Devil in the Desert: Catching Nayeri

Speaker 1 This is Deborah Roberts here with another weekly episode of our latest series from 2020 and ABC Audio, Devil in the Desert.

Speaker 1 Remember, you can get new episodes early if you follow Devil in the Desert on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Now, here's the episode.

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Speaker 10 January 25th, 2016, three days since the escape from the Orange County jail and three men on the run.

Speaker 14 Dangerous men.

Speaker 19 Hundreds of officials from Orange County Sheriff's Deputies to the FBI had been searching for the fugitives and had found nothing.

Speaker 17 For Southern California residents, nerves were beginning to fray.

Speaker 10 Deputy District Attorney Heather Brown, who had been working the Nayeri case, was worried too.

Speaker 25 for public safety, but also her own safety.

Speaker 28 When Nayeri had escaped, he had left a printed picture of her and fellow DA Matt Murphy on his bunk.

Speaker 26 It seemed like a clear message.

Speaker 31 I'm coming for you.

Speaker 33 And now, it could be anywhere.

Speaker 2 And Matt Murphy came to me and said, Heather, they don't have, they're out of leads.

Speaker 2 And we need, at this point, the sheriff's asked us to alarm the public. And you're just the girl to do it.

Speaker 4 So.

Speaker 34 Heather Brown called a reporter from the Orange County Register.

Speaker 35 He asked her about Nyeri's escape from jail.

Speaker 37 Was she calling for a sheriff's investigation to find out how that had happened?

Speaker 28 Brown said that it should be looked into.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 This is what happens when you house seasoned criminals and jails are overcrowded and underfunded. Then he said,

Speaker 2 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 Hannah Lecter out.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 If it was me, I'd be in Mexico drinking margaritas by now. But if I were Hosea Nairi, I would be in the first non-extraditable country I could find.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 2 Front line on the paper, Hannibal Lecter on the loose. DA calls for a sheriff's investigation.

Speaker 2 Apparently, you're supposed to make that comment about like, don't quote me on that before you make the quote.

Speaker 2 But in hindsight,

Speaker 2 it did make national news so that people were alarmed.

Speaker 41 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.

Speaker 41 Authorities now warning they could be anywhere in the U.S. or even outside the country.

Speaker 42 ABC's canaw.

Speaker 21 It wasn't just the investigators who were on the hunt to catch Nayeri.

Speaker 16 Now everyone was looking for the man that had gotten away once again.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 43 I'm Matt Gutman, ABC News chief national correspondent, and from ABC News, this is Devil in the Desert.

Speaker 49 Episode 6,

Speaker 51 Catching Nayeri.

Speaker 52 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.

Speaker 35 The search for the three men was like looking for a needle in a state-sized haystack.

Speaker 52 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.

Speaker 12 In Orange County, people were jumpy.

Speaker 15 Sheriff cruisers darting here and there, lights, sirens.

Speaker 55 So far, all false alarms.

Speaker 56 On day seven of the escape, I was there in Santa Ana, the city where the central jail was, watching this ever-expanding dragnet.

Speaker 54 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 61 Shenana Police, 911.

Speaker 61 Hi,

Speaker 2 I'm calling about Buck Young.

Speaker 61 I have him here. He's ready to turn himself in.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, who is ready to turn himself in?

Speaker 32 It was Buck Young, the 43-year-old murder suspect.

Speaker 34 I raced down to the repair shop to find out what I could.

Speaker 53 And by the time I got there, Buong had already been taken into police custody.

Speaker 12 But I met a friend of Young's.

Speaker 30 He'd been the one to help him make contact with authorities.

Speaker 63 He asked us to call the police so he could turn himself in, and that's all we know. Okay, how he got here, I don't know.
That's all we did. Why did he choose this place?

Speaker 63 We're just friends. He knows us, and he wants to make sure that he gets caught safely with nobody getting hurt.

Speaker 31 It was all very confusing.

Speaker 26 Why would a wanted man facing decades in jail return from an otherwise successful escape right back to the place of his jailbreak?

Speaker 34 Did this mean that the others, Tube and Nayeri, were they here in Santa Ana as well?

Speaker 10 That day, police in ballistic vests, tactical helmets, and carrying AR-15 style rifles patrolled Santa Ana in armored trucks, hunting for Nayeri.

Speaker 35 They scoured warehouses in the area of the auto repair shop.

