Under the Bay Bridge

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Speaker 1 Tonight, on dateline.

Speaker 5 I feel very inspired by my dad.

Speaker 6 He was such a good person.

Speaker 7 I realized I had missed calls. There was just this hit in my stomach.

Speaker 7 The doctor said we were not able to save him. I went blank.
Are you telling me that Bob is dead?

Speaker 8 He's a prominent person in the tech world.

Speaker 7 A friend texted me to tell the police to check the footage of the Millennium Tower.

Speaker 8 It's a large high-rise.

Speaker 1 A lot of people live there, and almost all of them have money. Yes.

Speaker 9 There's this glamorous spread in a magazine, and she's gorgeous. She and Bob hang around with each other.
They're in that circle.

Speaker 8 Khazar puts the two of them on kind of a collision course.

Speaker 11 We have them getting into the elevator.

Speaker 7 I think he was out for blood that night.

Speaker 5 I'd felt my stomach drop.

Speaker 1 That is the most far-out story I've ever heard.

Speaker 12 A luxury high-rise full full of the rich and famous, a murder on a dark street below, and a city holding its breath for answers. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 12 Here's Josh Mankiewicz with Under the Bay Bridge.

Speaker 1 April 4th, 2023. The 911 call came in around 2.30 a.m.

Speaker 1 from this lonely block on the streets of San Francisco.

Speaker 1 Help!

Speaker 1 Help!

Speaker 1 The man never gave his name. He had only one desperate plea for the operator on the other end of the line.
Help!

Speaker 1 Help! And he kept repeating it. Tell me.
I can please.

Speaker 1 Security cameras captured the man as he staggered to the front of a luxury apartment building, grabbed onto the call box, and then fell to the pavement.

Speaker 1 He fumbled with his phone and then somehow managed to get up and take a few more steps.

Speaker 1 Within a few minutes, officers arrived to find him unresponsive.

Speaker 1 They did CPR.

Speaker 1 The average adult male has about five quarts of blood.

Speaker 1 This guy had already parted ways with a lot of his.

Speaker 1 San Francisco has long been a destination for pioneers and explorers, up to and including the more modern gold rush of the digital age.

Speaker 1 Then as now, a place to stake your claim in the California dream.

Speaker 1 It's also a city where you can become both famous and infamous, and where success and failure get an equal amount of ink.

Speaker 1 So when fate and fortune collided in the shadow of the Bay Bridge, people may have thought they knew what happened.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 this was no ordinary crime, nor ordinary circumstances.

Speaker 1 And that man on the ground was no ordinary victim.

Speaker 1 San Francisco Police Sergeant Brent Dittmer got the call.

Speaker 8 And I figured, oh, maybe this is going to be something minor.

Speaker 1 Didn't turn out to be minor. Not quite.

Speaker 1 Sergeant Dittmer went to the scene at the corner of Main Street and Harrison in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.

Speaker 8 We just don't have a lot of call-outs to that area. It's not an area where there's a lot of violent crime.

Speaker 1 They knew where the victim had collapsed, who who attacked him, and where. Still unknown.
And you find a blood trail.

Speaker 15 That's right.

Speaker 1 Which points where?

Speaker 16 So the blood trail moves up this sidewalk along the building toward Harrison Street.

Speaker 1 He ends here, which means he came down here.

Speaker 15 That's right.

Speaker 16 There were some blood swipes on the building itself, but then it was blood drips that were moving down the sidewalk up towards Harrison Street.

Speaker 1 You can tell from the droplets droplets the direction that the person was traveling.

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 16 And as we get close to Harrison here, the blood drops went across the street over toward the west sidewalk.

Speaker 1 Uniformed officers followed that blood trail to this fence about half a block from where the man collapsed. They scanned with flashlights.
And then there it was.

Speaker 17 There's a knife over here.

Speaker 8 The knife was on the other side of a fence located near where this blood trail starts. And the area that was fenced off is a parking lot.

Speaker 1 That's probably your knife.

Speaker 8 Probably the knife.

Speaker 1 Blood on it? Yes.

Speaker 1 That blood was on the blade of this small pairing knife. The blade only three and a half inches long.
And the brand, Joseph Joseph.

Speaker 1 Police sent that to the crime lab. looking for a DNA sample.
What's the time lag from when they log it in to when you actually get some kind of result back?

Speaker 8 Sometimes it's a couple of weeks, sometimes it's months, sometimes it's over a year.

Speaker 1 Down here, detectives started knocking on doors. Maybe someone had seen or heard something.

Speaker 1 This is Main Street, after all, except the 911 call came in around 2.30 a.m.

Speaker 1 Witnesses?

Speaker 8 Not really. There was a homeless person that was contacted by the officers.
That person had been released from the scene, and he didn't say that he saw, heard, or knew about anything that happened.

Speaker 1 Sergeant Dittmer's team began pulling videos from buildings around the area. Is that an area where there are a lot of cameras?

Speaker 8 There's some. There aren't as many as you'd like.

Speaker 1 There's never as many as you like. Never.

Speaker 8 And they're never as good as you want them to be.

Speaker 1 It was during the search for video that Dittmer got a call. The victim had been identified.

Speaker 8 We were notified that the victim was Bob Lee.

Speaker 1 You ever heard of Bob Lee before? No. What do you hear from the hospital about what his injuries were?

Speaker 8 I knew initially that he had been stabbed once in the right hip, and then there were two additional stab wounds on the left chest.

Speaker 8 One of those punctured his heart.

Speaker 1 So, who was Bob Lee? And just as important, What brought him to that downtown street in the small hours of that April morning?

Speaker 8 My focus was just, let's figure out what happened here and who did it and just get on that trail.

Speaker 1 That trail would lead to some strange places. That was a text that you got?

Speaker 7 Anonymous text. I fear that I will be stabbed too.

Speaker 1 To a slew of rumors.

Speaker 18 What is going on in San Francisco that like, you know, this could happen?

Speaker 1 To some unforgettable characters.

Speaker 9 I mean, in San Francisco, you have money, but you don't wear your money. And she wears her money.

Speaker 1 And the family at the center of it all.

Speaker 20 She also just kind of seemed like she was there to help her brother however she could.

Speaker 1 All culminating in a trial about what really happened under the Bay Bridge.

Speaker 19 There's powers that are not normally in play when the decedent is the kind of person that Bob Lee is. Not a regular victim.
We call it victim plus.

Speaker 1 The skies were still dark over San Francisco Bay when Krista Lee felt the first inkling. Something was just not right on that Tuesday morning in April.

Speaker 7 I woke up around 6.30 like I usually do. When I grabbed my phone, I realized I had missed calls.

Speaker 1 Three missed calls, in fact, all from the the same unknown number. So she looked it up.

Speaker 7 It was San Francisco General Hospital, and

Speaker 7 I found that to be a little strange.

Speaker 1 Who's calling you from the hospital? Exactly.

Speaker 7 So then, as I was taking Scout, our youngest, to school, I said, do me a favor, check dad's location for me really quick.

Speaker 1 Dad was Bob Lee. divorced from Krista for years, but maintaining a close friendship and co-parenting relationship for their two children.

