Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio.
Speaker 2: News Tuesday bo San Francisco.
Speaker 3: Let's see.
Speaker 4: It's April fourth, three.
Speaker 5: Where are you?
Speaker 4: The nine one one call comes in at two thirty
Speaker 4: four in the morning from near downtown San Francisco.
Speaker 6: Hello, where are you?
Speaker 4: The caller sounds stunned. He doesn't say his name, He
Speaker 4: just keeps repeating health, health, until he says, I know
Speaker 4: you hear me?
Speaker 5: Where are you?
Speaker 4: Have somebody stabbed?
Speaker 2: Where are you?
Speaker 4: After a minute or so, the caller starts gasping for brud,
Speaker 4: I have help going to there.
Speaker 7: Where are you?
Speaker 4: The nine one one operator tries to get more information
Speaker 4: out of him without much luck.
Speaker 8: Are you outside or inside?
Speaker 3: Listen to my questions?
Speaker 9: I know you can hear me.
Speaker 7: Well, okay, you're on the street outside.
Speaker 2: I'm what I'm at?
Speaker 7: He need to hospital?
Speaker 10: Oh?
Speaker 4: Slowly he starts struggling for energy three until three minutes
Speaker 4: in he goes quiet.
Speaker 9: Zero two thirty sir. And fifty three seconds.
Speaker 4: The police arrive. Officer Drew Jackson is the first on
Speaker 4: the scene.
Speaker 11: Hey, hey, it's a police man.
Speaker 4: Zero two.
Speaker 12: It's the police.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the police is there for you.
Speaker 11: Can you see that.
Speaker 4: This recording is from his body camera here.
Speaker 1: In front of a four oh three main.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's the police.
Speaker 3: Hey, who did this to you?
Speaker 4: The video, I should say, is awful. You can and
Speaker 4: see Officer Jackson come upon this body collapsed on the sidewalk.
Speaker 4: It's a man. He looks completely helpless. He's gone pale
Speaker 4: and is struggling to breathe.
Speaker 2: Hey, my friend.
Speaker 4: Officer Jackson pulls up the victim's shirt to reveal stab
Speaker 4: wounds and blood on his chest. He starts cutting off
Speaker 4: the victim's clothes.
Speaker 5: I know, but he's not.
Speaker 7: Doing too that.
Speaker 4: A few hours later, the man would be pronounced dead
Speaker 4: of multiple stab wounds to the chest and heart. The
Speaker 4: police don't know it yet, but the victim is Bob Lee,
Speaker 4: a successful tech executive and programmer who had a hand
Speaker 4: in creating many popular tech products. He worked at Google
Speaker 4: on the Android phone. He was CTO of Square, the
Speaker 4: payment company, and he found a cash app, an incredibly
Speaker 4: popular pool for sending or receiving money via smartphone. He
Speaker 4: was respected and well liked in the tech industry. His
Speaker 4: death would send shockwaves through the community. What happened following
Speaker 4: this moment was unlike anything I've ever seen in San Francisco.
Speaker 4: It took nine days for the police to rest a suspect.
Speaker 4: In those nine days, very little was even said about
Speaker 4: the investigation, and so rumors, fear, and misinformation rushed in
Speaker 4: to fill the void. Online speculation turned Bobly's death into
Speaker 4: something else, into a narrative, a story about San Francisco
Speaker 4: and its decline. At first, there were some prominent figures
Speaker 4: in tech who thought that Bob's murder was the manifestation
Speaker 4: of all that was wrong with the city, a famously
Speaker 4: progressive place that had crumbled into lawlessness bush by its
Speaker 4: own liberal policies. To them, Bob Lee's death became a
Speaker 4: symbol of what came to be known as the San
Speaker 4: Francisco doom loop. Leaders in the tech industry started calling
Speaker 4: for change. They placed the blame for Bob's death at
Speaker 4: the feet of the city's politicians. San Francisco was among
Speaker 4: the first major cities where there were calls for a
Speaker 4: return to law and order while flaunting the actual crime statistics,
Speaker 4: but it would not be the last.
Speaker 6: The Trump administration is also increasing the pressure on Minnesota.
Speaker 4: Thousands of immigration nations were sent to the Twin cities.
Speaker 7: Trump administration is deploying an additional two thousand National Guard
Speaker 7: troops to Los Angeles.
Speaker 6: Amid his effort to deploy the National Guard to cities
Speaker 6: like Portland and Chicago.
Speaker 4: In the years since Bob Lee's death, President Trump would
Speaker 4: deploy federal troops to several cities with Democratic leaders.
Speaker 2: I don't like being up.
Speaker 9: You're talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting
Speaker 9: this once beautiful capital was.