Speaker 65 I followed, hoping to be there when they finally caught Nayeri.

Speaker 66 Officers, I've been searching this entire area right now. They're focusing on those containers with canine units, but still those other two inmates remain missing.

Speaker 35 Meanwhile, with Young in custody, investigators started to piece together where the men had been for the last week.

Speaker 12 As it turned out, the key to Bak Young's Young'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.

Speaker 24 He was a 71-year-old Vietnamese cab driver named Long Ma.

Speaker 12 The day the men rappelled down the wall of the jail, they dialed for a taxi.

Speaker 36 Since Young and Tiu both spoke Vietnamese, they called the Vietnamese taxi company, which dispatched Long Ma.

Speaker 53 The three escapees piled into his cab in the late evening of Friday, January 22nd.

Speaker 16 The men threatened the cab driver, who spoke almost no English, and forced him at gunpoint to drive them around Greater Los Angeles.

Speaker 19 But at some point, the group decided Ma's cab wasn't enough.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 12 They all stayed together in a motel, the Flamingo Inn, on the outskirts of L.A.

Speaker 40 It was there, in room 116, that the men passed the weekend drinking and smoking cigarette after cigarette.

Speaker 19 By Monday, Heather Brown's Hannibal Lecter comments had ignited a media firestorm.

Speaker 34 The men watched the coverage of their own escape on television.

Speaker 19 On Tuesday, the men left Southern California.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 30 But by now, the mood was tense.

Speaker 24 Long Ma later told investigators he saw the men bickering and even physically fighting each other.

Speaker 34 He said he thought that the fights were about him.

Speaker 21 He worried that they were planning to kill him.

Speaker 65 During a private moment, Bak Young apparently told Long Ma, Nayeri wants to get rid of you, but I'm trying to help you.

Speaker 69 Young wanted to help Ma escape, and soon they would get their chance.

Speaker 35 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.

Speaker 60 They jumped in the cab and drove south.

Speaker 57 And somewhere on their journey, Long Ma talked to Young about the lessons of Buddhism.

Speaker 59 He got Jung to agree that when they got back to Santa Ana, he would turn himself in.

Speaker 57 By the next morning, Friday, exactly a week after the escape, Bak Young did exactly that.

Speaker 60 He handed himself in to authorities and he started talking.

Speaker 59 Now, investigators knew Nayeri wasn't in Iran.

Speaker 58 He wasn't in Mexico.

Speaker 12 He'd been right here in California the whole time.

Speaker 19 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 Nyeri's links there.

Speaker 72 I can't reiterate enough the importance of the white van. We believe that Mr.
Nayeri and Mr. 2 are together in that white van.

Speaker 72 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.

Speaker 8 January 30th, 2016, and 40 miles north of San Jose in San Francisco, it was a cloudy Saturday morning.

Speaker 28 A man named Matthew Hay Chapman was taking his daily stroll from Golden Gate Park to neighboring Haight-Ashbury.

Speaker 34 He was unhoused and he'd been sleeping in the park's botanic gardens.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 10 So he knew all about the three escaped prisoners on the run from a Southern California jail.

Speaker 52 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,

Speaker 36 it caught his eye.

Speaker 8 First, it had no plates.

Speaker 35 Second, it was the exact same make and model of a van that he had once used as a temporary sleeping spot.

Speaker 34 And now he could see that somebody else was doing the same thing.

Speaker 28 Suddenly, the van door opened and a dark-haired man got out.

Speaker 26 Hey Chapman immediately recognized Hussein Nayeri.

Speaker 66 Well, I tell myself, that's the dude.

Speaker 47 That's got to be the guy.

Speaker 21 Hey Chapman started walking behind him until he saw two police officers passing by on the other side of the street.

Speaker 34 He started frantically waving and gesturing at Nayeri.

Speaker 47 I'm like this, Flagon. I go with my cane and like this, body language.
Boom. That's the guy.

Speaker 23 He bolts.

Speaker 64 Officer on foot bolts after him. Another officer comes over and his cruiser comes up and he says, I said, they're that way.

Speaker 40 Back toward Wallace. Nayeri ran west along the edge of Golden Gate Park and happened to run right past an SFPD station.

Speaker 22 They caught up to him and arrested him on the spot.

Speaker 26 Hay Chapman then led police to the van in the parking lot.

Speaker 28 where Jonathan Tugh was still hiding inside.