Speaker 7 I don't know why, but there was just this feeling, this pit in my stomach.

Speaker 1 And then Scout, 14 at the time, told her where the phone seemed to be located.

Speaker 5 It was at the police station.

Speaker 1 Specifically, the SFPD's southern station.

Speaker 5 I remember my stomach just like, like, I felt nauseous, kind of.

Speaker 1 Like, I didn't know why.

Speaker 1 Krista reminded herself locating a phone that way was an inexact science. And besides, Bob was staying at a hotel nearby, since he'd recently relocated to Miami.

Speaker 7 I'm like, this is a little odd. I'm not going to let my overactive imagination take hold just yet.

Speaker 1 So Krista got on with the morning rush, dropped Scout off at school, and when she got home, she tried that missed number from the hospital.

Speaker 7 And the operator had said, oh, I'm so sorry. We were probably just verifying or confirming an appointment.

Speaker 7 And I thought, this is strange I don't have appointments down there so she sent Bob a text didn't hear back from him which is very bizarre because by 10 a.m.

Speaker 7 Bob is up and running he would always text you back always yeah either text call anything we were always in contact with each other so that's weird it was very strange by 10 11 a.m.

Speaker 1 I still had not heard from him Krista did hear from someone else a friend of Bob's.

Speaker 7 He's like, I'm supposed to take him to the airport and he's not picking up his phone. I'm like, I know he hasn't hasn't returned my messages either.

Speaker 1 The friend told Krista he'd go down to the police station just to check.

Speaker 7 And said, by any chance, there's this guy by the name of Bob Lee here. And the woman said, are you family?

Speaker 1 That's never good when they ask that.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't good. The police told the friend Bob was at the hospital.

Speaker 7 I jumped in the car with my boyfriend and we sped as fast as we could down to the hospital. And every scenario at that time was going through my head.
What? He's been mugged.

Speaker 7 Mugged, car accident, hit by a car, hit by a self-driving car in San Francisco. You know, every little scenario.

Speaker 7 And so we get there and they escorted us back into a private waiting room, which at that point too, I felt very almost just sick to my stomach, like, what is going on here? Is he in a coma?

Speaker 7 What happened?

Speaker 7 And shortly after that, the nurse and the attending doctor walked in and said, are you Bob Lee's wife?

Speaker 7 Yes, I'm his former wife. And they said, Well, I'm so sorry.
We did everything we could, but we were not able to save him.

Speaker 1 Bob, she was told, had been fatally stabbed. He was 43.

Speaker 7 At that time, I just went blank. I stared at the doctor like,

Speaker 7 Are you telling me that Bob is dead?

Speaker 7 And it was was in that moment that, you know, you almost fall to the floor. You don't think it's real.

Speaker 7 My whole body, I mean, just went flushed. This is not real.
And that's all I kept thinking was, you have the wrong person. This isn't real.
I need to get home to the kids right now.

Speaker 7 Like, they're getting out of school. It's three o'clock in the afternoon.
I need to go now.

Speaker 1 Krista rushed home to her children, Sirius, then 17, and Scout, who'd been taking an after-school nap.

Speaker 21 She's like, we're going to your sister's room.

Speaker 5 And I'm like, Okay, what's happening?

Speaker 21 And that's when she breaks the news.

Speaker 5 I remember I thought that I was like, still dreaming.

Speaker 6 Like, I really wish that I was.

Speaker 1 Sergeant Dittmer spoke with Bob's family. And when you say to Krista, is there some obvious suspect? She says, There wasn't.

Speaker 8 She didn't have any idea why this would happen.

Speaker 1 Hard to find people who didn't like Bob Lee.

Speaker 8 I can't think of anybody who said they didn't like Bob Lee.

Speaker 1 Now it was up to police to figure out if this was a random crime or whether someone in Bob's life would want to hurt him. Police were about to learn the late Bob Lee was no average guy.

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Speaker 1 At first, police knew little about Bob Lee, the man stabbed to death in the shadow of San Francisco's Bay Bridge. Reporter Sergio Quintana covered the case for NBC Bay Area.

Speaker 9 San Francisco is an interesting city because you know you live in the tech world, but most residents don't know who these people are.

Speaker 9 But people in the tech industry knew who Bob Lee is.

Speaker 1 Soon, police were starting to learn what the tech world already knew. Bob Lee was a big deal.

Speaker 18 Bob was, I think, a very rare person in the tech world. He invented so many things.

Speaker 1 Bob's friends and former co-workers, Ajit Varma and Carlos Witt.

Speaker 33 He was building some of the best tools on the planet.

Speaker 1 You've probably heard of and maybe even used some of Bob's tools. He helped develop Android for Google.
He founded the financial service Cash App.

Speaker 1 And he was a top executive at Square and Mobile Coin, just to mention a few.

Speaker 18 Way beyond just what he created individually, he empowered so many other people to create amazing things.

Speaker 1 You must have been proud of him. Yeah, very, very proud of my brother.
And he continually amazed me with things.

Speaker 1 Oliver Lee was Bob's younger brother by just 18 months. They grew up a world away from Silicon Valley, outside of St.
Louis, Missouri.

Speaker 1 You can imagine, you know, two boys close in age growing up in the Midwest.

Speaker 1 We built a lot of forts in the woods. You know, we did everything together.
Their dad, Rickley, an engineer, sparked an interest in technology.

Speaker 34 We wanted a computer, and so we bought a tandy 1,000

Speaker 34 on time payments, because it was almost $3,000.

Speaker 9 He saw it as like an investment in us.

Speaker 1 And so we started messing around with that computer, and then we just built from there and your parents encourage this you're because you're explorers absolutely he's like if they take it apart they'll probably put it back together right

Speaker 1 by high school bob was creating computer games for his friends and even programs for the school he was their tech expert at for the high school bob went to college but not for long the dot-com boom of the late 90s beckoned he was at the breaking wave of tech yeah it was the wild west of many parts of tech, you know, and he wanted to go solve problems on his own.

Speaker 1 In 2001, Bob first made a name for himself by solving a major problem. He developed a fix for a dangerous computer virus called Code Red.

Speaker 1 Oliver said his brother had big money offers to sell the software he had created.

Speaker 1 But instead of monetizing it, he just made it open source code and basically gave it to the world for free because that was the fastest way to be able to create the best good with it.

Speaker 1 Life was not all computers for Bob. Not long after Code Red,

Speaker 1 Bob met Krista.

Speaker 7 Bob made you feel immediately you could feel your worth. He was present in the conversation just like you and I are right now.

Speaker 1 How did Bob talk about his work and what he did for a living and what he wanted to do?

Speaker 7 It wasn't work. It was his happiness.
It was his happy place. He loved his work.
He loved the opportunity to make the world a better place.

Speaker 1 Bob and Krista had their first child in 2005. A Star Trek-themed wedding followed in Vegas.
Honeymoon on Rigel 7? Exactly.

Speaker 7 Yep. Yep.
Kling-ons only.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it was something that we did because it represented the two of us rather than some Napa wedding with a bunch of guests that we could care less about.

Speaker 1 By By 2008, they were a family of four.