Speaker 4: He would argue that crime was quote out of control,
Speaker 4: and that these cities were burning down, that the streets
Speaker 4: were in crisis, and for anyone living in San Francisco,
Speaker 4: this kind of language might sound pretty familiar. The San
Speaker 4: Francisco Doom Loop was only the first chapter of how
Speaker 4: Bobley's death was spun. After that, when details of Bobley's
Speaker 4: personal life started being reported out in the press, a
Speaker 4: new story started to emerge. Bob was held up as
Speaker 4: an example of the tech industry's excessive party scene, replete
Speaker 4: with sex, drugs, and house music. What was the real story,
Speaker 4: Why was Bob Lee killed? And who really was to
Speaker 4: blame the city, the industry, or something else entirely. I'm
Speaker 4: sean wen, this is foundering. The killing of Bob Lee.
Speaker 5: I'm trying. I should look up with our last text
Speaker 5: message hold on me.
Speaker 4: I first met Bobley's former wife, Chrystal Lee, at her
Speaker 4: family home in Marin County. She moved there after she
Speaker 4: and Bob separated, while he stayed in the penthouse apartment
Speaker 4: in San Francisco. She still lives there with their kids
Speaker 4: and her partner.
Speaker 5: Okay, so this was in April third and eight, eight
Speaker 5: or six pm. How are you feeling hanging with Bow
Speaker 5: in the city And I messaged back, Hey, sexy boys,
Speaker 5: I'm in bed, not suitable for public eye. I feel
Speaker 5: like crap, Like just leave me alone and say, oh
Speaker 5: I feel better, babe. We'll hit you up tomorrow. And
Speaker 5: that was the last message that I heard from him.
Speaker 4: Krista and Bob met when they were both twenty two
Speaker 4: years old. They became adults together and raised kids. They
Speaker 4: divorced in twenty eighteen after a sixteen year relationship, but
Speaker 4: they stayed close, not just we have kids close, but
Speaker 4: we still party together close. They had a shared family
Speaker 4: group text and were in constant touch.
Speaker 5: He'll send a message on our family thread, you know,
Speaker 5: love you guys, see you soon. He was always in
Speaker 5: communication with our family.
Speaker 4: It was the morning of April fourth. Bob had moved
Speaker 4: to Miami a few months before all of this, but
Speaker 4: he was back in town for a work trip and
Speaker 4: to see his daughter's school play. Krista had seen him
Speaker 4: the night before, but hadn't heard from him all morning.
Speaker 4: She was in the car with her daughter.
Speaker 5: I was driving and I said, do me a favorite
Speaker 5: check Dad's location for me. Something's not right.
Speaker 4: Bob's phone showed that he was at the police station.
Speaker 4: After Krista dropped her daughter off at school, she texted him.
Speaker 5: April fourth, nine, forty nine, am Are.
Speaker 2: You in jail?
Speaker 5: Question mark?
Speaker 12: Question?
Speaker 5: Question mark? I got multiple calls at six am from
Speaker 5: Zuckerberg General Hospital, no message, and when I called back,
Speaker 5: they said it was probably just auto update confirmation for
Speaker 5: an appointment, but I don't have appointments there. Then I
Speaker 5: had Scout double check your location. It shows you at
Speaker 5: the police station.
Speaker 4: She didn't hear back. A few hours passed.
Speaker 5: We were out back having lunch and I tried to
Speaker 5: call him again. It was going right to voicemail. I'm like,
Speaker 5: this isn't right. I've got a weird feeling. Shortly after that,
Speaker 5: that's when our friend Ali called me and said, babes,
Speaker 5: have you talked to Bob this morning?
Speaker 4: Ali is a close friend of Bob's.
Speaker 5: He goes, I don't want to alarm you, but it
Speaker 5: shows his location at the police station. And of course
Speaker 5: then I kind of giggled to myself, like, how many
Speaker 5: people have your location? Honey? Ali was like, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm in the area. I'm going to go see what's
Speaker 5: going on, Like, did he get beat up? Did something
Speaker 5: happen the I guess A receptionist and at the at
Speaker 5: the police station said, you know, the person matching this
Speaker 5: description was taken to the hospital. My heart dropped, and
Speaker 5: I mean we left the house within two seconds of
Speaker 5: that and went down there and Ali said I'm on
Speaker 5: my way there right now. And of course the entire drive,
Speaker 5: we're thinking, Okay, what happened? What damn it, Bob? What
Speaker 5: did you do? Or even worse, you know, did he
Speaker 5: get attacked by someone? You know, what's going on here?
Speaker 5: Nothing made sense.
Speaker 4: Christal arrived at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital with her
Speaker 4: partner Jeremy.