Speaker 35 The great escape was over, and the fugitives were sent right back to the Orange County jail.

Speaker 74 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 us.

Speaker 17 I was outside the jail that day that Nayeri was returned.

Speaker 24 I remember seeing him in an orange jumpsuit between two Orange County sheriff's deputies who were escorting him into the jail complex.

Speaker 42 The search for a fugitive had brought me into a story that was all at once shocking and terrifying and intriguing.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 14 In my 25 years of reporting, I've heard countless law enforcement refer to a suspect as a monster.

Speaker 21 But in my experience, everyone has something that makes them human.

Speaker 14 Could I find that with Nayeri?

Speaker 20 It would be years before Nayeri would appear in front of a judge.

Speaker 75 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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Speaker 80 It started with a phone call. In the early hours of the morning.

Speaker 16 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 80 A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in a room with her attacker.

Speaker 80 He's fallen asleep, so she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone and calls for help.

Speaker 2 Is there any way you can get out of the building?

Speaker 48 I don't know. We're not looking at him.
I'm scared.

Speaker 80 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland into a crime scene.

Speaker 44 We've got something big big going on here.

Speaker 39 The first thing that hit my mind is a monster.

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Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 10 If he moved around the jail, guards would film everything he did.

Speaker 35 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.

Speaker 37 He was candid and surprisingly easy to chat with.

Speaker 16 I asked him for a sit-down interview, no questions barred.

Speaker 37 I was hopeful, but not expecting much because pretrial interviews are really risky for defendants.

Speaker 57 But after after many months of correspondence and weeks before his rescheduled trial date in early 2019, he agreed.

Speaker 58 I drove down to the jail to meet him, excited, but also nervous.

Speaker 71 I didn't know which Nayeri was going to show up.

Speaker 82 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,

Speaker 82 gotten to know the guy, and I'm very eager to get him on camera because

Speaker 82 he has an incredible story to tell. And for the first time, he's willing to tell it.
So

Speaker 82 here we go.

Speaker 40 It would be filmed at the visiting booth at the jail, a tiny box with blue walls with half a dozen guards present.

Speaker 17 Nayeri was allowed to wear a crisp white collarless shirt, but when we asked for the guards to remove his shackles, they said no.

Speaker 23 He now went by Adam rather than Hussein.

Speaker 69 His voice had the same gravel to it that I'd 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.

Speaker 8 I knew our time together was short, and I needed to cut to the chase to get to the charges he faced.

Speaker 14 First, the escape from jail.

Speaker 49 When did you first start planning that escape?

Speaker 84 I didn't,

Speaker 83 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.

Speaker 83 So one thing led to another. It just came up as a.

Speaker 37 On the escape, he was clear.

Speaker 35 He was guilty of that.

Speaker 34 He'd hacked his way out of the jail cell.

Speaker 25 In fact, he told me he'd had access to the roof for days before the escape.

Speaker 43 But he denied that he was any kind of mastermind of the scheme.

Speaker 83 But it wasn't all me, that's the thing. It's a group effort.

Speaker 56 Yeah, but the other.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 15 In fact, he wanted me to see that even with total freedom, he chose not to attack anyone.

Speaker 14 Not his ex-wife, not the prosecutors

Speaker 83 no one nobody had a freaking clue where we were right correct I could have hurt somebody in the public I could have get what I want right what was it I did didn't I I sat tight and I didn't do anything we smoked some herb that's what we did

Speaker 83 God bless America

Speaker 8 I was getting the sense that he was now aware of the monster he'd been painted to be.

Speaker 43 Hannibal Lecter wanted some good press.

Speaker 65 And his legal team was working on that.

Speaker 9 About 18 months after he was captured in San Francisco, his defense team released a stunning video.

Speaker 40 It was cell phone footage taken by Nayeri of his own escape from jail.

Speaker 17 The son of Nayeri's lawyer was an aspiring filmmaker.

Speaker 68 He'd edited the clips together and added a voiceover from Nayeri himself.

Speaker 85 My name is Adam Hussein Nayeri.

Speaker 85 You know, a lot of people like to credit us with some Houdini escape act all in eight minutes flat. It's an interesting myth.
Three guys sneaking out of a maximum seat.

Speaker 54 The voiceover is eerily flat, and it's a little strange that he so thoroughly documented a pretty serious felony.