Speaker 5 He didn't treat me like I was a little kid, like, even though, obviously, I'm his kid. But, like, he talked to me like I was an adult, and he taught me like very valuable life lessons on

Speaker 35 being calm and like

Speaker 5 conflict. Oh, he's so patient, right? Yeah, he had a very like gentle parenting style.
Yeah, he was really nice, I want to say. It was just like that soft voice, gentle parenting kind of thing.

Speaker 1 Rock, goodbye, baby. As the Lee family grew, so did Bob's influence in the tech world.
Here he is at MobileCoin's 2021 conference.

Speaker 29 Before I joined as CPO last month, I was a mobile coin advisor and investor.

Speaker 1 Financial success followed and all that comes with it. Lavish trips, VIP lounges.
Private parties.

Speaker 7 We would have parties or, you know, yacht parties, private jets were not an unfamiliar thing.

Speaker 5 Oh, he definitely spoiled us. Oh, there is not a point where I was not living in a cushion luxury life.

Speaker 1 Correct to say that money and success changed him or it just allowed him to be who he always would have been? It gave him freedom to be more of who he was. Right.
And so I don't think it changed him.

Speaker 1 After 10 years of marriage, Bob and Krista split up. Generally, divorce in America equals friction of some kind.
Sure. But not here.

Speaker 7 No, no, it actually,

Speaker 7 I think he and I became more loving towards each other. We had a whole newfound respect for each other.

Speaker 1 In 2022, Bob moved to Miami, but made frequent trips back to San Francisco to be with his kids. In fact, when he was killed, Bob had come to San Francisco to see Scout perform in a school play.

Speaker 1 It's difficult for her to talk about.

Speaker 5 Because that was the last time I ever saw him.

Speaker 1 Now, Bob's family was talking with investigators and learning more about his final minutes. On those security videos from near the crime scene, police found something heartbreaking.

Speaker 1 Moments after he's been stabbed, Bob approaches a car stopped at a red light, and it looks like he's asking for help.

Speaker 1 Instead, the person drives off, and a badly wounded Bob drops to the ground.

Speaker 1 There's a video of him,

Speaker 1 which you've probably seen.

Speaker 7 Actually, no. I can't bring myself to watch it yet.

Speaker 1 Well, it is tough to watch because he is stumbling down the street. He's clearly been hurt.

Speaker 7 My son watched the footage, and his response to me was, it only showed me how strong my father was.

Speaker 7 That it looked like he was trying to survive whatever had happened to him. And I trust his opinion on that one.

Speaker 1 Any evidence that would have made any difference if somebody had picked him up and taken him to the hospital?

Speaker 8 As far as surviving, yeah, I don't think so.

Speaker 1 In life, Bob Lee's name was once known primarily to tech insiders.

Speaker 1 Now, in death, he was about to achieve a whole new level of notoriety. Elon Musk is talking about it and saying,

Speaker 1 calling you out specifically.

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 1 Krista Lee was stunned. The father of her two children was gone.

Speaker 7 It was unreal. It felt like I was in a dream.
It wasn't true, especially the way that he was taken from us. It just did not seem like it was reality.

Speaker 1 When you hear about Bob, you hear words like, you know, brilliant, innovator, visionary, selfless, right? Murder.

Speaker 1 Not one of them. No.

Speaker 1 I mean, that just seems inconceivable. I mean, I think murder is always the last thing you expect.

Speaker 21 Police in San Francisco are investigating the stabbing death of Bob Lee.

Speaker 36 His death sent shockwaves through the tech industry.

Speaker 1 News of Bob Lee's death made national headlines.

Speaker 21 Police are trying to solve a murder mystery.

Speaker 1 It happened early Tuesday morning. That's what investigated.
Especially when that dramatic video of his collapse outside the apartment building became public.

Speaker 10 It is just one of the latest high-profile crimes that's increased safety concerns around the San Francisco area.

Speaker 1 Reporter Sergio Quintana said many believed Bob's death was a symptom of a bigger issue

Speaker 1 in Bob's beloved San Francisco.

Speaker 9 In the the midst of the pandemic, the city of San Francisco went through some changes like many cities in the United States. There is street crime.
People get mugged.

Speaker 9 People get attacked sometimes in the streets. And that was the perception of

Speaker 9 San Francisco at the time, that this was a dangerous city. And this crime exacerbated that perception.

Speaker 1 Even Elon Musk joined the discussion about Bob Lee's murder, writing, Violent crime in San Francisco is horrific, and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately.

Speaker 1 Although that clearly was not true, it made an impact.

Speaker 9 The attention on this case was immediate. And, you know, for someone like Elon Musk to post this, he had just bought Twitter and had just come to San Francisco to run that company.

Speaker 1 In the post, Musk mentioned district attorney Brooke Jenkins, who had recently taken office. Elon Musk is talking about it and calling you out specifically.

Speaker 21 Yes, he was basically saying that it was because of lawlessness in our city and a need to prosecute repeat offenders and tagging me in that tweet.

Speaker 1 At that point, nothing was known about who'd killed Bob Lee, whether it was a repeat offender or whether it was a person living on the street or whether it was something else.

Speaker 21 Nothing publicly had been disclosed as far as the investigation. He had no information about that crime.

Speaker 9 So, you know, it's just kind of ratcheting up the attention for this case.

Speaker 1 With all that attention on Bob's death, his friend Ajit was left angry and shocked.

Speaker 19 How could this be allowed to happen?

Speaker 18 Like, what is going on in San Francisco that, like, you know, this could happen?

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 18 just like you come to like these conclusions.

Speaker 1 What's the world coming to?

Speaker 18 What's the world coming to, yeah.

Speaker 7 And so, you know, it's like a lot of like anger at like, you know, this is a great person getting taken away from us that didn't deserve this krista knew bob would never put himself in a dangerous situation that made his murder even more puzzling the main thing that people were saying was oh he must have gotten mugged he was walking back home to his hotel that one i did not believe because bob never walked anywhere he would have ubered especially at that time you ever worry about him working in san francisco and and

Speaker 7 downtown never not at all Had Bob been approached by someone that was trying to mug him, he would have given him, you know, them, the shirt off his back, his wallet, his keys, his clothes.

Speaker 7 He would have said, hey man, let me buy you a meal. Please don't hurt me.

Speaker 1 Sergeant Brent Dittmer was sure from early on that the person who stabbed Bob to death wasn't after his money.

Speaker 16 There was a lot of talk that, you know, this is random violent homeless crime in San Francisco. Could that have happened when we first get get here?

Speaker 38 Maybe.

Speaker 16 But very quickly, it really doesn't appear to be the case.

Speaker 1 And he's still got his watch and his wallet.

Speaker 15 He does.

Speaker 16 And if that's the story people are going to run with, that is an advantage for us because the people who are responsible, we don't want to know what we know.

Speaker 1 So you leave the robbery story out there, even though you know right here that's probably not it.

Speaker 16 Let everybody think that this is whatever's on Twitter at that time. We'll work on what actually happened.

Speaker 1 The idea of a mugging didn't seem plausible to you, but Bob being targeted

Speaker 1 that's even harder to believe. Yes, yeah, we were all confused, confused and scared, especially after Krista received a mysterious text message.