Speaker 5: I walked up, I gave them my ID and the
Speaker 5: one said, oh, okay, let's take you back to this
Speaker 5: private waiting room. I'm thinking, what the fuck is going
Speaker 5: on here? And then maybe about five minutes past and
Speaker 5: it's just kind of a we're kind of making little
Speaker 5: jokes here and there, like what is going on with Bob.
Speaker 5: Shortly after that, a nurse and the attending doctor came
Speaker 5: into the waiting room and said, you're the wife of
Speaker 5: Bob Lee, a former wife, Crystal Lee. And he's like,
Speaker 5: I'm so sorry to inform you, but we did everything
Speaker 5: we could, but we couldn't say Bob. I almost passed out.
Speaker 5: This flush went over me and it was like, you know,
Speaker 5: I couldn't even hear what he was saying anymore. It
Speaker 5: was just all of a sudden, you know, ears are death,
Speaker 5: and I'm listening to this person try to tell me,
Speaker 5: you know, and they don't even say his name. They
Speaker 5: keep saying a man matching his description, and I.
Speaker 4: Was like, what the what the fuck? What is going
Speaker 4: on here?
Speaker 5: And I'm looking at Jeremy and I couldn't even make
Speaker 5: a tear. I couldn't catch my breath, and they wanted
Speaker 5: me to stick around. They wanted me to talk to
Speaker 5: the medical examiner all this other stuff, and it's like
Speaker 5: the only thing I could think of was I have
Speaker 5: to go home. My kids just got out of school.
Speaker 5: They're at the house. I have to go home now.
Speaker 5: I have to tell my children that their father was
Speaker 5: stabbed to death.
Speaker 4: Krista made the hour long drive back to her house.
Speaker 4: She pulled in the driveway.
Speaker 5: I just kind of sat in the car, looking out
Speaker 5: the window and hoping that I was going to get
Speaker 5: a call saying, oops, wrong guy, never mind it was
Speaker 5: some other blonde dude.
Speaker 4: When that called didn't come, she went inside to see
Speaker 4: her kids.
Speaker 5: So I walked upstairs to their rooms and said, I
Speaker 5: need to tell you that something happened to dad last
Speaker 5: night and he was taken to the hospital and Dad
Speaker 5: passed away early this morning. I didn't really know how
Speaker 5: to express to my child, like what words that you're
Speaker 5: supposed to use. And I just remember looking at Scout
Speaker 5: and it's our fifteen year old. She's got the big
Speaker 5: Disney princess eyes where they just welled up in tears.
Speaker 5: So I'm laying there with Bolt, like with my children,
Speaker 5: and not really making sense of it all, but just
Speaker 5: feeling pain, absolute pain. Within minutes, I received calls from
Speaker 5: dozens of people. Is it real?
Speaker 4: I'm like as far as I know, I think so.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And then shortly after that, one of our best
Speaker 5: friends called and said I just saw on the news,
Speaker 5: And at that point in time, my heart shattered. I'm like,
Speaker 5: how the fuck is this already on the news?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 10: RAINA seven oh one and the breaking news.
Speaker 5: A tech executive is dead.
Speaker 10: He was stabbed in San Francisco south of Market Street.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 10: The latest reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee,
Speaker 10: the founder of cash App.
Speaker 5: Someone out there has already run doing the media saying,
Speaker 5: you know, cash app founder Bob Lee stabbed to death.
Speaker 3: He's widely known as the founder of cash app, a
Speaker 3: popular mobile payment service.
Speaker 4: He is a giant in the tech field.
Speaker 13: His death certainly sending shockwaves through the tech community.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 5: I was on the phone with my father and I
Speaker 5: started crying. I'm like, Dad, I gotta go. Bob's on
Speaker 5: the news.
Speaker 3: Police officers rushed out there, but by the time they
Speaker 3: got there, the killer or killers were long gone.
Speaker 4: The initial wave of news stories are pretty bare bones.
Speaker 4: They mentioned Bob's name and the fact that he was killed,
Speaker 4: but they don't mention a suspect or a weapon. Then
Speaker 4: the story changes at eight oh one, PM the night
Speaker 4: of April fourth, only eighteen hours after Bob was stabbed,
Speaker 4: a retired MMA fighter named Jake Shields goes on Twitter
Speaker 4: and posts quote, I just found out that my good
Speaker 4: friend was killed last night while walking in San Francisco.
Speaker 4: He was in the good part of town and appears
Speaker 4: to have been targeted in a random mugging slash attack.