Speaker 35 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.

Speaker 14 And underneath it, a soundtrack scored their escape.

Speaker 40 It continues, showing moments from the fugitives' week on the run, filmed in the back of the stolen white van.

Speaker 24 This is our casa right now for the moment.

Speaker 44 This is our crib.

Speaker 83 Water

Speaker 26 and all all the basics.

Speaker 37 By the end of the video, the voiceover borders unrambling.

Speaker 40 He tells the viewer that he got totally crushed by the reality distortion machine and criticized Orange County law enforcement.

Speaker 48 Really?

Speaker 85 Who polices the police? Please, think for yourself. Question authority.
Think for yourself. Question authority.

Speaker 34 Nayeri's defense team was convinced their edit of the footage would help their client's case.

Speaker 67 That ahead of the trial, it might undo the bad publicity that Nayeri had built up, or at least soften it a little.

Speaker 6 And maybe that's why he finally agreed to sit down for an interview with me.

Speaker 43 Why did you do that? Why'd you shoot the video?

Speaker 83 Believe it or not, it was all spontaneous. If I had any clue

Speaker 83 that we were gonna is going to get released at some point, if I'm gonna need it to protect myself at some point, I would have done a probably much better job.

Speaker 68 So the escape and the video of it, he seemed comfortable talking about.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 8 With those details, he was less forthcoming.

Speaker 49 Why were you doing surveillance on this man?

Speaker 83 I'm gonna

Speaker 83 leave

Speaker 83 that question when we get to trial.

Speaker 83 We're gonna get to the bottom of every single piece of that when the time comes, piece by piece.

Speaker 43 Were you there at the kidnapping?

Speaker 83 The kidnapping of the guy?

Speaker 4 Yeah, the guy who we've been surveilling.

Speaker 30 No, not at all. You were not there?

Speaker 56 Absolutely not. Were you part of mutilating him?

Speaker 83 I had to be there if I

Speaker 83 had to be part of it if I so obviously not, yes.

Speaker 28 I kept asking him,

Speaker 37 trying different ways to get him to admit, or at least acknowledge what he was accused of, but he refused to budge.

Speaker 49 So, is the testimony that she's given an intention?

Speaker 24 I asked him about his ex-wife planning to testify against him.

Speaker 83 You know,

Speaker 83 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.

Speaker 68 I thought about Nayeri as a high school wrestler, about something his coach said about him.

Speaker 15 That in all the years he coached him, Nayeri never lost his cool on a wrestling mat.

Speaker 67 He never let his anger take over.

Speaker 21 That's the Nayeri I saw.

Speaker 71 Calm, self-assured, and in control.

Speaker 83 It's gonna be alright, Matt.

Speaker 5 You think?

Speaker 83 I know.

Speaker 83 One way or another. What's gonna happen at the end?

Speaker 49 Well, I don't know. I mean, what what if you have to spend the rest of your life in jail, in prison?

Speaker 83 Then I deal with it at that point. This is life.
I mean, don't hang on to it so tight.

Speaker 10 We had spoken for just over an hour when the guard signals time's up.

Speaker 49 Okay, great. Thanks.

Speaker 83 Matt, it was good to see you. Duane,

Speaker 83 have a good day, guys.

Speaker 17 Even meeting Nayeri in person, he still felt frustratingly out of reach.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 7 The trial began on July 17th, 2019, at the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach.

Speaker 19 The courtroom was windowless and small, with too bright artificial lighting overhead.

Speaker 54 Greg Prickett presided, with 20 years' experience as a California Superior Court judge.

Speaker 58 To Prickett's right were the seats that would soon be filled by the jury.

Speaker 25 To his left was a door surrounded by a small cage.

Speaker 60 Prisoners were transported through that cage on their way to the courtroom. In front of the judge were long tables, almost touching.

Speaker 57 At one side was Nayeri's defense team, headed by attorney Sal Chula in a tailored suit, salt and pepper hair.

Speaker 56 Before the jury entered the room, Nayeri in handcuffs was led through the cage and into the courtroom.

Speaker 57 He was in shape and his muscles were visible under his tan suit. He took a seat next to his lawyer.

Speaker 57 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.

Speaker 78 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?

Speaker 24 So I'm about,

Speaker 78 I mean, I'm maybe eight feet maybe from a guy who I know absolutely hates my guts.