Speaker 7 I heard that you were talking to the police. Please tell them to check the footage of the Millennium Tower.

Speaker 7 I'd like to remain anonymous. I fear that I will be stabbed too.

Speaker 1 Bob's impact was discussed in all corners of Silicon Valley. You have layers of processors and ISOs in the tech world

Speaker 1 and beyond

Speaker 1 as his family and friends gathered for memorial services,

Speaker 1 Carlos Witt attended the service in San Francisco.

Speaker 33 People were talking about Bob's stories, crying, etc.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 33 you could feel

Speaker 33 the absence of Bob everywhere.

Speaker 1 And walking around, and

Speaker 33 it was, you know, it was a beautiful party. And it was, again, beautiful to see everybody.

Speaker 1 But somebody wasn't there.

Speaker 33 It wasn't just like the minus one person. It felt like it was minus like a thousand people

Speaker 33 with one person not being there.

Speaker 21 I'll record myself too and I got myself.

Speaker 1 Hey!

Speaker 6 He just made people feel so amazing.

Speaker 5 Are you gonna send this to mom?

Speaker 39 Yeah.

Speaker 39 And he knew just how to help people.

Speaker 5 Like he was so charismatic and he just like knew how to like solve any issue that he came across.

Speaker 1 His brother Oliver caught a glimpse of Bob's generosity. as he handled Bob's finances after his death.
Constantly, you see him helping somebody else.

Speaker 1 There was a investment in a hair salon and another investment in a restaurant. These were not investments he expected to get back.

Speaker 1 And so it was more of, I met this cool person who's doing this cool thing. How can I help them to do that?

Speaker 1 And the answer was, I'm going to give them some money and I probably won't get anything for it. Yeah, well, I know I won't get anything for it, right? Except the feeling that I helped somebody.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, investigators were trying to figure out why anyone would want Bob dead. They had already dug up a possible lead from that security video they pulled at the crime scene.

Speaker 1 On it, you can see a white car.

Speaker 8 From some of the angles, yeah, you could tell it was a white BMW Roadster.

Speaker 1 In another video, where Bob lifts up his shirt, maybe to see how badly he's wounded,

Speaker 1 there's the white car again in the background.

Speaker 8 You'll see behind him this vehicle pull away from the scene, a vehicle that we determined was this white BMW Z4, a small coop.

Speaker 1 In other videos, police saw what looked like the same white car speeding away from the area. They were able to follow the car as it got onto the Bay Bridge.

Speaker 1 Then they lost sight of it.

Speaker 1 Had the driver seen something, or was the driver involved?

Speaker 1 Can't get a license number.

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 1 But you start looking for that car on other cameras of other buildings. Yes.
Sort of backtracing where it came from. Yes.

Speaker 1 How many other angles of that car do you get along its trip?

Speaker 8 Probably six or seven.

Speaker 19 Can you tell who's inside?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Then they got a break. A friend of Bob's told police that on the night he died, Bob might have gone to a luxury high-rise called Millennium Tower.

Speaker 1 Everybody in San Francisco knows the Millennium Tower.

Speaker 1 I think so. It's famous or infamous, maybe.

Speaker 8 Well, I think the short version is

Speaker 8 a large, luxury high-rise apartment building.

Speaker 1 Like as luxury as it gets. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 I think it was famous first because Joe Montana was living there, and then it became famous because it started tilting.

Speaker 1 For years, the 58-story high-rise has been plagued by structural issues that caused it to lean and sink, sparking countless lawsuits from its wealthy residents. A lot of units in that building.

Speaker 1 A lot of people live there, and almost all of them have money. Yes.

Speaker 1 It was the same building mentioned in that alarming text to Krista.

Speaker 7 I heard that you were talking to the police. I fear that I will be stabbed too.

Speaker 1 Without saying who it was they feared, the texter provided Krista Lee a clue.

Speaker 7 Please tell them to check the footage of the Millennium Tower.

Speaker 1 That was exactly what police were doing. And fortunately, The Millennium Tower had security cameras, lots of them.
Sergeant Dittmer sent an investigator to pull that footage for any sign of Bob.

Speaker 1 Right away, they saw something interesting from a camera outside the building.

Speaker 8 We saw a white BMW that matched the white BMW that was seen driving away from the scene of the killing. We run the plate and the BMW is registered to Nima Momeni.

Speaker 1 Nima Momeni.

Speaker 1 Police now focused on him.

Speaker 1 There was just one problem.

Speaker 1 Is there any evidence that Neima and Bob even knew each other before that evening?

Speaker 8 Not really, no. And that's where Khazar comes into play in all of this.

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Speaker 42 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

Speaker 36 Fox.

Speaker 40 There are new episodes out every Thursday.

Speaker 42 So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 23 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 14 But with Zen Nicotine Pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

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Speaker 30 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

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Speaker 1 Speculation about Bob Lee's murder continued to dominate the headlines. What wasn't on the news was that police now had a name to go on, Nemo Momeni.

Speaker 1 It was still unclear how Nima fit into their case, so Sergeant Dittmer decided to put off talking with him.

Speaker 8 My first plan at this point is to figure out who this Nemo Momeni is.

Speaker 8 We didn't want to go into the Millennium Tower and start knocking on doors or anything like that because we don't want to tip anybody off at at what is really a pretty early stage of this investigation.

Speaker 1 And maybe you're not on the right track here.

Speaker 8 That's possible.

Speaker 1 When you run him, ask people about him, learn more about him, what picture emerges of Nemo Moeni?

Speaker 8 Nemo Moheni has a consulting tech business. He lives over in the East Bay.

Speaker 1 He's in the same business broadly as Bob Lee, but he's way down on the food chain below Bob. Yeah.

Speaker 8 I mean, if you could say tech is the same business, they're in the same business. I don't think they're in any way kind of on the same level.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Investigators would learn Nima was born in Iran, and at 14, he moved to the Bay Area with his mother and his sister, Khazar.

Speaker 1 His mother, Manaz Tehrani. How'd your son adjust to moving to the United States?

Speaker 44 Both my case, they were so strong.

Speaker 44 And we decided when we were leaving Iran,

Speaker 44 we accepted all the difficulties we're gonna face.

Speaker 1 What about your daughter?

Speaker 44 The thing she was a hard-working.

Speaker 44 She started working at a very young age at the age of 13 when we came here.

Speaker 1 Mana says she and the kids all worked hard and scraped by.

Speaker 1 It all seemed to pay off. By 2023 Nima and his family appeared to be doing pretty well.

Speaker 20 He had a nice white BMW. He had a couple boats.
He was talking about buying a ranch.

Speaker 1 Eleni Balakrishnan is a criminal justice reporter for the news site Mission Local who did some digging on NEMA.

Speaker 20 People described him as being extremely generous and, you know, well off. He had a nice loft in Emeryville where he lived as well.

Speaker 1 His personality? Quiet, low-key.

Speaker 20 People thought he was kind of aloof. He was kind of a timid guy.
He would be out, but, you know, wasn't necessarily the center of the party or anything.

Speaker 1 For all the information investigators gathered on Nima, one thing was missing. Is there any evidence that Nima and Bob even knew each other before that evening?

