Devil in the Desert: Catching Nayeri

This is Deborah Roberts here with another weekly episode of our latest series from 2020 and ABC Audio, Devil in the Desert.

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January 25th, 2016, three days since the escape from the Orange County jail, and three men on the run.

Dangerous men.

Hundreds of officials from Orange County Sheriff's Deputies to the FBI had been searching for the fugitives and had found nothing.

For Southern California residents, nerves were beginning to fray.

Deputy District Attorney Heather Brown, who had been working the Nayeri case, was worried too.

for public safety, but also her own safety.

When Nayeri had escaped, he had left a printed picture of her and fellow DA Matt Murphy on his bunk.

It seemed like a clear message.

I'm coming for you.

And now, it could be anywhere.

And Matt Murphy came to me and said, Heather, they don't have, they're out of leads.

And we need, at this point, the sheriff's asked us to alarm the public.

And you're just the girl to do it.

So.

Heather Brown called a reporter from the Orange County Register.

He asked her her about Nyeri's escape from jail.

Was she calling for a sheriff's investigation to find out how that had happened?

Brown said that it should be looked into.

I don't even know how he escaped, but certainly we have questions.

How did it happen?

So we can take measures so it doesn't happen again.

But I have no idea.

This is what happens when you house seasoned criminals and jails are overcrowded and underfunded.

Then he said,

what was your first thought when you learned he escaped?

And I said, when I got that text, I thought, oh my God, they let Hannibal Lecter out.

And then I said, don't quote me on that.

I'm not saying, you know, he was eating body parts, but I'm just saying of all the people to escape, this wasn't a guy who stole a car.

This is someone who's capable of the most atrocious, heinous acts, and people are in harm's way.

That's what I said to him.

He goes, where do you think he went?

I go, I don't know.

If it was me, I'd be in Mexico drinking margaritas by now.

But if I were Jose Nairi, I would be in the first non-extraditable country I could find.

By the next morning, the Orange County Register's headline did boost awareness of the hunt for Nayeri, though not in the way Heather Brown might have been hoping for.

Front line of the paper, Hannibal Lecter on the loose.

DA calls for a sheriff's investigation.

Apparently, you're supposed to make that comment about, like, don't quote me on that before you make the quote.

But in hindsight,

it did make national news so that people were alarmed.

All right, that is ahead.

But first, in this half hour, the massive manhunt ramping up this morning for those three violent convicts who broke out of a maximum security jail.

Authorities now warning they could be anywhere in the U.S.

or even outside the country.

ABC's came away from the market.

It wasn't just the investigators who were on the hunt to catch Nayeri.

Now everyone was looking for the man that had gotten away once again.

But his escape from jail was just the beginning of the strangest part of the Jose Nayeri saga, and for many in Southern California, the most terrifying.

I'm Matt Gutman, ABC News chief national correspondent, and from ABC News, this is Devil in the Desert.

Episode 6,

Catching Nayeri.

Alongside Nayeri, who investigators believed was the mastermind behind the brutal attack and mutilation of a dispensary owner in Newport Beach was Jonathan Tu facing a murder charge and Bach Young, who was in for attempted murder.

The search for the three men was like looking for a needle in a state-sized haystack.

And that week, as news of Nayeri's escape turned the local story into a national one, I traveled to Orange County to cover it.

In Orange County, people were jumpy.

Sheriff cruisers darting here and there, lights, sirens.

So far, all false alarms.

On day seven of the escape, I was there in Santa Ana, the city where the central jail was, watching this ever-expanding dragnet.

We were talking to terrified residents and business owners, and I was there when we started to hear word that one of the escapees had turned himself in just a few miles away.

At around noon on January 29th, 911 dispatchers received a call from an auto repair shop.

The voice on the line said, those three inmates that escaped, I have one of them right here.

Shenana Police, 911.

Hi,

I'm calling about Buck Young.

I have him here.

He's ready to turn himself in.

I'm sorry, who's ready to turn himself in?

It was Buck Young, the 43-year-old murder suspect.

I raced down to the repair shop to find out what I could.

And by the time I got there, Buong had already been taken into police custody.

But I met a friend of Young's.

He'd been the one to help him make contact with authorities.

He wants to make sure that he gets caught safely with nobody getting hurt.