Speaker 60 This case would mark a huge milestone for Matt Murphy.

Speaker 57 After 26 years as a prosecutor, he was retiring from the DA's office and going into private practice.

Speaker 34 This trial would be his last.

Speaker 67 Just after 10 a.m., the jury filed in and took their seats.

Speaker 51 Again, jury service is very important, and I would like to welcome you and thank you for your service.

Speaker 19 Judge Prickett spent 10 minutes or so reminding the jury about the rules of the courtroom.

Speaker 10 Then it was time for opening statements.

Speaker 23 Heather Brown went first. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
She warned the jury, this isn't a case for the faint-hearted.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 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 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.

Speaker 24 In his opening statement, defense attorney Sal Chula asked the jury to keep an open mind.

Speaker 81 Because things are going to change. I guarantee you, things are going to change.

Speaker 65 The charges against Nayeri were kidnapping, torture, and aggravated mayhem, which was specifically about Michael's injuries.

Speaker 30 He had pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.

Speaker 32 And Nayeri's lawyer, Chula, said the prosecution's evidence was flimsy.

Speaker 34 He argued that the police had planted the glove found in Kyle Hanley's truck and that Courtney Shigerian was not a credible witness.

Speaker 26 The attack was horrible, he said.

Speaker 57 We're all going to feel badly for Michael, he said.

Speaker 58 But I'm telling you right now, this man right here did not do it.

Speaker 58 After opening statements were over, the prosecution presented their case.

Speaker 46 They called Deputy Sheriff Williams to the stand, the first officer who found Mary in the desert.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 60 Heather Brown's warning was right.

Speaker 46 The details of the attack on Michael were hard to listen to.

Speaker 58 The prosecution called the victims themselves to testify.

Speaker 46 Both offered harrowing descriptions of the night of the crime.

Speaker 57 Michael told the court that the scars of where the bleach was poured on his wounds were still visible.

Speaker 46 And when he drank alcohol, they bloomed up as red marks all over his body.

Speaker 58 But when the defense had their chance to cross-examine Michael, Nairi's attorney focused on the fact that immediately after he was rescued, Michael told police that his attackers had used Spanish words.

Speaker 24 Later, both victims said that they believed the men were pretending to be Hispanic.

Speaker 65 Chula made the point that Nayeri didn't speak Spanish.

Speaker 35 Chula also questioned Michael's relationship with Kyle Hanley.

Speaker 24 He asked about them partying in Vegas together.

Speaker 35 It seemed like he was trying to open a door for the jury to doubt Nayeri's guilt.

Speaker 36 He appeared to be saying it could all have been the work of a Mexican gang orchestrated by Kyle Handley.

Speaker 34 Later that day, the prosecution called Courtney Shigerian to the stand.

Speaker 19 It had been six years since she had seen her ex-husband in person, and now they would just be feet apart.

Speaker 86 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.

Speaker 86 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

Speaker 86 talking to his lawyer and kind of like giggling and laughing. And I just lost it.
And I started crying and getting hysterical.

Speaker 86 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.

Speaker 86 And I was like, I can't look at him. I can't.
I mean, it was, it was just too much.

Speaker 19 She said that at the time, an investigator from the DA's office tried to calm her down.

Speaker 36 He gave her a tip.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 Courtney went back into the courtroom and tried to scoot as far back as possible in her chair.

Speaker 35 It worked, but she couldn't shake the feeling that while she was in the same room as Nayeri, she was in danger.

Speaker 86 So I just feel like, you know, he's so capable of getting and doing whatever he wants to do. He's going to just jump over the table as his last thing and come and kill me.

Speaker 14 With his witness back in the stand, Matt Murphy got Courtney to describe key details of the days before the attack.

Speaker 87 I remember

Speaker 87 Kyle had just come over to the house and Hossein was playing. He sent in the, they were in the garage and he sent me a trend.

Speaker 58 She had seen Nayeri playing with a blowtorch and taser days before the kidnapping.

Speaker 19 She had seen Nayeri wearing a fake construction worker outfit matching the description of what Michael's neighbor saw out her window.

Speaker 10 She described how Nayeri had been surveilling Michael's every move.

Speaker 87 Hussein would take these trackers or cameras, and I saw him on many occasions.

Speaker 86 You know, he would pull the map up.

Speaker 87 So he would take a tracker, put it on a car, car would drive around so that there would be data.