Speaker 8 Not really, no.

Speaker 1 If this involves Nima and Bob, that seems maybe off a little bit because these guys aren't friends. They're not in business together.
They don't even really know each other.

Speaker 8 They don't. And, you know, that's where Khazar comes into play in all of this.

Speaker 1 Khazar, Nima's younger sister. The two were about a year apart and by all accounts, extremely close.
Your son and your daughter have always got along really well. Yes.

Speaker 1 Is your son protective of your daughter?

Speaker 44 My son very supportive.

Speaker 44 Yes, very supportive of her since the day one, you know, since they were little kids.

Speaker 1 Nima and his sister spent a lot of time together. And if Nima was fairly muted, Khazar was anything but reporter Sergio Quintana.

Speaker 9 Khazar Momeni probably stands out because she's pretty glamorous. I mean in San Francisco, again,

Speaker 9 you have money, but you don't wear your money. And she wears her money.

Speaker 1 Khazar is also married to Dino Eliasnia, a top plastic surgeon in the Bay Area.

Speaker 9 There's this glamorous spread in a San Francisco magazine of her and her husband Dino,

Speaker 9 who they're like being photographed in this sky-rise apartment overlooking the city, and she's glamorous and gorgeous.

Speaker 1 Investigators soon discovered that while Bob didn't know Nima, he knew Khazar and knew her quite well. The two seemed to run in the same social circles.

Speaker 1 They'd met about eight years earlier at the Battery, an exclusive social club in San Francisco.

Speaker 8 Definitely friendly acquaintances, you know, talked, texted back and forth about hanging out together, things like that.

Speaker 9 We know that she's a bit of a party girl. She and Bob Lee hang around with each other.
They're in that circle of people who live in these gorgeous high-rise towers in downtown San Francisco.

Speaker 1 It was Khazar Momeni, not Nima, who lived in the glitzy Millennium Tower.

Speaker 1 Police discovered she and her husband lived in separate apartments on separate floors. That living arrangement appeared to mirror their lifestyle and their marriage.

Speaker 1 Khazar's married, but she doesn't live with her husband.

Speaker 8 That's right.

Speaker 1 And they have some kind of open marriage?

Speaker 8 I don't know. It certainly seems clear that they know that

Speaker 38 she sees other people.

Speaker 1 That's been described as an open marriage.

Speaker 44 Yeah, I don't know how to describe that, but

Speaker 44 yeah, her husband was, I think they were

Speaker 44 open-minded in some ways.

Speaker 1 Had Bob somehow gotten into the middle of Khazar and Dino's marriage? He and Khazar clearly had a relationship. Whether this was some sort of love triangle remained unclear.

Speaker 9 On the onset, I think some people might have been assuming that there was something more going on beyond just friendship.

Speaker 9 I mean, there's a handsome guy and there's this glamorous woman and they're hanging around with each other at these parties. I think that was kind of an easy assumption to make.

Speaker 1 For detectives, it all felt like a possible motive. Did you have any suspicions to whether or not Khazar might be involved in this?

Speaker 8 I did. You know, certainly that's on the table.
We know that Bob

Speaker 1 knew her and,

Speaker 8 you know, didn't seem to know Mima as far as we knew.

Speaker 1 Turns out, Khazar and Bob had been together just hours before he died.

Speaker 8 Khazar Momeni had spent time with Bob the day before the killing.

Speaker 1 She was at a party that included Bob, some friends, and some pharmaceuticals. It was not uncommon for Bob to use drugs.

Speaker 38 On the weekends, after his work was all completed, yeah, he enjoyed himself.

Speaker 1 Soon, the investigation would follow a trail of drugs, blood, and anger, and it would lead to a suspect. A shocking video.

Speaker 8 Up until that point, we didn't think we were going to have any video of the killing, so having something was very significant.

Speaker 1 And a high-profile trial.

Speaker 20 Khazar's testimony was the most awaited part of the trial. There were cameras everywhere.

Speaker 1 Silicon Valley has a reputation. Among its success stories lies also a culture of extremes.

Speaker 33 Some people can code hard and play hard at a level.

Speaker 1 Carlos Witt said his friend Bob Lee was at a much higher level.

Speaker 33 It would not be weird for us to put a hundred hour weekend on a regular basis and sometimes string weeks and weeks together.

Speaker 33 So I think one of the ways that you can do that is that sometimes you need to also play hard as well to try to balance your life out.

Speaker 1 And sometimes playing hard is staying up all night shooting pool or playing Nintendo. I mean something harmless.

Speaker 33 It's like we tennis till like five in the morning.

Speaker 1 Bob was just built different because he could do

Speaker 33 the parties,

Speaker 33 but he would also be one of the number one engineers on the entire planet.

Speaker 1 Police learned that sometimes, maybe frequently, that partying involved drugs.

Speaker 9 Bob was part of this scene with this array of substances, the alphabet of drugs, K and E and G and cocaine.

Speaker 7 Yes, he did partake in parties and drugs, but he was never the kind of guy that would get out of control.

Speaker 1 And you never thought to yourself, you're making a big mistake.

Speaker 7 No, no, because I never saw drug use as being abused or an addiction.

Speaker 1 However, his brother Oliver says he did worry. about Bob's chemically fueled adventures.

Speaker 1 Who's self-medicating? There's this narrative of Bob being this super successful guy, but if you knew him, you knew he had self-doubt and he had anxiety.

Speaker 1 Police discovered Bob spent his last days balancing the scales of work and fun with a small circle of friends.

Speaker 8 I got a phone call from someone who played a large part in the case, Mr. Mohazabe.
who said that he had been spending time with Mr. Lee the evening before his death.

Speaker 8 And during that conversation he mentioned Khazar Momeni.

Speaker 1 Bob's friend Bo Moazabe is a tech entrepreneur and DJ.

Speaker 1 According to Bo, he and Khazar were with Bob at a small afternoon get-together.

Speaker 1 Their host was a guy named Jeremy Boivan.

Speaker 1 Who's Jeremy Boivan?

Speaker 8 Jeremy Boivan is a friend of Bob Lee, who is also his drug dealer.

Speaker 38 Bob and I met a few years back. We vacationed together.

Speaker 38 Really got pretty close.

Speaker 1 Jeremy was convicted of drug dealing in 2022.

Speaker 1 He didn't want to talk with me about that, but he did talk about that get-together with Beau, Bob, and Khazar.

Speaker 38 I ordered some pieces. We partied a little bit.

Speaker 1 Some of them partied with alcohol, cocaine, and nitrous oxide, also known as Whippets. To the uninitiated, that being me, what's a whippet?

Speaker 8 Nitrous oxide canister used to whip cream or get high if you snort the gas out of it.

Speaker 1 Were you aware that Bob was on drugs?

Speaker 38 Yeah, I knew Bob was having a good time. He was off work.

Speaker 1 It was not uncommon for Bob to use drugs.

Speaker 38 On the weekends, after his work was all completed, yeah, he enjoyed himself.

Speaker 1 What was Khazar's relationship with Bob?

