans with the attorney. That was a really
Speaker 4: low point you took all of us to today. Hope
Speaker 4: you can make better decisions and find some better goals
Speaker 4: and priorities in life, and start thinking about your place
Speaker 4: in the world and your impact on the world and
Speaker 4: people around you. I'll help start the case against these guys.
Speaker 4: But you fucked up and fucked all of us over
Speaker 4: and over and going to have to work your way
Speaker 4: out of this by yourself.
Speaker 1: These texts from Nima are rather evasive, but here's how
Speaker 1: I read it. He's implying to his sister that he
Speaker 1: dropped Bob off at a strip club or a bar,
Speaker 1: and it seems clear he was under the impression that
Speaker 1: Bob did something to Kazar. This alleged rape that Nima
Speaker 1: was referring to comes up later in the trial, but
Speaker 1: Kazar is emphatic that Nima is wrong.
Speaker 2: Strip club rape case. Nima, you're fucking psychotic at times.
Speaker 2: No one enjoys that company. You scare me.
Speaker 4: Hope it was worth it. Stop text me. I have
Speaker 4: nothing to talk to you about. Go do whatever and
Speaker 4: call whoever you want. You're on your own. You don't
Speaker 4: need to lie about going to sleep again.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. My heart is just shattered about Bob, like
Speaker 2: it really is hurting my feelings. We're not perfect, but
Speaker 2: I just saw him last night. It hurts.
Speaker 1: It was a few hours later that news broke that
Speaker 1: Bob was dead the next day because our text Nima
Speaker 1: at seven thirty in the morning.
Speaker 2: If I find out anyone hurt him, I'll have no mercy.
Speaker 4: Good morning. Are you okay? You wake up like an
Speaker 4: animal when you take this stuff.
Speaker 2: No, Nima, I'm not okay. My friend is dead. Nima,
Speaker 2: Fuck you, You're an animal. Twenty four to seven. I
Speaker 2: have no more empathy for anyone right now. I'm going
Speaker 2: to get to the bottom of this and find out
Speaker 2: what happens to Bob.
Speaker 4: Okay, sounds good.
Speaker 2: Where do you drop him off? Either I'll ask or
Speaker 2: the cops will. I want to know.
Speaker 4: I talked to an attorney today about your overdose and
Speaker 4: attempted rape case. Really need you to take a few
Speaker 4: tests and talk to attorneys as well. Let me know
Speaker 4: when you're ready to deal with that.
Speaker 2: Llolol.
Speaker 4: In fact, text mom when you get your shit together.
Speaker 14: Lol.
Speaker 2: You dumb fuck Bob never touched me, No one did.
Speaker 2: Your dad did who? You kissed his ass and begged
Speaker 2: to get his approval. No, I'll call the cops too,
Speaker 2: since you called them too, call.
Speaker 4: Your mom when you're sober. Don't call me or Dino
Speaker 4: for anything else.
Speaker 2: Nope, the cops.
Speaker 1: The theory that prosecutors would eventually present goes like this.
Speaker 1: Nima was under the impression that something happened to Kazar,
Speaker 1: perhaps rape or an assault. This set Nima off. He
Speaker 1: was defensive of his sister. He had been his whole life,
Speaker 1: and for good reason. Nima played it cool that night
Speaker 1: by offering Bob a ride, but actually he blamed Bob
Speaker 1: for whatever might have happened, and at that moment, Nima
Speaker 1: was hiding a peary knife from Kazar's kitchen in his
Speaker 1: jacket with the intent to kill Bob. I spoke to
Speaker 1: one of nima neighbors, who asked to remain anonymous. He
Speaker 1: recalls an interaction that stuck with him. He said that
Speaker 1: Nima was in quote a weird state of mind. He
Speaker 1: called me and asked me if I had any alcohol,
Speaker 1: can I bring it all over. I thought he was
Speaker 1: having a party. I had no idea what the hell happened.
Speaker 1: I just brought it all over. Nima was alone. He
Speaker 1: was incoherent, more incoherent than normal, unable to tell a
Speaker 1: story coherently. He was like, yo, man I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of traveling. Then he tried to give me
Speaker 1: his new EAMs chair. I said, I can't take this.
Speaker 1: This is like a two thousand dollars chair. I looked
Speaker 1: at the call logs to see when Nima dialed his neighbor.
Speaker 1: It turns out it was twice, just hours after the stabbing.
Speaker 9: His life is tarnished. He's probably going to spend a
Speaker 9: lot of years in jail, His youth is going to
Speaker 9: be gone by the time he gets out, and nobody's
Speaker 9: looking at the human part of it.
Speaker 1: That family friend Alex Presha again, we.
Speaker 9: Love Nima, we love Huszar, but our heart was really
Speaker 9: broken for Manos because we know the kind of hardship
Speaker 9: she went through to bring this family to where they're at.
Speaker 9: It didn't come cheap. This was the very last thing
Speaker 9: that I think would ever make get on her mind
Speaker 9: that after all of that hard work that she put
Speaker 9: into this family and herself, she ends up defending her son.
Speaker 1: There are many sad things about the stories of Bob
Speaker 1: Lee and Nima. MOMENTI to me one of the sadder
Speaker 1: aspects is that Nima, his sister, and his mom, fled
Speaker 1: Iran to escape his father's alleged violence. They started over,
Speaker 1: but even so, Nima seemingly became a violent person himself.