Speaker 4: Suck San Francisco. Nowadays, Jake is a podcast host. He's
Speaker 4: interviewed holocaust deniers and white nationalists, but at the time
Speaker 4: he was simply a semi famous guy on Twitter. Soon
Speaker 4: more voices join in, many identifying as venture capitalists and
Speaker 4: tech founders. We've trimmed these tweets for length. Rip at
Speaker 4: crazy Bob, this is fucking horrific. Fuck you SF politicians.
Speaker 4: Fuck you. Can we please stand up and completely purge
Speaker 4: SF politics now and start over? How many more of
Speaker 4: these are we going to see? Another? One reads Chase A.
Speaker 4: Boudin and the criminal loving city council that enabled him
Speaker 4: in a lawless SF for years have Bob's literal blood
Speaker 4: on their hands. This last tweet was referencing Chase A. Boudin,
Speaker 4: a progressive da who ran on policies like bail reform
Speaker 4: and reducing the prison population. He was removed from office
Speaker 4: after a very contentious recall vote. By the time Bob
Speaker 4: was killed, members of the tech industry had been rallying
Speaker 4: for months around the message that crime in San Francisco
Speaker 4: was out of control, and now one of their own
Speaker 4: was dead. That's when the richest man in the world
Speaker 4: chimes in, taking the to a whole new level of infamy.
Speaker 4: At two twenty seven am, Elon Musk tweets very sorry
Speaker 4: to hear that many people I know have been severely assaulted.
Speaker 4: Violent crime in San Francisco is horrific and even if
Speaker 4: attackers are caught, they are often released immediately. Is the
Speaker 4: city taking stronger action to incarcerate repeat offenders at Brook
Speaker 4: Jenkins SF.
Speaker 1: So I woke up, I remember early in the morning
Speaker 1: to that tweet already being in my inbox.
Speaker 4: That's Brook Jenkins, the current DA of San Francisco. She
Speaker 4: was appointed after Chase A.
Speaker 1: Boudin was recalled, and me having to, you know, out
Speaker 1: of the fog of waking up, realize what exactly I
Speaker 1: was looking at in that it was in fact Elon
Speaker 1: Musk who had tagged me in this tweet. About this case.
Speaker 4: Were you surprised he even knew who you were?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I was shocked that he knew my name at all.
Speaker 1: I think about six million people saw it within twenty
Speaker 1: four hours, and so the flood of media interest began
Speaker 1: almost right away.
Speaker 2: All Right, here's a horrible story, then we'll talk about Trump.
Speaker 4: The next morning, things moved beyond the walls of Twitter
Speaker 4: when conservative YouTubers take up the story.
Speaker 9: Tech executive Bob Lee, founder of cash app, was stabbed
Speaker 9: to death in San Francisco on the three hundred block
Speaker 9: of Main Street.
Speaker 4: This is the late Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert.
Speaker 9: Now this caught my attention not only because it was
Speaker 9: a horrible tragedy, but this is the same block that
Speaker 9: I was attacked with.
Speaker 4: A knife two months before this. Dilbert was dropped by
Speaker 4: major newspapers all over the country when Adams made racist
Speaker 4: statements about black people, he became a YouTuber commenting on
Speaker 4: the news of the day.
Speaker 9: So in the eighties, I was robbed twice at gunpoint
Speaker 9: while I was a bank teller in downtown San Francisco.
Speaker 4: He then goes on to suggest that cities are done for.
Speaker 2: I tend to think the cities are dead. I think
Speaker 2: they're dead.
Speaker 9: I think the next time the cities will be alive
Speaker 9: is when robots rebuilt them.
Speaker 2: That could be a while. All right, let's talk about
Speaker 2: Trump's arrangement.
Speaker 11: Clearly, what's happening in San Francisco is political.
Speaker 4: This is Luke Rudkowski, a prominent nine to eleven truther
Speaker 4: and an Alex Jones acolyte.
Speaker 11: The latest high profile incident that happened in San Francisco
Speaker 11: happened where a major tech executive and the founder of
Speaker 11: cash app, Bobb Lee, was viciously attacked in the middle
Speaker 11: of the night and then lost his life at the
Speaker 11: age of forty three.
Speaker 4: News of Lee's death caught the attention of many commentators,
Speaker 4: from those on the fringe to those who are increasingly mainstream.
Speaker 3: Dave Rubin this is the Ruben reported April sixth, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, were live streaming on Rumble YouTube and locals.
Speaker 4: Dave Rubin is a conservative YouTuber channel has almost three
Speaker 4: million subscribers.
Speaker 3: And it's not just that they're pushing all of the
Speaker 3: gender stuff and the race stuff and that they lied
Speaker 3: about COVID and everything else. It's that there is also
Speaker 3: an unbelievable amount of crime happening in blue cities right now.