Speaker 87 He would take the device and put it into the computer and then he would look and see where that going from.

Speaker 14 Courtney could do a lot to tie together the details that supported the prosecution's version of events.

Speaker 4 And she could say that the night the attack happened, Nayeri wasn't with her.

Speaker 36 But what she couldn't do was place him at the scene of the crime.

Speaker 50 And then the defense had their chance to cross-examine her.

Speaker 81 I'm going to ask you some questions if you

Speaker 81 can't remember something. It's all right just to say, you know, I don't remember.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 24 Courtney's use to the prosecution was as a witness to Nayeri's activities.

Speaker 36 But Chula wanted the jury to see that Courtney was somewhat incentivized to lay all the blame on Nayeri.

Speaker 35 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,

Speaker 14 she'd protected Nayeri and reported the car stolen.

Speaker 39 That wasn't true?

Speaker 48 It was not.

Speaker 81 Did you kind of have an attitude with the police?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 84 You know what I mean by that, right?

Speaker 50 And cooperative attitude, yes.

Speaker 81 Sounds like you kind of got into their face a little bit.

Speaker 50 I'm not sure if that's a fair characterization, but I definitely was uncooperative.

Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 81 I would imagine at this point in time, after this conversation with your dad,

Speaker 81 I'm not sure what your dad told you, but I would imagine you started to get scared.

Speaker 5 That's fair to say.

Speaker 81 I mean really scared.

Speaker 48 Right?

Speaker 48 The whole situation is very scary.

Speaker 81 I would think that at this point in time maybe you thought, uh-oh,

Speaker 12 I may not be a lawyer.

Speaker 81 Were you having those kind of thoughts?

Speaker 81 I felt like the whole world was crashing down on me

Speaker 81 at when I got called.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 34 After Courtney, the prosecution called a few more witnesses.

Speaker 24 They were all investigators involved with the case in one way or another.

Speaker 19 They ran through their recollections of the investigation and its findings, and and then the prosecution rested.

Speaker 15 Now, it was the defense's turn.

Speaker 24 They called a long stream of officers from Newport Beach Police to the stand.

Speaker 58 They asked them questions, designed to create doubt about Nayeri's involvement.

Speaker 37 Questions about, again, the fact that witnesses had said they saw or heard Hispanic men.

Speaker 57 The defense also implied that evidence like the blue glove had been tampered with, pointing to oddly timed crime scene photographs as proof.

Speaker 27 On the eighth day of the trial in the mid-afternoon, the defense called Hussein Nayeri to the stand.

Speaker 89 Do you solemnly state that the evidence you shall give in this matter shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Sir Alfida?

Speaker 83 I do.

Speaker 57 This decision to put Nayeri on the stand was not spur of the moment.

Speaker 17 It was a defense strategy that was planned before the trial began.

Speaker 9 And it's a controversial one.

Speaker 57 It's incredibly risky for a defendant to take the stand in their own defense.

Speaker 60 Any accidental slip could be misconstrued by the jury or pounced on by the prosecution.

Speaker 57 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.

Speaker 60 But Nayeri's lawyers thought that their client's testimony was important to their case.

Speaker 54 And they said, Nayeri seemed like he could handle it.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 74 Mr. Nayeri,

Speaker 66 were you born here in the United States?

Speaker 84 No, I wasn't. Where were you born?

Speaker 83 I was born in Tehran, capital of Iran.

Speaker 30 The defense began with a biography of sorts of Hussein Nayeri.

Speaker 24 They talked about his past.

Speaker 35 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.

Speaker 34 They talked about his entry into the world of weed back in 2003.

Speaker 83 It was very soothing. It was therapeutical to me.
It was fascinating to me.

Speaker 84 Botany,

Speaker 62 plant biology in general, all that.

Speaker 83 I just got sucked into the world world of marijuana

Speaker 83 in a science fashion more like it than anything else at first.

Speaker 10 They worked their way through the years until they arrived at 2012 and the days leading up to the crime.

Speaker 65 Nayeri said Kyle Handley told him that Michael had ripped him off.

Speaker 34 Kyle had asked Nayeri to monitor the dispensary owner.

Speaker 19 Nayeri told the court that he got paid to keep tabs on Michael for months.

Speaker 24 And that explained the cameras and the trackers.

Speaker 19 But the night of the kidnapping, Nayeri said he knew nothing about the crime until days later when Kyle's charges were made public.