It was all very confusing.

Why would a wanted man facing decades in jail return from an otherwise successful escape right back to the place of his jailbreak?

Did this mean that the others, Tube and Nayeri, were they here in Santa Ana as well?

That day, police in ballistic vests, tactical helmets, and carrying AR-15 style rifles patrolled Santa Ana in armored trucks, hunting for Nayeri.

They scoured warehouses in the area of the auto repair shop.

I followed, hoping to be there when they finally caught Nayeri.

Officers, I've been searching this entire area right now, focusing on those containers with canine units, but still those other two inmates remain missing.

Meanwhile, with Young in custody, investigators started to piece together where the men had been for the last week.

As it turned out, the key to Bak Yong's surrender was a fourth man, somebody who'd been on the run with the prisoners from the beginning, but not as a fugitive, as a captive.

He was a 71-year-old Vietnamese cab driver named Long Ma.

The day the men rappelled down the wall of the jail, they dialed for a taxi.

Since Young and Tiu both spoke Vietnamese, they called the Vietnamese taxi company, which dispatched Long Ma.

The three escapees piled into his cab in the late evening of Friday, January 22nd.

The men threatened the cab driver, who spoke almost no English, and forced him, at gunpoint, to drive them around Greater Los Angeles.

But at some point, the group decided Ma's cab wasn't enough.

So on the second day of their escape, the group stole a white 2008 GMC van and forced Ma to stay on as their getaway driver.

They all stayed together in a motel, the Flamingo Inn, on the outskirts of L.A.

It was there, in room 116, that the men passed the weekend drinking and smoking cigarette after cigarette.

By Monday, Heather Brown's Hannibal Lecter comments had ignited a media firestorm.

The men watched the coverage of their own escape on television.

On Tuesday, the men left Southern California.

They drove the stolen van and the cab in convoy five and a half hours north to the Bay Area where they pitched up in a new motel in San Jose.

But by now, the mood was tense.

Long Ma later told investigators he saw the men bickering and even physically fighting each other.

He said he thought that the fights were about him.

He worried that they were planning to kill him.

During a private moment, Bak Young apparently told Long Ma, Nayeri wants to get rid of you, but I'm trying to help you.

Young wanted to help Ma escape, and soon they would get their chance.

On Thursday, when Nayeri and Chu left the motel to get the van windows tinted, Long Ma and Bak Young made a run for it.

They jumped in the cab and drove south.

And somewhere on their journey, Long Ma talked to Young about the lessons of Buddhism.

He got Jung to agree that when they got back to Santa Ana, he would turn himself in.

By the next morning, Friday, exactly a week after the escape, Bak Young did exactly that.

He handed himself in to authorities and he started talking.

Now, investigators knew Nayeri wasn't in Iran.

He wasn't in Mexico.

He'd been right here in California the whole time.

That day, the Orange County Sheriff's Department held a press conference telling reporters that they would focus the search on San Jose, but that they hadn't ruled out Fresno because of Nayeri's links there.

I can't reiterate enough the importance of the white van.

We believe that Mr.

Nyeri and Mr.

2 are together in that white van.

And as we have said all along, both should be considered armed and dangerous.

If anybody sees that van or sees

anybody in the van, they should call 911 immediately.

January 30th, 2016, and 40 miles north of San Jose in San Francisco, it was a cloudy Saturday morning.

A man named Matthew Hay Chapman was taking his daily stroll from Golden Gate Park to neighboring Haight-Ashbury.

He was unhoused, and he'd been sleeping in the park's botanic gardens.

Every day, his routine was to walk to a McDonald's for a coffee, and as a self-described news news junkie, he would often grab a newspaper along the way.

So he knew all about the three escaped prisoners on the run from a Southern California jail.

As he exited the park, he noticed a white van in a nearby parking lot.

And as he described it later to a local news channel, KGO,

it caught his eye.

First, it had no plates.

Second, it was the exact same make and model of a van that he had once used as a temporary sleeping spot.

And now he could see that somebody else was doing the same thing.

I noticed people were sleeping in it because the windows were all steamed up content, heavy, heavy condensation.

I thought to myself, there's two people in that van because I used to live in a van.

Suddenly, the van door opened and a dark-haired man got out.