Speaker 3: You know what, We cover it all the time. But
Speaker 3: the worst of the worst, as you guys know, is
Speaker 3: San Francisco. San Francisco has completely collapsed. Elon Musk's comments
Speaker 3: are completely right, the amount of security he has to
Speaker 3: have at the Twitter offices, which is in the midst
Speaker 3: of a zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 4: And then Ruben goes on to connect this to the
Speaker 4: city's political leaders.
Speaker 3: Why is it the Democrat cities look like that? If
Speaker 3: you can find Republican led cities that look like that,
Speaker 3: please send me the video and I will show it
Speaker 3: and I will go after the Republican mayor in those
Speaker 3: cities that's doing it.
Speaker 4: It's worth pausing here to ask where does San Francisco's
Speaker 4: reputation as a crime written hellhole come from. The data
Speaker 4: show that all reported crime and San Francisco is at
Speaker 4: a twenty year low. During those early years of the pandemic.
Speaker 4: Crime was also trending down overall, according to SFPD data.
Speaker 4: The exceptions that stand out include Carthieff's burglaries and homicides,
Speaker 4: all of which increased a little, but the homicide rate
Speaker 4: is still among the lowest of major cities in the US.
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty three, the year Bobbly was killed, he
Speaker 4: was one of only fifty five homicides. But San Francisco
Speaker 4: suffers from a persistent gap between what the data show
Speaker 4: and how people feel. This has prompted questions about how
Speaker 4: crime data is gathered, and some prominent tech voices have
Speaker 4: suggested throwing out the stats altogether. This topic is kind
Speaker 4: of a minefield, and many people who are much more
Speaker 4: knowledgeable than I am have made a go at it.
Speaker 4: But what I want to get at is a feeling
Speaker 4: a disconnect between the data and people's experiences. I remember,
Speaker 4: not long after I moved here, about a decade ago,
Speaker 4: I was crossing the street and I saw a man
Speaker 4: lying face down right where the crosswalk met the sidewalk.
Speaker 4: So to reach the sidewalk you had to step over
Speaker 4: his body, and that's what everyone at this intersection did,
Speaker 4: including me. We walked right past him, not knowing if
Speaker 4: he was alive or dead. While this kind of human
Speaker 4: suffering is not unique to San Francisco, there's something about
Speaker 4: it here that just feels different. It's more casual, more
Speaker 4: in your face, in your daily life, on your way
Speaker 4: to work, on your way to dinner, on the walk
Speaker 4: to pick up groceries, you might see someone shooting up
Speaker 4: at the bart station, or sitting on the sidewalk with
Speaker 4: open soores on their legs, or having a mental health
Speaker 4: episode in the middle of traffic, and most long time
Speaker 4: sam cosiscents would tell you, unfortunately, that's not new. There's
Speaker 4: research that shows that worrying about crime can become a
Speaker 4: chronic emotional state that shapes how people see the world
Speaker 4: around them. It can sow anxiety and mistrust even when
Speaker 4: crime rates are stable or falling. The research also shows
Speaker 4: that people who worry more about crime also tend to
Speaker 4: see common nuisances as threatening, things like noisy neighbors, litter, graffiti,
Speaker 4: or just visible groups of teenagers hanging out to them.
Speaker 4: These are signs of social decline. Crime during and immediately
Speaker 4: after COVID was a nationwide conversation, but San Francisco especially
Speaker 4: was a hot topic.
Speaker 7: Comedian Dave Chappelle was not the usual jokes and giggles
Speaker 7: during a surprise show last week, instead going off about
Speaker 7: San Francisco's high crime and rampant homelessness.
Speaker 4: Bob Lee was killed during a moment when San Francisco
Speaker 4: had become a national punching bag based on the reputation
Speaker 4: that wasn't completely inaccurate.
Speaker 10: The commedian asking the audience quote, what the blank happened
Speaker 10: to this place? He didn't say blank, saying the whole
Speaker 10: city was now the tenderloin. As a district notorist for crime, homelessness,
Speaker 10: drug problems.
Speaker 4: Florida Governor Ron de Santis flew in just to dump
Speaker 4: on the city for a campaign spot.
Speaker 6: We're here in the once great city of San Francisco.
Speaker 6: We came in here and we saw people defecating on
Speaker 6: the street. We saw people using heroin, we saw people
Speaker 6: smoking crack cocaine, and you look around. The city is
Speaker 6: not vibrant anymore. It's really collapsed because of leftist policies.
Speaker 4: After the break, the weight of this national scrutiny comes
Speaker 4: down on a few local politicians. We'll be right back.
Speaker 4: By Wednesday night, less than forty eight hours after bob
Speaker 4: was killed, city officials could see the narrative spinning out
Speaker 4: of control.