Speaker 65 DA Matt Murphy wasn't buying it.

Speaker 77 It was a show.

Speaker 32 Matt Murphy didn't believe the jury was seeing the real Nayeri.

Speaker 34 And for his cross-examination, he wanted them to see a different side.

Speaker 78 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.

Speaker 78 Good morning Mrs. Murphy.
So what I'm going to do is look at it.

Speaker 40 Murphy's cross-examination began by picking apart the story that the defense had created of Nayeri's earlier life.

Speaker 51 Now, you dated Courtney when she was 16, and I believe you were 23 at the time.

Speaker 48 Yes, okay.

Speaker 23 And when you found out...

Speaker 28 Up until this point, Nayeri had been calm.

Speaker 24 He'd been pleasant with his own attorney, and if not friendly, he'd been courteous with the prosecutor.

Speaker 71 Now, something started to change.

Speaker 23 It began when Murphy asked about a witness report that Nayeri had physically abused the ex-wife of one of his co-conspirators.

Speaker 8 And Nayeri began to argue back.

Speaker 23 Absolutely wrong.

Speaker 62 Mr. Aeri, we've got all the time in the world, so you don't have to interrupt me.

Speaker 48 I'm not going to interrupt you.

Speaker 83 I understand.

Speaker 48 Okay. Okay.
Are we good?

Speaker 48 We're going to do that.

Speaker 23 We're good. Okay.

Speaker 83 Are you going to start telling the truth once in a while? Sir.

Speaker 20 When Ayeri said, are you going to start telling the truth?

Speaker 34 The prosecution table could barely contain themselves.

Speaker 45 Their eyes went wide.

Speaker 35 Faces were hurriedly rearranged to hide smiles. The judge stepped in.

Speaker 62 Sir.

Speaker 51 Sir, you may not make those kind of granduitous statements. You know better.

Speaker 84 Yes, Your Honor.

Speaker 74 Next question, please. Okay.

Speaker 26 Murphy wasn't done.

Speaker 29 He'd started going after Nayeri's claim that he had no idea about the plot to kidnap and torture Michael.

Speaker 48 Wrong.

Speaker 34 He wanted Nayeri to admit that he knew more than he was letting on.

Speaker 85 I set up the email accounts.

Speaker 48 You set up this whole kidnapping,

Speaker 48 right?

Speaker 83 You don't even believe that.

Speaker 84 Alright, I'm going to take that as a no and ask my next question.

Speaker 84 Okay, so

Speaker 62 different.

Speaker 23 As Murphy tried to needle him, Nayeri would snap back.

Speaker 4 Then he would purse his lips and blink quickly as if to regain control over his outbursts.

Speaker 33 It didn't seem to help.

Speaker 23 I didn't set it up, and you know the information. Where was it set up?

Speaker 83 Fresno, California, wasn't it?

Speaker 85 Mr.

Speaker 43 Nayeri, I'm going to ask the questions.

Speaker 85 Truth.

Speaker 85 Truth, please.

Speaker 7 Mr. Nayeri,

Speaker 51 do I need to admit you again, sir?

Speaker 83 Your Honor is shoving down information down my throat.

Speaker 23 I need you to please leave the courtroom.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 51 You're out in the desert,

Speaker 51 you cut off his penis.

Speaker 23 Why couldn't you just leave it there in the hopes that it can be reattached?

Speaker 23 You're done.

Speaker 51 You want to give us an answer for that?

Speaker 83 I'm going to give you an answer for that.

Speaker 23 Personally.

Speaker 51 Personally, I'm done. So he said.

Speaker 84 I'm done.

Speaker 66 What does that mean, Mr. Penier?

Speaker 83 He said, are you done?

Speaker 83 So my question to you. I'm not going to answer your question.

Speaker 83 You don't even deserve an answer with that.

Speaker 33 The room went silent.

Speaker 34 Murphy got the flash he was looking for.

Speaker 13 The question was, what would the jury make of it?

Speaker 16 Nayeri was the final witness of the trial.

Speaker 34 Now, all that was left were the closing arguments.

Speaker 52 In his statement, Matt Murphy told the jury, not only was Nayeri guilty, he was the guiding force of the whole plot against Michael.

Speaker 28 He said that Nayeri had lied to them throughout the trial.

Speaker 58 His positioning of himself as a framed man was a falsehood.