Hey Chapman immediately recognized Hussein Nayeri.

Well, I told myself, that's the dude.

That's got to be the guy.

Hey Chapman started walking behind him until he saw two police officers passing by on the other side of the street.

He started frantically waving and gesturing at Nayeri.

I'm like this flag and I go with my cane and like this, body language.

Boom.

That's the guy.

He bolts.

Officer on foot bolts after him.

Another officer comes over and his cruiser comes up and he said, I said, they're that way.

Nayeri ran west along the edge of Golden Gate Park and happened to run right past an SFPD station.

They caught up to him and arrested him on the spot.

Far, Carl, Paul, we got him down.

Hay Chapman then led police to the van in the parking lot.

where Jonathan Tu was still hiding inside.

The great escape was over, and the fugitives were sent right back to the Orange County jail.

ABC's Matt Gutman is on the story from Santa Ana.

Matt, good morning to you.

Hey, good morning, Dan.

Now that the three are back behind me, I was outside the jail that day that Nayeri was returned.

I remember seeing him in an orange jumpsuit between two Orange County Sheriff's deputies who were escorting him into the jail complex.

The search for a fugitive had brought me into a story that was all at once shocking and terrifying and intriguing.

The way that Nayeri had scared people, the reign of terror, just his name held over Orange County for all those days, it felt different.

In my 25 years of reporting, I've heard countless law enforcement refer to a suspect as a monster.

But in my experience, everyone has something that makes them human.

Could I find that with Nayeri?

It would be years before Nayeri would appear in front of a judge, and while the world waited for him to be brought to justice, I decided I would form a relationship with him, try to get to know him, and ultimately meet him face to face.

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After Jusé Nayeri returned to the custody of the Orange County sheriffs, he was transferred to a maximum security unit where he was kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.

If he moved around the jail, guards would film everything he did.

It was shortly after he arrived there in the early spring of 2016 that I started to write to him and unbelievably, he started writing back.

He was candid and surprisingly easy to chat with.

I asked him for a sit-down interview, no questions barred.

I was hopeful, but not expecting much, because pretrial interviews are really risky for defendants.

But after many months of correspondence and weeks before his rescheduled trial date in early 2019, he agreed.

I drove down to the jail to meet him, excited, but also nervous.

I didn't know which Nayeri was going to show up.

Walking into the Theo Lacy facility here in Orange, California, and I've been waiting to do this interview with Nayeri for nearly three years now.

We've exchanged letters,

gotten to know the guy, and I'm very eager to get him on camera because

he has an incredible story to tell.

And for the first time, he's willing to tell it.

So

here we go.

It would be filmed at the visiting booth at the jail, a tiny box with blue walls with half a dozen guards present.

Nayeri was allowed to wear a crisp white collarless shirt, but when we asked for the guards to remove his shackles, they said no.

Matt, Adam.

Thank you.

It's good to help you.

Take a seat.

Glad the clue.

He then went by Adam rather than Hussein.

His voice had the same gravel to it that I had heard in those calls with Courtney, but he was warm, friendly even, and we talked briefly about things we'd written about in our letters.

I knew our time together was short, and I needed to cut to the chase to get to the charges he faced.

First, the escape from jail.

When did you first, when did you first start planning that escape?

I didn't.

You know, it wasn't a much of, there was not a whole lot of planning to go into it as far as like let's try to escape

some one thing led to another it just came up as a on the escape he was clear he was guilty of that

he'd hacked his way out of the jail cell in fact he told me he'd had access to the roof for days before the escape

but he denied that he was any kind of mastermind of the scheme but it wasn't all me that's the thing it's a group effort.

Yeah, but the other.

And he was careful to mention that for a portion of the time he was on the lamb from jail, no one knew where he was.

In fact, he wanted me to see that even with total freedom, he chose not to attack anyone.

Not his ex-wife, not the prosecutors.

No one.

Nobody had a freaking clue where we were, right?

Correct.

I could have hurt somebody in the public.

I could have did what I wanted, right?

What was it?

I didn't, didn't I?

I sat tight and I didn't do anything we smoked some herb that's what we did

god bless america

i was getting the sense that he was now aware of the monster he'd been painted to be hannibal lecter wanted some good press

and his legal team was working on that About 18 months after he was captured in San Francisco, his defense team released a stunning video.