Speaker 12: I learned about Bobly's murder in the same way that
Speaker 12: most people did, just seeing coverage from the media and
Speaker 12: on social media.
Speaker 4: This is Kevin Benedicto, a San Francisco police commissioner.
Speaker 12: What you saw right away was people jumping to conclusions,
Speaker 12: blaming the house, blaming open air drug markets.
Speaker 4: In San Francisco, a police commissioner is not the city's
Speaker 4: top cop the way there's in New York or in Batman. Instead,
Speaker 4: the commission is like a civilian advisory board that's meant
Speaker 4: to oversee police misconduct. It's basically a volunteer gig bob
Speaker 4: Ley happened to die the night before a routine police
Speaker 4: commission meeting which would be broadcast to the pub blick.
Speaker 4: So before the meeting starts, Benadicto wants to talk to
Speaker 4: the city police chief, a guy named Bill Scott.
Speaker 12: One reason why I wanted to speak to the chief
Speaker 12: of police before the commission meeting was to ask if
Speaker 12: there was any evidence that this was linked to opener
Speaker 12: drug markets, if there was any evidence that this was
Speaker 12: connected to any and how'se individuals or anyone in a
Speaker 12: mental health crisis. And at that point of the answer
Speaker 12: was no, there was nothing that connected to those things,
Speaker 12: and all the evidence pointed to that not being the case.
Speaker 12: What really, I think most frustrated and really disgusted me
Speaker 12: was what seemed to me an attempt to weaponize this
Speaker 12: tragedy to advance an existing political agenda and to advance
Speaker 12: political narratives about the state of San Francisco, when we
Speaker 12: were less than twenty four hours, when the investigation was
Speaker 12: still in its early stages, and there wasn't really any
Speaker 12: evidence to suggest any of those things, and all the
Speaker 12: sort of statistical data suggested really quite the opposite.
Speaker 4: At the commission meeting that night, Benedicto decides to make
Speaker 4: a statement about Bob Lee.
Speaker 12: I do feel compelled to comment on what we're seeing.
Speaker 12: I do feel like some people out there on the
Speaker 12: media and social media that are exploiting this horrific incident
Speaker 12: for political gain.
Speaker 4: Like most government commission meetings, this one was sparsely attended,
Speaker 4: so he thinks he's speaking to a small group of people.
Speaker 12: So much of the coverage in this short amount of
Speaker 12: time has been a significant amount of misrepresenting facts, of
Speaker 12: fear mongering, and of trying to exploit this tragedy. The
Speaker 12: thrust of my statement was really, wait and see, we
Speaker 12: don't know all the facts. The Department will update the
Speaker 12: public and the Commission when we do and would discourage
Speaker 12: people from reading the fear mongering and the politicization and
Speaker 12: things on Twitter, including things by the CEO of Twitter.
Speaker 12: So I got home, I went to bed and woke
Speaker 12: up to dozens, maybe over one hundred negative responses and
Speaker 12: mentions directly in emails, including threats.
Speaker 4: Police commission meetings are taped, and unbeknownst to Benedicto, his
Speaker 4: comments were cut into a short video clip and tweeted
Speaker 4: out by a local news outlet called The San Francisco Standard.
Speaker 12: It had gotten I think upwards of one or two
Speaker 12: million views. I since stroked. I watched my remarks back
Speaker 12: to make sure that I didn't confess to the murderer,
Speaker 12: because why else would someone be spreading me and spreading
Speaker 12: my family bad One that said, I hope your mom
Speaker 12: gets stabbed, and let's see if you say we should
Speaker 12: wait and see when it's your mom to get stabbed.
Speaker 4: One of the people to jump on him was Jason Calacanis,
Speaker 4: a prominent venture capitalist. He tweeted in all caps and
Speaker 4: with minimal punctuation. These are the lunatics running San Francisco,
Speaker 4: evil and competent fools and grifters who accomplish nothing except
Speaker 4: in name bling rampant violence, vote them out.
Speaker 12: I really do feel empathy for their immediate fear and
Speaker 12: anxiety when there's violence that strikes into our community, particularly
Speaker 12: if it's sort of a subset of a community that
Speaker 12: you belong to, just have just goes home to many
Speaker 12: tech companies that are many tech workers, and so to
Speaker 12: feel that anxiety, I totally empathize that, But it really
Speaker 12: felt quite distasteful to be sort of the conclusions.
Speaker 4: Benedicto's empathy was not necessarily returned. Jason Kalakanas, the guy
Speaker 4: who called Kevin Benedicto an evil and competent fool, is
Speaker 4: one of the four hosts of the All In podcasts.