Speaker 1: He was able to escape his father physically, but not
Speaker 1: the cycle of abuse. What remains frustrating about this story
Speaker 1: is the extent to which it does say quite a
Speaker 1: bit about San Francisco, only not in the way that
Speaker 1: venture capitalists and conservative YouTuber's thought. San Francisco is a
Speaker 1: land of boom and bust. There was the gold rush,
Speaker 1: then the depression, the dot com boom, and then the
Speaker 1: dot com crash, the most recent tech boom and the
Speaker 1: subsequent downturn, and of course we're in the midst of
Speaker 1: an ai boom right now. I think that a lot
Speaker 1: of the issues that you see in San Francisco can
Speaker 1: be tied to this boom and bust cycle, housing volatility, homelessness,
Speaker 1: tremendous wealth disparities, and this general sense of social unrest.
Speaker 1: Boom and bust, boom and bust. That's San Francisco. It's
Speaker 1: also the momenties in Tehran they were wealthy, then in
Speaker 1: the US they started with nothing, they slept in the
Speaker 1: same room of a family friend's house. Then they built
Speaker 1: comfortable lives with luxury clothes, cars, boats, the works. You
Speaker 1: could argue they were the epitome of the American dream.
Speaker 1: Then came bob Anima's decision to attack him the bust.
Speaker 1: As facts about the night of the murder continued to
Speaker 1: stack up, new details and new characters emerged, and as
Speaker 1: the story came together, it simply couldn't look less like
Speaker 1: the random act of violence originally alleged online.
Speaker 14: Obviously, based on this arrest and the storyline, it's quite
Speaker 14: different than what we all assumed it to be, which
Speaker 14: was some sort of homeless robbery type moment that has
Speaker 14: become all too commonplace in SF.
Speaker 1: The person speaking here is David Friedberg, a tech entrepreneur
Speaker 1: and one of the hosts of the popular All In podcast.
Speaker 1: In the early days following Bobley's death, Friedberg and his
Speaker 1: co hosts leaned into this theory that was a random
Speaker 1: act of violence on the street. Now, Friedberg was walking
Speaker 1: some of his assumptions back.
Speaker 14: When I read this this morning, I was like, Man,
Speaker 14: I didn't even consider the possibility that this guy was
Speaker 14: murdered by someone that he knew because I am so
Speaker 14: enthralled right now by this narrative that SF is so bad,
Speaker 14: and it must be another data point that validates my
Speaker 14: point of view on SF.
Speaker 8: Two things can be true.
Speaker 14: A tolerance for ambiguity is necessary.
Speaker 1: His co hosts, however, refused to follow suit.
Speaker 14: But I'm saying I didn't even do that. As soon
Speaker 14: as I heard this, I was like, I was like, oh,
Speaker 14: a fine assumption to David. That is a fine assumption
Speaker 14: to me.
Speaker 1: The other voices here are co host Jason Calacanis, followed
Speaker 1: by former PayPal executive David Sachs.
Speaker 3: That's a final sociological assumption.
Speaker 4: Listen, you made that assumption for our own protection.
Speaker 1: David Sachs went on to become President Trump's AI and
Speaker 1: cryptos are at the time, he had bet that the
Speaker 1: murderer had been quote a psychotic homeless person.
Speaker 3: We got all these reporters who are basically propaganda's trying
Speaker 3: to claim that crime is down in San Francisco. They're
Speaker 3: all basically seeking comment for me this morning, sending emails
Speaker 3: or trying to god on us because we basically talked
Speaker 3: about the Bobbly case in that way. Listen, that we
Speaker 3: didn't know what happened, but if we were to bet,
Speaker 3: at least, what I said is I bet this case
Speaker 3: it looks like a lot like the Brianna Cuffer case.
Speaker 1: Brianna Cuppfer was a twenty four year old woman murdered
Speaker 1: at work in Los Angeles. The man who killed her
Speaker 1: was a repeat violent offender.
Speaker 4: That was logical.
Speaker 3: That's not conditioning or bias. That's logic.
Speaker 1: Do you remember your reaction?
Speaker 12: You know, it didn't make sense to me then, and
Speaker 12: now I've seen most of the trial and all of
Speaker 12: the evidence, and it doesn't make sense to me now.
Speaker 1: Nina's friend David Again, I.
Speaker 12: Told a someone I was hanging out with the other
Speaker 12: day about how, you know, Nima's my friend, and they
Speaker 12: were like, oh, very interested in this, Like oh they
Speaker 12: know about the case and went on They're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 12: I heard it was like a hit job, like somebody
Speaker 12: you know, blah blah blahlahlah. Like there's been so much
Speaker 12: like wild speculation to fill in the gifts. It was
Speaker 12: clearly a personal dispute of some kind that happened between
Speaker 12: the two men, and because the right wing media picked
Speaker 12: it up to say, you know, the san Francisco is
Speaker 12: going to hell and you know all that stuff, right, Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so they they want to be like we
Speaker 1: got him, and like that shows that we are not
Speaker 1: the broken city that you're saying we are.
Speaker 12: Right, well, it's showing it's a city full of drug
Speaker 12: use and all night partying and you know a lot
Speaker 12: of a lot of wild.
Speaker 1: Living, a lot of wild living inside the clubs, the
Speaker 1: drugs and what came to be known as the lifestyle.
Speaker 1: On the next episode, Foundering is reported hosted an executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Sean Wen. Eric Mesitzi's mental produced our show.
Speaker 1: Bart Warshaw is our audio engineer. Our story editors are
Speaker 1: Joshua Brustin, Tom Giles, Anne vander May, and Nicole Beamster Bower.
Speaker 1: Voice acting by Mark Leydwarf, Eliza Jabaherry and Ramine Kavon.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe and if you like our show,
Speaker 1: leave a review. Most importantly, tell your friends see you
Speaker 1: next time.