It was cell phone footage taken by Nayeri of his own escape from jail.

The son of Nayeri's lawyer was an aspiring filmmaker.

He'd edited the clips together and added a voiceover from Nayeri himself.

My name is Adam Hussein Nayeri.

You know, a lot of people like to credit us with some Houdini scape act all in eight minutes flat.

It's an interesting myth.

Three guys sneaking out of a maximum.

The voiceover is eerily flat, and it's a little strange that he so thoroughly documented a pretty serious felony.

The video shows Nayeri and the fugitives removing the grate in their cell and shinnying through a hole, putting a hand back through to give a thumbs up to the camera.

And underneath it, a soundtrack scored their escape.

It continues, showing moments from the fugitive's week on the run, filmed in the back of the stolen white van.

This is our casa right now for the moment.

This is our crib.

Water

and all the basics.

By the end of the video, the voiceover borders on rambling.

He tells the viewer that he got totally crushed by the reality distortion machine and criticized Orange County law enforcement.

Really, who polices the police?

Please, think for yourself.

Question authority.

Think for yourself.

Question authority.

Nayeri's defense team was convinced their edit of the footage would help their client's case.

That ahead of the trial, it might undo the bad publicity that Nayeri had built up, or at least soften it a little.

And maybe that's why he finally agreed to sit down for an interview with me.

Why did you do that?

Why'd you shoot the video?

Believe it or not, it was all spontaneous.

If I had any clue

that we were gonna is going to get released at some point or if I'm gonna need it to protect myself at some point, I would have done it probably much better job.

So the escape and the video of it, he seemed comfortable talking about.

But things changed when I asked him about the other crimes he was accused of.

The surveillance of Michael and his beating and mutilation in the desert.

With those details, he was less forthcoming.

Why were you doing surveillance on this man?

I'm going to leave

that question when we get to trial.

We're going to get to the bottom of every single piece of that when the time comes, piece by piece.

Were you there at the kidnapping?

The kidnapping of the guy?

Yeah, the guy who you've been surveilling.

No, not at all.

You were not there?

Absolutely not.

Were you part of mutilating him?

I had to be there if I

had to be part of it if I

so obviously not.

Yes.

I kept asking him,

trying different ways to get him to admit, or at least acknowledge what he was accused of, but he refused to budge.

So is the testimony that she's

I asked him about his ex-wife planning to testify against him.

You know,

a liar and a lawyer show me the difference.

She picked the right career after all, I guess.

That's the best I can say.

I thought about Nayeri as a high school wrestler, about something his coach said about him.

That in all the years he coached him, Nayeri never lost his cool on a wrestling mat.

He never let his anger take over.

That's the Nayeri I saw.

Calm, self-assured, and in control.

It's going to be all right, Matt.

You think?

I know.

One way or another.

What's going to happen at the end?

Well, I don't know.

I mean, what if you have to spend the rest of your life in jail, in prison?

Then I deal with it at that point.

This is life.

I mean, don't hang on to it so tight.

We had spoken for just over an hour when the guard signals, time's up.

Okay, great.

Thanks.

Matt, it was good to see you.

Duane,

have a good day, guys.

Even meeting Nayeri in person, he still felt frustratingly out of reach.

But just a few weeks later, I would get to see Nayeri again, this time in court, in front of the prosecutors, his ex-wife, and the victims.

The trial began on July 17, 2019, at the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach.

The courtroom was windowless and small, with too bright artificial lighting overhead.

Greg Prickett presided, with 20 years' experience as a California Superior Court judge.

To Prickett's right were the seats that would soon be filled by the jury.

To his left was a door surrounded by a small cage.

Prisoners were transported through that cage on their way to the courtroom.

In front of the judge were long tables, almost touching.

At one side was Nayeri's defense team, headed by attorney Sal Chula in a tailored suit, salt and pepper hair.

Before the jury entered the room, Nayeri, in handcuffs, was led through the cage and into the courtroom.

He was in shape, and his muscles were visible under his tan suit.

He took a seat next to his lawyer.

At the next table over was the prosecution team, district attorneys Heather Brown and Matt Murphy, who was uncomfortably aware of the room's small size.