Speaker 4: The show has nearly nine hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube,
Speaker 4: and I want to talk about All In for a
Speaker 4: moment specifically because of who those hosts are. All for
Speaker 4: our powerful tech leaders, all for our venture capitalists with
Speaker 4: connections to PayPal, Facebook, and Uber, among other companies. They
Speaker 4: are powerful businessmen who've built up a very successful podcast. Also,
Speaker 4: they've been some of the loudest critics of San Francisco
Speaker 4: politics since twenty twenty. Here's Calacanas. Politicians are sending their
Speaker 4: thoughts in prayers.
Speaker 8: But obviously San Francisco is still a very dangerous place,
Speaker 8: it seems.
Speaker 4: The next voice is a guy named David Friedberg.
Speaker 8: I used to live two blocks from where the event happened.
Speaker 8: I'll zoom out. Is it a bad tis in Soma
Speaker 8: at ring Con Center? Is it part of all that
Speaker 8: drug craziness? No, it's just a nice area. Look, here's
Speaker 8: the thing. If you park at a parking meter in
Speaker 8: San Francisco for eight minutes too long, you get a
Speaker 8: sixty to one hundred dollars parking ticket. And San Francisco
Speaker 8: has become an upside down town. What I mean by
Speaker 8: that is I think that, like so much of the
Speaker 8: response to concerns about the powerful having too much influence
Speaker 8: over those who are less powerful, the response has been
Speaker 8: to turn things upside down, which is to give those
Speaker 8: who were lacking in the power structure everything and to
Speaker 8: try and take everything away from those who are at
Speaker 8: the top of the power structure.
Speaker 4: Look, there are clearly differences between the all in guys
Speaker 4: and right wing pundits like Dave Rubin or the outright
Speaker 4: conspiracy theorists like Luke Rutkowski. People listen to all In
Speaker 4: because the hosts are incredibly successful investors offering business insights.
Speaker 4: But there are some key parallels too. They're freely zipping
Speaker 4: between Bob Lee's murder and unrelated topics like Walgreens and
Speaker 4: parking tickets, and they also speculate quite openly.
Speaker 14: We don't know exactly what happened yet.
Speaker 4: This is David Sachs, an early PayPal executive. He's probably
Speaker 4: the most prominent among the all In guys.
Speaker 15: I think we suspect, and I would bet dollars to
Speaker 15: dimes that the story is very similar to a case
Speaker 15: we had in LA recently, that Brianna Kupfer case, where
Speaker 15: a young woman was basically stabbed for no reason by
Speaker 15: a psychotic, homeless person who could have been locked up,
Speaker 15: who has arrested multiple times but was not kept locked
Speaker 15: up because of this push for decarceration. But this idea
Speaker 15: of just releasing these people onto the street, I just
Speaker 15: think is an outrageous abdication of responsibility by our elected officials.
Speaker 4: To be clear, there was nothing tying Bob Lee's death
Speaker 4: to the death of Brianna Kupfer in LA. At this point,
Speaker 4: there was no suspect publicly identified and no evidence linking
Speaker 4: Bob's murder to homelessness or mental illness. It was all speculation.
Speaker 4: I should mention. In the years since, David Sacks's political
Speaker 4: involvement has only deepened, but crime in San Francisco was
Speaker 4: one of the first examples of SAX prominently waiting into
Speaker 4: a political fight.
Speaker 14: These elected leaders they are setting loose on us a predatory,
Speaker 14: criminal or icotic element that jeopardizes our safety and makes
Speaker 14: these cities unlivable.
Speaker 4: David Sachs turned down my request for an interview. Jason
Speaker 4: Calacanis and David Friedberg did not respond. Meanwhile, amidst the speculation,
Speaker 4: time ticked on.
Speaker 7: Four days later, still no arrests or suspects identified in
Speaker 7: Tuesday's tragic murder of tech executive Bob Lee. Last night,
Speaker 7: police Chief Phil Scott said there have been good developments. Reportedly,
Speaker 7: a kitchen knife with a four inch blade was found
Speaker 7: in a nearby parking lot.
Speaker 4: One week after Bob's death. Crystal Lee, Bob's former wife,
Speaker 4: was starting to pick up the pieces.
Speaker 5: I headed out and had to fly to Miami to
Speaker 5: do something I wished in my life I'd never have
Speaker 5: to do, and that is to go through someone's apartment
Speaker 5: and pack things up and also look for evidence because
Speaker 5: at this time there was no suspect.
Speaker 4: However, some new information had leaked to the press, including
Speaker 4: security recordings.
Speaker 7: The Daily Mail website obtained this heartbreaking footage showingly staggering
Speaker 7: along the sidewalk leading trying to flag down a driver
Speaker 7: or a doorman to no avail.