Speaker 38 I knew that they were friends for the past few years, on and off again, just seeing each other casually. Nothing sexual, just actual friendship.

Speaker 1 And that day, Jeremy says he felt a connection with Khazar.

Speaker 38 She has some, you know, pretty captivating qualities. You know, not just her physical looks, but at times she can be pretty funny and fun to hang out with.

Speaker 1 After an hour or so, Bo told police that Khazar stayed at Jeremy's while he and Bob left. Here they are in the elevator.
It looks as though they wanted to continue the party together.

Speaker 1 Their next stop was the bar at Bob's hotel and later up to his room where they started calling family and friends.

Speaker 7 The last time I spoke to him, I had missed a FaceTime call and so I called him back and he was with our friend Bo

Speaker 7 and it was just sweet and loving. You know, hey baby, talking about you, miss you, come meet up with us.

Speaker 7 And at this point in time, it was already about eight o'clock at night and the last words that we actually spoke to each other were i love you good night

Speaker 1 from bow police learned bob got another call later this one from neema bo is a witness to bob's side of that conversation correct and what he hears is bob defending himself or trying to calm down someone who's clearly pretty upset That's right.

Speaker 1 What sort of things does Bo overhear?

Speaker 8 Bo overhears Bob telling Nima that nothing happened, everything's okay, he wasn't there, but you know, everything's fine.

Speaker 1 Bo told police Nima was upset with Bob. It wasn't clear why.

Speaker 1 Bo said they moved on after the call, stopping for drinks at the battery club and then to Bo's condo. By then, it was after midnight.
and Bo was ready to call it a night.

Speaker 1 Bob didn't want the party to end.

Speaker 8 Bo said that he thought Bob was going to go see Khazar, who lives at the Millennium Tower.

Speaker 1 By then, Khazar had left Jeremy's and was back home.

Speaker 1 Investigators dug frame by frame through video from the Millennium Tower,

Speaker 1 eventually finding the moment Bob arrived, just after 12.30 a.m.

Speaker 1 Then, a little more than an hour later, Bob left. And this time, he wasn't alone.
There's Nima Momeni next to him,

Speaker 1 wearing a black beanie.

Speaker 1 It's a little weird watching the two of them walk out of the Millennium Tower together.

Speaker 8 Yeah, it's always strange to watch someone's last moments on a video.

Speaker 1 And there was more. The two men did not go their separate ways when they left Khazar's apartment.
Investigators found this video of them getting into Nima's white BMW.

Speaker 1 A clearer picture of what happened that night was starting to emerge.

Speaker 8 That first moment, we want to make sure Nima's the person who drove Bob to where this killing happened. And, you know, we're trying to kind of piece everything together right then.

Speaker 1 It was time for police to start tailing Nima Momeni. What that surveillance would capture on video would shift the course of this investigation.

Speaker 8 I think he's showing exactly what he did.

Speaker 19 Hey, everybody.

Speaker 3 It's Rob Lowe here.

Speaker 1 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 41 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore.

Speaker 36 Chris Pratt, Michael J. Fox.

Speaker 40 There are new episodes out every Thursday.

Speaker 42 So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 23 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 14 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 17 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 13 Plus, Zin offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 26 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 29 Check out Zinn.com/slash find to find Zin at a store near you.

Speaker 30 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

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Speaker 1 Police were one step closer to figuring out what had happened to Bob Lee. Bob's friend Bo is the one who really ends up pointing you guys in the right direction.

Speaker 8 That's a huge part of this case, yes.

Speaker 8 That interview sets us on the path.

Speaker 1 He tells you who the players are. He did.
And he's the first person to identify somebody who didn't like Bob. And it was Nima.
Right.

Speaker 1 That phone call Beau witnessed one end of, coupled with the video evidence connecting Nima to Bob, had turned Nima Momeni into the prime suspect.

Speaker 1 Investigators still were not ready to bring him in for questioning. They did put a tail on Nima.

Speaker 1 What form does that surveillance take? You're following him or you've got a tracker on his car or what?

Speaker 8 Combination of things. So initially

Speaker 8 I write a warrant to put a tracker on his car. We go to his house, try and find this white BMW, which we don't see anywhere.

Speaker 8 We see a different vehicle that's registered to him, and officers start following Mr. Momani.

Speaker 1 And what's he doing?

Speaker 8 They see him in a parking lot. And he's talking with someone we later learned as a private investigator.

Speaker 1 Nima's on the right here. Keep in mind, he had not been interviewed, arrested, or charged with any crime, but he had already retained a criminal defense attorney.

Speaker 1 As he spoke with his lawyer's PI, the undercover officer tailing him hit record. What do you see in that video?

Speaker 8 I think I see him.

Speaker 8 pantomiming, stabbing Mr. Lee.

Speaker 1 That's Nima showing somebody else what he did. It is.

Speaker 1 Remember, Bob was stabbed twice in the chest. On the video, police believe Nima makes some stabbing motions toward the P.I.'s torso.

Speaker 1 Then Nima does this. To investigators, he seemed to be demonstrating how to throw the murder weapon over that fence.

Speaker 1 A suspect reenacting the crime for your surveillance is something that doesn't happen every day.

Speaker 8 That was a first.

Speaker 1 For me.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was all suggestive. but would it be enough to convince a jury or the DA?

Speaker 21 We wanted to make sure that at the point at which Momeni was arrested, that we did have a solid case.

Speaker 21 And so we asked that the San Francisco police make sure that they collected every ounce of evidence that they could prior to that.

Speaker 1 And they did find some more evidence.

Speaker 8 In this case, we were able to see texts on Bob's phone.

Speaker 1 Specifically, messages Khazar sent to Bob hours after he left her home that night.

Speaker 1 Just wanted to make sure you're doing okay, because I know Nima came way down hard on you and thank you for being such a classy man handling it with class.

Speaker 1 Bob Lee's phone received those texts. We know Bob never read them.
These are texts that Khazar sends to Bob not knowing he's already dead. That's right.

Speaker 8 So I think at that point we knew Bob has left the Millennium Tower and gone to the place where he's killed with Nima.

Speaker 8 And then we have Khazar sending Bob messages that her brother came down way hard on him the night before. At that point, I felt comfortable and said, okay, it's time to arrest this guy.

Speaker 1 Nine days after Bob's murder, SWAT officers arrived at Nima's condo outside San Francisco to make the arrest

Speaker 1 and execute a search warrant.

Speaker 8 So simultaneous to that, we served warrants at Khazar Momeni's apartment and her husband Dino's apartment at the Millennium Tower.

Speaker 8 I'm looking for Joseph Joseph knives, and I was also seeking to speak with Khazar

Speaker 8 and or Dino to see if they would give up any kind of an interview with us.

Speaker 1 How willing were Khazar and her husband to speak with you?

Speaker 8 Khazar said that we had to speak with her attorney. and Dino refused to even provide his name to the officers searching the apartment.

Speaker 1 In that search, police did find a Joseph-Joseph knife in Khazar's kitchen, the same brand as the murder weapon.

Speaker 1 You think Nima takes that knife from Khazar's kitchen and carries it with him when he leaves the apartment with Bob, and his plan is to stab Bob?