One of the funny things about the branch courts is the courtrooms tend to be smaller, and everything is just kind of like squeezed a little bit, you know?

So I'm about,

I mean, I'm maybe eight feet, maybe from a guy who I know absolutely hates my guts.

This case would mark a huge milestone for Matt Murphy.

After 26 years as a prosecutor, he was retiring from the DA's office and going into private practice.

This trial would be his last.

Just after 10 a.m., the jury filed in and took their seats.

Again, jury service is very important, and I would like to welcome you and thank you for your service.

Judge Prickett spent 10 minutes or so reminding the jury about the rules of the courtroom.

Then it was time for opening statements.

Heather Brown went first.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

She warned the jury, this isn't a case for the faint-hearted.

There is nothing that I could say right now that could prepare you adequately for the things that you're going to see and hear about during the course of this trial.

The prosecution, she said, would prove beyond doubt that it was Hussein Nayeri who was responsible for the brutal crimes against Mary Barnes and Michael.

She laid out the evidence they would explore, from the blue glove with Nayeri's DNA on it found in Kyle Hanley's truck to the version of events that Nayeri's own ex-wife would swear to in court, one that would show that he was guilty of the crimes.

In his opening statement, defense attorney Sal Chula asked the jury to keep an open mind.

Because things are going to change.

I guarantee you, things are going to change.

The charges against Nayeri were kidnapping, torture, and aggravated mayhem, which was specifically about Michael's injuries.

He had pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.

And Nayeri's lawyer, Chula, said the prosecution's evidence was flimsy.

He argued that the police had planted the glove found in Kyle Hanley's truck and that Courtney Shigerian was not a credible witness.

The attack was horrible, he said.

We're all going to feel badly for Michael, he said.

But I'm telling you right now, this man right here did not do it.

After opening statements were over, the prosecution presented their case.

They called Deputy Sheriff Williams to the stand, the first officer who found Mary in the desert.

The jury was shown crime scene photos of Mary zip-tied and dusty by the side of the road, and pictures of Michael's injuries.

Heather Brown's warning was right.

The details of the attack on Michael were hard to listen to.

The prosecution called the victims themselves to testify.

Both offered harrowing descriptions of the night of the crime.

Michael told the court that the scars of where the bleach was poured on his wounds were still visible.

And when he drank alcohol, they bloomed up as red marks all over his body.

But when the defense had their chance to cross-examine Michael, Nayeri's attorney focused on the fact that immediately after he was rescued, Michael told police that his attackers had used Spanish words.

Later, both victims said that they believed the men were pretending to be Hispanic.

Chula made the point point that Nayeri didn't speak Spanish.

Chula also questioned Michael's relationship with Kyle Hanley.

He asked about them partying in Vegas together.

It seemed like he was trying to open a door for the jury to doubt Nayeri's guilt.

He appeared to be saying it could all have been the work of a Mexican gang orchestrated by Kyle Hanley.

Later that day, the prosecution called Courtney Shigarian to the stand.

It had been six years since she had seen her ex-husband in person, and now they would just be feet apart.

I remember walking in the courtroom, and, you know, he's at his table with his lawyers, and I kind of like sit down at first, but then I think it was Matt Murphy wanted to say something to me.

She was going to take me into the jury room to talk to me, which caused me to walk by him.

And I looked at Hussein, and he was like

talking to his lawyer and kind of like giggling and laughing, And I just lost it.

And I started crying and getting hysterical.

And I don't know if I was why I was crying or my heart felt like it was beating out of my chest like I was going to pass out.

And then they rushed me out, you know, of his eyesight.

And I was like, I can't look at him.

I can't.

I mean, it was just too much.

She said that at the time, an investigator from the DA's office tried to calm her down.

He gave her a tip.

He said, push yourself as far back in the chair as you can and use the judge's platform to block your view of Nayeri.

Courtney went back into the courtroom and tried to scoot as far back as possible in her chair.

It worked, but she couldn't shake the feeling that while she was in the same room as Nayeri, she was in danger.

So I just feel like, you know, he is so capable of getting and doing whatever he wants to.

He's going to just jump over the table as his last thing and come and kill me.

With his witness back in the stand, Matt Murphy got Courtney to describe key details of the days before the attack.