Speaker 4: Then, nine days after the murder for breaking news right now,
Speaker 4: it seems there might have been an arrest.
Speaker 7: San Francisco Police Department has arrested a suspect and the
Speaker 7: murder of tech executive Bob Lee.
Speaker 4: There was big news. The Mayor, the DA and the
Speaker 4: Chief of Police held a joint press conference.
Speaker 13: On April fourth, twenty twenty three. At approximately two thirty am,
Speaker 13: San Francisco Police officers from Southern Station responded to the
Speaker 13: three hundred block of Main Street for a report of
Speaker 13: a stabbing. Our homicide investigators developed information that identified the
Speaker 13: suspect as thirty eight year old Nima Momeni of Emoryville, California.
Speaker 4: Who San Francisco Police arrested thirty eight year old Nima Momenti.
Speaker 3: The suspect is another tech executive who knew Lee.
Speaker 5: I did not know the name. I had never heard
Speaker 5: of him before. They showed pictures of him. I looked
Speaker 5: him up. I had no idea who this person was.
Speaker 4: Here's police Chief Bill Scott.
Speaker 13: We can confirm that mister Lee and mister Momenti knew
Speaker 13: each other. Mister Momeni was taken into custody without incident
Speaker 13: and Emeryville, California. He was transported to the San Francisco
Speaker 13: County Jail and booked on one charge of murder.
Speaker 4: Scott starts by emphasizing that the two men knew each other,
Speaker 4: which is most often the case when it comes to violence.
Speaker 4: It's usually not a random act on the street.
Speaker 13: This is more about human nature and human behavior than
Speaker 13: it is about our city. This is not about San Francisco.
Speaker 13: It happened in San Francisco, and that is unfortunate. It's
Speaker 13: even more of a tragedy that it happened and at all.
Speaker 13: But this speaks to more about human nature. Fact show
Speaker 13: and research shows that most people who commit homicides know
Speaker 13: the people that they kill.
Speaker 4: Then the new DA Brook Jenkins speaks and somewhat surprisingly,
Speaker 4: she turns her attention to Twitter. She calls out Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: As you already heard mister Lee was murdered by somebody
Speaker 1: that he knew. While we're not going to release any
Speaker 1: additional facts at this time, I must point out that
Speaker 1: reckless and irresponsible statements like those contained in mister Must's
Speaker 1: tweet that assumed incorrect circumstances about mister Lee's death served
Speaker 1: to mislead the world in their perceptions of San Francisco
Speaker 1: and also negatively impact the pursuit of justice for victims
Speaker 1: of crime, as it spreads misinformation at a time when
Speaker 1: the police are trying to solve a very difficult case.
Speaker 4: So, after nine days of speculation, Nima Momeni was arrested.
Speaker 4: He wasn't, as some had suspected, a quote psychotic homeless person.
Speaker 4: He was an it guy who lived in a fancy
Speaker 4: loft just across the bridge from San Francisco. Him being
Speaker 4: out on the street that night in April had nothing
Speaker 4: to do with decarceration politics or lenient city officials. But
Speaker 4: now there were many new questions. How did Bob know Nima?
Speaker 4: Why was he hanging out with him at two in
Speaker 4: the morning. All of us were just like, who who
Speaker 4: is this guy? These questions opened a window into a
Speaker 4: subculture that Bob inhabited a realm of casual sex, recreational
Speaker 4: drug use, and hard partying.
Speaker 5: I started to piece things together and started kind of
Speaker 5: wondering Millennium apartment. Oh wait, I picked up Bob from
Speaker 5: some chicks apartment at the Millennium Tower Once.
Speaker 4: The story that emerged after Momeni was charged was far
Speaker 4: more complicated than the initial speculator. On the next episode,
Speaker 4: who is the supposed tech executive Nima Momeni, Why would
Speaker 4: he want to kill Bob Lee? And what was the
Speaker 4: cost of pushing a narrative that was so off the mark?
Speaker 4: That's next time on Foundry. Foundering is reported, hosted and
Speaker 4: executive produced by me Sean Wen, Eric Mesitzi's mental producder
Speaker 4: show Bart Warshaw is our audio engineer. Our story editors
Speaker 4: are Joshua Brustein, Tom Giles, Anne vander May, and Nicole
Speaker 4: Beamster Bower Special thanks to Peter Bloomberg, Janna Knoedler and
Speaker 4: Brad Stone. Be sure to subscribe and if you like
Speaker 4: our show, leave a review. Most importantly, tell your friends
Speaker 4: see you next time.
Speaker 7: Actor Plaster report to prison, Stan Cop with
Speaker 15: The compass and the same before the State of patter,