Speaker 8 I believe that's the case, yes.

Speaker 22 We start out with breaking news out of San Francisco. A person accused of fatally stabbing local tech executive Bob Lee is under arrest.

Speaker 22 The stabbing was not random, and the killer apparently knew Lee.

Speaker 1 When you heard there was an arrest, you feel better? Yes, absolutely. I was very relieved at the arrest because at least we knew we were going to start getting answers.

Speaker 44 I was shocked.

Speaker 44 I was shocked. I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 44 I became like a dead person

Speaker 44 walking.

Speaker 44 I'm sorry.

Speaker 8 You want to stop a second?

Speaker 44 Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 There's nothing harder, is there?

Speaker 44 Yeah, it was very, very difficult.

Speaker 1 The thing that still eluded police was any clear motive. Why would Nima want Bob dead?

Speaker 1 When you arrest Nima, what's your theory of the crime?

Speaker 8 The theory is he's upset with Bob over something that happened with his sister.

Speaker 1 We don't know exactly why.

Speaker 8 We don't know exactly what happened.

Speaker 8 Khazar is sort of the engine that made this whole thing happen.

Speaker 8 Khazar's relationship with her brother and her relationship with Bob is what puts the two of them on kind of a collision course.

Speaker 1 It had been a year and a half since Bob Lee was stabbed to death under the Bay Bridge. Now, Nima Momeni, a man who barely knew Bob, was about to stand trial for his murder.
He pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 11 We thought it was going to be a difficult case for various reasons.

Speaker 1 Cameras were not allowed inside the courtroom in which prosecutors Omit Talai and Dane Reinstedt would present their case.

Speaker 11 The one person who can truthfully tell us what happened isn't with us.

Speaker 1 There's no live eyewitnesses.

Speaker 11 There's no witness, so that allows the defendant and the defense to tell any type of fantastical story they can come up with.

Speaker 1 Prosecutors argued this was simple. Nima Momeni was the last person to see Bob Lee before he was stabbed.
And they had plenty of security video to prove their case.

Speaker 11 We have them on great surveillance getting into the elevator at the Millennium, walking through the lobby, walking out to Nima Momeni's car.

Speaker 1 Either Nima is aware that there are cameras and he's concealing how furious he is at Bob, or he wasn't furious at Bob yet. Correct.

Speaker 11 He quite possibly was very furious.

Speaker 1 Prosecutors first played that 911 call. Tell me, I need.

Speaker 1 In court, that was a painful moment for Bob's family. They had never heard that call before.

Speaker 6 The 911 call just keeps like ringing in my head, being so in shock that he can't say anything else but he just keeps repeating

Speaker 1 oh over and over again

Speaker 14 where you stat man

Speaker 1 and they played for jurors that body came video showing officers trying to revive a close to lifeless bob lee

Speaker 11 nima momeni is driving home in his nice bmw and hoping to go on with his life like nothing ever happened One question.

Speaker 1 Had Nima's sister and mother helped him go on with his life? That's because in those first few days, police were not able to find that white BMW.

Speaker 11 We eventually found the car about a month later at a BMW dealership where his family was attempting to sell it on his behalf.

Speaker 1 You think this is the family trying to help him dispose of evidence?

Speaker 11 I feel confident this is one of many ways in which the family was trying to help him.

Speaker 1 Then jurors watched that undercover police video of Nima speaking with his attorney's private investigator.

Speaker 1 The court required Nima's mouth to be blurred so the jury couldn't try to make out the conversation.

Speaker 11 I've

Speaker 11 never had a piece of evidence where a suspect is reenacting his or her crime.

Speaker 1 Beyond the reenacting, prosecutors believed they had a powerful piece of evidence. Video of the actual killing.
It's low quality. Police recovered it from a building right across from the crime scene.

Speaker 11 You see two figures, and we are able to make out who those two figures are given the color of the clothing Bob and Nima Momeni are wearing in the elevator.

Speaker 1 There they are at the bottom of the screen. It's hard to make out so we put a spotlight on them.
Prosecutors believe the darker figure is Bob. The lighter one is Nima.

Speaker 1 Talai says the video shows Nima lunging forward toward Bob and then throwing the knife over the fence to dispose of it. That video is pretty blurry.

Speaker 11 That's an understatement.

Speaker 1 You're confident that that's Bob and that's Nima.

Speaker 11 I'm confident given that the car that we see the two of them get into is perfectly tracked to that exact location of the incident.

Speaker 1 While prosecutors argued the videos place Nima at the scene, The backbone of their case was the forensics. Those DNA tests ordered on the knife had come back.

Speaker 11 99% of the DNA from that handle comes back to Nima Momeni. From the blade of that knife, it comes back to Bobley.

Speaker 1 The state is not required to prove motive, but prosecutors wanted to address the burning question.

Speaker 1 Why would Nima want to kill Bob?

Speaker 9 Khazar, how do you feel about testifying today?

Speaker 1 To answer that, They called Khazar Momeni, Bob's friend, and the defendant's sister.

Speaker 20 Khazar's testimony was the most awaited part of the trial. There were cameras everywhere.

Speaker 1 Reporter Eleni Balakrishnan was in the courtroom.

Speaker 20 She's very well dressed.

Speaker 20 She showed up in court and was the star of the show. The cameras would be following her.
She's dressed in all Valentino and wears these big sunglasses to cover her eyes.

Speaker 1 Through a subpoena, Khazar was forced to testify against her own brother. It was clear she did not want to be there.

Speaker 20 She was very soft-spoken. She kind of looked down a lot of the time.

Speaker 1 Because Khazar refused to give a formal statement to police, prosecutors were not sure exactly what she would testify to in court. They hoped she would talk about that party at Jeremy Boivan's place.

Speaker 1 And she did. She told jurors she was high on LSD, cocaine, and nitrous oxide.
After Bob left, Jeremy gave her GHB, known as a date rape drug, and she willingly took it.

Speaker 1 Then, Khazar said, something horrible happened.

Speaker 20 Khazar on the stand described being on Jeremy's bed and having taken a bunch of GHB and being unable to move, and that he was grabbing her, that her pants were down, and that he was slapping her butt.

Speaker 1 Prosecutor Dane Reinstedt.

Speaker 39 She testified that she told Nima she had been sexually assaulted at Jeremy Bovin's. That's a pretty clear indication of motive.

Speaker 1 In fact, that tense phone call Beau witnessed between Bob and Nima was all about the alleged sexual assault. What kinds of things is Nima saying in that phone call?

Speaker 11 He's interrogating Bob. He's questioning him about what was happening at Jeremy Boivin's place.

Speaker 1 When Bob visited Nima and Khazar at the Millennium Tower later that night, prosecutors believe Nima was furious.

Speaker 39 And we have the text messages from Khazar to Bob talking about her brother coming down way hard on Bob. It's clear that there was more hostility.

Speaker 1 Some sort of argument or Nima yelling at Bob. Correct.

Speaker 39 But it would appear that by the time they departed, he had made nice.

Speaker 1 Prosecutors confronted Khazar with those text messages she'd sent to Bob.

Speaker 39 Her explanation is to many texts that she was high out of her mind and didn't know what she was saying, that that was her attempt to help her brother.