I remember Kyle had just come over to the house and Hossein was playing.

They were in the garage and he sent me up.

She had seen Nayeri playing with a blowtorch and taser days before the kidnapping.

She had seen Nayeri wearing a fake construction worker outfit, matching the description of what Michael's neighbor saw out her window.

She described how Nayeri had been surveilling Michael's every move.

Hossein would take these trackers or cameras, and I saw him on many occasions.

You know, he would pull the map up.

So he would take a tracker, put it on a car, car would drive around so that there would be data.

He would take the device and put it into the computer, and then he would look and see where that grew from.

Courtney could do a lot to tie together the details that supported the prosecution's version of events.

And she could say that the night the attack happened, Nayeri wasn't with her.

But what she couldn't do was place him at the scene of the crime.

And then the defense had their chance to cross-examine her.

I'm going to ask you some questions if you

can't remember something.

It's all right just to say, you know, I don't remember, okay?

Courtney's use to the prosecution was as a witness to Nayeri's activities.

But Chula wanted the jury to see that Courtney was somewhat incentivized to lay all the blame on Nayeri.

First, Chula focused on the moments in the case that looked bad for Courtney, like when she answered the door to the police after Nayeri had abandoned the Chevy Tahoe on Balboa Island.

She'd protected Nayeri and reported the car stolen.

That wasn't true.

Did you kind of have an attitude with the police?

Yes.

You know what I mean by that, right?

Uncooperative attitude, yes.

Sounds like you kind of got into their face a little bit.

I'm not sure if that's a fair characterization, but I definitely was uncooperative.

Then Chula brought up the moment Courtney's father had called her after Newport detectives had contacted him to explain the trouble his daughter was in.

I would imagine at this point in time, after this conversation with your dad,

I'm not sure what your dad told you, but I would imagine you started to get scared.

That's very insane.

I mean, really scared.

Right?

The whole situation is very scary.

I would think that at this point in time, maybe you thought, uh-oh,

I may not be a lawyer.

Were you having those kind of thoughts?

I felt like the whole world was crashing down on me

when my dad called.

Courtney had been offered immunity in return for testifying against Nayeri, and the defense team wanted the jury to think that her testimony was about a single thing, saving herself.

After Courtney, the prosecution called a few more witnesses.

They were all investigators involved with the case in one way or another.

They ran through their recollections of the investigation and its findings, and then the prosecution rested.

Now, it was the defense's turn.

They called a long stream of officers from Newport Beach Police to the stand.

They asked them questions designed to create doubt about Nayeri's involvement.

Questions about, again, the fact that witnesses had said they saw or heard Hispanic men.

The defense also implied that evidence like the blue glove had been tampered with, pointing to oddly timed crime scene photographs as proof.

On the eighth day of the trial in the mid-afternoon, the defense called Hussein Nayeri to the stand.

You solemnly

This decision to put Nayeri on the stand was not spur of the moment.

It was a defense strategy that was planned before the trial began.

And it's a controversial one.

It's incredibly risky for a defendant to take the stand in their own defense.

Any accidental slip could be misconstrued by the jury or pounced on by the prosecution.

Many lawyers advise their clients not to speak in their own defense, no matter how tempting it might be to take control of your own narrative.

But Nyeri's lawyers thought that their client's testimony was important to their case, and they said, Nayeri seemed like he could handle it.

They coached him about how to withstand any possible cross-examination from Matt Murphy, how to stay cool under fire, and they hoped it would be enough.

Mr.

Nayeri,

were you born here in the United States?

No, I wasn't.

Where were you born?

I was born in Tehran, capital of Iran.

The defense began with a biography of sorts of Hussein Nayeri.

They talked about his past.

Building a picture of Nayeri's early life allowed them to create an image of someone who had faced adversity, who had interests and passions and goals.

They talked about his entry into the world of weed back in 2003.

It was very soothing, it was therapeutical to me, it was fascinating to me, botany,

plant biology in general, all that.

I just got sucked into the world of marijuana

in a science fashion more like it than anything else at first.

They worked their way through the years until they arrived at 2012 and the days leading up to the crime.

Nayeri said Kyle Handley told him that Michael had ripped him off.