Speaker 24 Either the world was out to get him, Murphy said, or he's guilty.

Speaker 19 When the defense had their turn, Nayeri's attorney asked the jury to use their common sense.

Speaker 35 to look at the allegations against Nayeri and ask, did it pass the test of reasonable doubt?

Speaker 10 Once you reach a verdict, Chula said, you're done.

Speaker 35 You can't come back tomorrow or the next week or the next year and say, I've been thinking about it.

Speaker 9 I think I got it wrong.

Speaker 28 Those closing arguments were on a Friday.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 9 Monday turned into Tuesday, Tuesday into Wednesday.

Speaker 25 Prosecutors might have been hoping for a quick verdict.

Speaker 40 What they got was an agonizing wait.

Speaker 12 Late on Thursday, the news finally came from the jury for person.

Speaker 23 A verdict had been reached.

Speaker 51 With the exception of Ms. Brown, the defendant is present.

Speaker 50 On the morning of August 16th, 2019, the courtroom once again filled up.

Speaker 16 Nayeri sat next to his lawyer, wearing a gray suit and staring straight ahead.

Speaker 61 Superior Court of California, County of Orange, Harvard Justice Sen. The people of the state of California versus Hussein Nayeri, case number 13CF 3394.

Speaker 61 Verdict. We, the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Hossein Nayeri, guilty of the crime of kidnapping for ransom, reward, extortion, to exact money or valuable things.

Speaker 48 A felony in violation of section 209, subsection 8 of the people of the court station.

Speaker 6 The jury found Hussein Nayeri guilty of two counts of kidnapping and one count of torture.

Speaker 23 The only charge they didn't find him guilty of was aggravated mayhem, specifically related to who had disfigured Michael's body.

Speaker 26 They felt they couldn't decisively say that it was Nayeri.

Speaker 26 When Nayeri heard the verdict, he shook his head slightly and turned his gaze to the ceiling.

Speaker 15 He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 21 Nayeri's verdict was in line with what separate juries had decided in the cases of his co-conspirators.

Speaker 20 Kyle Handley was found guilty of kidnapping, aggravated mayhem, and torture, and was also given two life terms without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 40 The third man, Ryan Kvorkian, aka Mr.

Speaker 10 Brown, pleaded guilty in 2021 to two counts of kidnapping and one count each of burglary and assault with a firearm.

Speaker 24 He was sentenced to 12 years and eight months in prison.

Speaker 26 Matt Murphy, as planned, retired from the Orange County Prosecutor's Office.

Speaker 14 He now works in private practice and as a contributor for ABC News.

Speaker 10 Within days of his sentencing hearing in 2020, Nayeri lodged an appeal with the courts.

Speaker 52 The basis for the appeal was a series of wide-ranging complaints about his trial.

Speaker 34 He said, in part, that Matt Murphy leaned too heavily on his Iranian heritage and that his own attorney gave him ineffective counsel.

Speaker 34 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

Speaker 57 it also questions Courtney Shigerian's immunity deal with Newport 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.

Speaker 54 And lastly, that the prosecutors intervened to help her retain her license to practice law.

Speaker 57 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.

Speaker 57 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

Speaker 26 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

Speaker 67 And maybe this is why.

Speaker 42 Because despite everything that's happened, everything that Nayeri has done, there has always been someone who believed his side of the story.

Speaker 42 In his trial, a juror, a young woman, held out for four days, believing he should have been acquitted of all the charges.

Speaker 42 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.

Speaker 23 So, even though he's now behind bars, his victims might always wonder: have we seen the last of Hussein Nayeri?

Speaker 44 Or does the man who charmed his way to so many second chances have one more disappearing act up his his sleeve.

Speaker 21 Devil in the Desert is a production of ABC Audio, ABC News Studios in 2020.

Speaker 40 Hosted by me, Matt Gutman, this series was produced by Madeline Wood, Amy Padula, and Chiara Powell.

Speaker 24 Our supervising producer is Susie Liu.

Speaker 21 Music and mixing by Evan Viola.

Speaker 59 Special thanks to Liz Alessi, Katie Dendas, Janice Johnston, Eamon McNiff, Jake Lefferman, Katie Muldowney, Chris Donovan, Nora Ritchie, and Michelle Margowice.

Speaker 17 Josh Cohan is our director of podcast programming. Laura Mayer is our executive producer.

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