Kyle had asked Nayeri to monitor the dispensary owner.

Nayeri told the court that he got paid to keep tabs on Michael for months.

And that explained the cameras and the trackers.

But the night of the kidnapping?

Nayeri said he knew nothing about the crime until days later when Kyle's charges were made public.

D.A.

Matt Murphy wasn't buying it.

It was a show.

Matt Murphy didn't believe the jury was seeing the real Nayeri.

And for his cross-examination, he wanted them to see a different side.

So as a prosecutor, the goal is you always, it's called getting them to flash.

Okay.

You always want a jury in a case of violent crime to see the real personality of your defendant if you can when they testify.

You may begin

Good morning, Miss Murphy.

Sir, what I'm going to do is I'm going to.

Murphy's cross-examination began by picking apart the story that the defense had created of Nayeri's earlier life.

Now, you dated Courtney when she was 16, and I believe you were 23 or something?

Yes, okay.

And when you found out...

Up until this point, Nayeri had been calm.

He'd been pleasant with his own attorney, and if not friendly, he'd been courteous with the prosecutor.

Now, something started to change.

It began when Murphy asked about a witness report that Nairi had physically abused the ex-wife of one of his co-conspirators.

And Nayeri began to argue back.

Absolutely wrong.

Okay, Mr.

Nayeri, we've got all the time in the world, so you don't have to interrupt me.

I'm not going to interrupt you.

Okay, so you got to let me finish asking the question before you answer them.

And it's courtesy of what we're seeing in the program.

We good.

I understand.

Okay.

Okay.

Are we good?

We're going to do that.

We're good.

Okay.

Are you going to start telling the truth once in a while?

Sir.

When Nayeri said, Are you going to start telling the truth?

The prosecution table could barely contain themselves.

Their eyes went wide.

Faces were hurriedly rearranged to hide smiles.

The judge stepped in.

Sir.

Sir, you need need not make those kind of gratuitous statements.

You know better.

Yes, Your Honor.

Next question, please.

Okay.

Murphy wasn't done.

He'd started going after Nayeri's claim that he had no idea about the plot to kidnap and torture Michael.

Wrong.

He wanted Nayeri to admit that he knew more than he was letting on.

I set up the email accounts.

You set up this whole kidnapping,

right?

You don't even believe that.

Alright, I'm gonna take that as a no and ask my next question.

Um, okay, so uh, different names.

As Murphy tried to needle him, Nayeri would snap back.

Then he would purse his lips and blink quickly as if to regain control over his outbursts.

Didn't seem to help.

I didn't set it up, and you know the information.

Where was it set up?

Fresno, California, wasn't it?

Mr.

Nayer, I'm going to ask the questions.

Truth.

Truth, please.

Mr.

Nayeri,

do I need to admonish you again, sir?

Your Honor is shoving down information down the line.

Ladies and gentlemen, I need you to please leave the courtroom.

At one point, Judge Prickett was forced to intervene again, sending the jury briefly out of the courtroom so he could remind Nayeri.

of the rules.

And then, when it came to his final question, Matt Murphy seemed to choose one that was calculated to get a reaction out of Nayeri.

You're out in the desert,

you cut off his penis.

Why couldn't you just leave it there in the hopes that it can reattach?

You're done.

You want to give us an answer for that?

I'm going to give you an answer for that, personally.

Personally, I'm done.

So he said.

I'm done?

What does that mean, Mr.

Mayer?

He said, are you done?

So my question to you.

I'm not going to even answer your question.

You don't even deserve an answer with that.

The room went silent.

Murphy got the flash he was looking for.

The question was, what what would the jury make of it?

Nayeri was the final witness of the trial.

Now, all that was left were the closing arguments.

In his statement, Matt Murphy told the jury, not only was Nayeri guilty, he was the guiding force of the whole plot against Michael.

He said that Nayeri had lied to them throughout the trial.

His positioning of himself as a framed man was a falsehood.

Either the world was out to get him, Murphy said, or he's guilty.

When the defense had their turn, Nayeri's attorney asked the jury to use their common sense, to look at the allegations against Nayeri and ask, did it pass the test of reasonable doubt?

Once you reach a verdict, Chula said, you're done.

You can't come back tomorrow or the next week or the next year and say, I've been thinking about it.

I think I got it wrong.

Those closing arguments were on a Friday.

The judge gave the jury a weekend off, telling them to be back in court on Monday morning to be given their instructions and begin deliberation.

Monday turned into Tuesday, Tuesday into Wednesday.

Prosecutors might have been hoping for a quick verdict.

What they got was an agonizing wait.

Late on Thursday, the news finally came from the jury for person.

A verdict had been reached.

On the morning of August 16th, 2019, the courtroom once again filled up.

Nayeri sat next to his lawyer, wearing a gray suit and staring straight ahead.

Superior Court of California, County of Orange, Harvard Justice Center, the people of the state of California v.

Hussein Nayeri.

Case number 13CF 5394.

Verdict.

We, the jury, in the above entitled Action, find the defendant, Hussein Nayeri, guilty of the crime of kidnapping for ransom, reward, extortion, to exact money or valuable things.

A felony in violation of Section 209, subsection 8.

The jury found Hussein Nayeri guilty of two counts of kidnapping and one count of torture.

The only charge they didn't find him guilty of was aggravated mayhem, specifically related to who had disfigured Michael's body.

They felt they couldn't decisively say that it was Nayeri.

When Nayeri heard the verdict, he shook his head slightly and turned his gaze to the ceiling.

He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

Nayeri's verdict was in line with what separate juries had decided in the cases of his co-conspirators.

Kyle Handley was found guilty of kidnapping, aggravated mayhem, and torture, and was also given two life terms without the possibility of parole.

The third man, Ryan Kvorkian, aka Mr.

Brown, pleaded guilty in 2021 to two counts of kidnapping and one count each of burglary and assault with a firearm.

He was sentenced to 12 years and eight months in prison.

Matt Murphy, as planned, retired from the Orange County Prosecutor's Office.

He now works in private practice and as a contributor for ABC News.

Within days of his sentencing hearing in 2020, Nayeri lodged an appeal with the courts.

The basis for the appeal was a series of wide-ranging complaints about his trial.

He said in part that Matt Murphy leaned too heavily on his Iranian heritage and that his own attorney gave him ineffective counsel.

Later, he would lodge a second concurrent appeal suggesting that the prosecution's evidence was too weak to prove his involvement and again that his attorney provided ineffective counsel.

It also questions Courtney Shigerian's immunity deal with Newport police.

Police.

The appeal argues that she was offered immunity much earlier than was claimed in the courtroom, and that the prosecution assisted Courtney with complications the case caused her with the State Bar Association.

And lastly, that the prosecutors intervened to help her retain her license to practice law.

The appeal is an attempt to get a retrial, this time without Courtney's crucial testimony.

The first appeal was argued in February of 2025 and was denied, but the second is ongoing.

In early summer, the California Court of Appeals, 4th Appellate District, heard the arguments of the case, and soon they'll release the details of their decision, whether the appeal has merit or not.

At Nayeri's sentencing, Michael told the judge, quote, I live with the feeling of always looking over my shoulder, never feeling 100% safe in any one location for any period of time.

And maybe this is why.

Because despite everything that's happened, everything that Nayeri has done, there has always been someone who believed his side of the story.

In his trial, a juror, a young woman, held out for four days, believing he should have been acquitted of all the charges.

And whether it was a girlfriend covering for him when he fled the country, a cellmate helping him cut a hole in a county jail wall, or a juror who believed his innocence and fought for it for four days, there has always been someone in his corner on his side, over and over and over again.

So, even though he's now behind bars, his victims might always wonder, have we seen the last of Hussein Nayeri?

Or does the man who charmed his way to so many second chances have one more disappearing act up his sleeve?

Devil in the Desert is a production of ABC Audio, ABC News Studios, and 2020.

Hosted by me, Matt Gutman, this series was produced by Madeline Wood, Amy Padula, and Kiara Powell.

Our supervising producer is Susie Liu.

Music and mixing by Evan Viola.

Special thanks to Liz Alessi, Katie Dendas, Janice Johnston, Eamon McNiff, Jake Lefferman, Katie Muldowney, Chris Donovan, Nora Ritchie, and Michelle Margamis.

Josh Cohan is our director of podcast programming.

Laura Mayer is our executive producer.

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