Speaker 1 On the stand, at least, Khazar insisted there was no beef between Bob and Nima.

Speaker 20 According to Khazar, everything was fine there, that there had actually never been an issue between Nima and Bob.

Speaker 1 Still, prosecutors believed they had enough evidence to piece together their motive.

Speaker 39 Nima understood Khazar to have been sexually assaulted because she told him that, comes to a conclusion that the people responsible were Jeremy Bovin and Bob Lee.

Speaker 39 And when he gets an opportunity later that night to act against one of those two people, he does.

Speaker 1 That's a very convoluted motive that Nima is angry enough at Bob to want to kill him for something Bob wasn't even present for. Why isn't he going after Jeremy?

Speaker 11 Why is he going after Bob? That's a great question. I don't know what he planned to do with Jeremy at some point.
What happened in Jeremy Boivan's apartment is not important.

Speaker 11 What Nima Momeni thinks happened in that apartment, that's what is important.

Speaker 1 Now it was the defense's turn, and they were about to challenge the state's motive and Khazar's credibility. You believe anything comes out of Khazar's mouth? No, no, no, I don't.

Speaker 3 Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here.

Speaker 1 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 42 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

Speaker 36 Fox.

Speaker 40 There are new episodes out every Thursday.

Speaker 42 So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 23 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

Speaker 14 But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 26 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 13 Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 26 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

Speaker 29 Check out Zinn.com slash find to find Zinn at a store near you.

Speaker 30 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 43 If you're you're an experienced pet owner, you already know that having a pet is 25% belly rubs, 25% yelling, drop it, and 50% groaning at the bill from every vet visit, which is why Lemonade Pet Insurance is tailor-made for your pet and can save you up to 90% on vet bills.

Speaker 43 It can help cover checkups, emergencies, diagnostics, basically all the stuff that makes your bank account nervous. Claims are filed super easy through the Lemonade app and half get settled instantly.

Speaker 43 Get a quote at lemonade.com slash pet and they'll help cover the vet bill for whatever your pet swallowed after you yelled drop it.

Speaker 1 For nearly a month, Nima Momeni's mother, Manaz, watched prosecutors portray her son as a cold-blooded killer.

Speaker 44 My son is not that type of person. I have raised a very kind

Speaker 44 son.

Speaker 44 Both of my kids, they are very kind, they are very giving. And my son has not been any aggressive person to hurt someone, never.

Speaker 1 Defense Attorney Sam Zanganay came from Miami to represent NEMA.

Speaker 19 He is innocent. The DA here, right, had unbelievable pressure on this case.

Speaker 1 And you think charging NEMA is a sort of reaction to that?

Speaker 19 I think that they jumped the gun, right? They found somebody, they went in, and they made an arrest. They say something happened and Bob Lee died.

Speaker 1 That's it. He insists Bob Lee's stature in the tech business added a different layer to the case.

Speaker 19 There's powers that are not normally in play when the decedent is the kind of person that Bob Lee is, right? I call not a regular victim. We call it victim plus, right?

Speaker 19 When you have someone who's in that victim plus era.

Speaker 1 That's Bob Lee.

Speaker 19 That's Bob Lee. He's victim plus squared, right?

Speaker 1 He sought to take apart the prosecution's case, starting. with the murder weapon.

Speaker 1 The blade's this big. It's a little paranite.
You can be killed with a blade that big.

Speaker 19 Of course you can, right? That's not the kind of blade you take to hurt somebody, right? If you're in a kitchen, there's a ton of knives there.

Speaker 29 You're going to pick the smallest, weakest one.

Speaker 1 The defense went after that grainy video prosecutors say showed Nima stabbing Bob.

Speaker 19 There's this Nest Cam, which shows like these two blurry dots on Main Street. They've taken that video and they have sped it up, slowed it down, changed the lighting to make

Speaker 19 something that occurred look different than what actually occurred. Right? Smoke and mirrors, my man.
Smoke and mirrors.

Speaker 1 Also not credible to the defense, that undercover police video of Nima speaking with his attorney's PI.

Speaker 1 What's happening in that video?

Speaker 19 Well, I'll tell you what's not happening in that video is that he's not pantomiming anything. They don't have any evidence of what's going on there.
So what are they going to do?

Speaker 19 They're going to assume and speculate and try to force a square peg into a round hole.

Speaker 1 And Zangane said there was a reasonable explanation why Nima's family tried to sell his white BMW after his arrest. They have a power of attorney.

Speaker 19 They took the car to the dealership where they purchased it because he had legal bills coming. They could have junked it.
They could have lit it on fire. They didn't do any of that stuff.

Speaker 19 They took it back to the dealership.

Speaker 1 According to the defense, The weakest part of the prosecution's case was the motive. What reason would Nima Momeni have to want to kill Bob Lee?

Speaker 19 Their story was that Nima killed Bob Lee because Bob Lee's friend touched his sister's ass. Didn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 Two and two didn't equal four, right?

Speaker 19 Why would he go after Bob Lee for something his friend did?

Speaker 1 Nima's motive might be to take out his anger on Jeremy Boivin and not on Bob.

Speaker 19 Right, but he doesn't.

Speaker 1 The defense argued Nima was not furious with Bob at all and pointed to those security videos of Bob and Nima leaving the Millennium Tower showing two people who looked friendly and calm

Speaker 1 they didn't leave in a hurry Josh they went and hung out in the front of the valet didn't appear to have any issues is that the video of two guys who have settled whatever dispute they had or is that Nima concealing his anger until a time when he can take out that anger on Bob without anyone watching anyone watch bro this the the the the fight happened on a place called main street this wasn't in like a little cul-de-sac or a little hidden place.

Speaker 19 The prosecution's like, oh, it's under a bridge. Bro, it's on a place called Main Street.
It is a busy street.

Speaker 1 And in a very odd moment, even though Khazar Momeni and her husband helped bankroll Nima's defense, Zangane told jurors she had no credibility and to disregard her version of what happened that night.

Speaker 1 You believe anything comes out of Khazar's mouth? No, no, no, I don't. And let me tell you why.

Speaker 19 Because she's an addict, okay? You can't ask the jury to believe something that doesn't really pass a smell test, right?

Speaker 1 On the stand, Khazar said she had sought help for her substance abuse problems and completed a rehab program.

Speaker 1 Jeremy Boivan was never called to testify. While he admits smacking Khazar's backside, he denies ever assaulting her.
Did you abuse Khazar?

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 38 Not once. We had had a physical relationship after the fact and continued to have a physical relationship for many months after that.
So

Speaker 38 her saying these allegations is just

Speaker 38 baseless and

Speaker 1 really unfounded.

Speaker 1 In court, Khazar acknowledged Jeremy stayed in her apartment after Bob's death. She didn't remember for how long and said it wasn't sexual.

Speaker 1 After her testimony, Jeremy claimed Khazar apologized to him for making the assault allegation. And she said, I'm sorry I shouldn't have said that? Yes.

Speaker 1 So to you, at least, she's admitting to lying on the witness stand.

Speaker 1 Hey,

Speaker 38 it's none of my business, really. Bottom line is, I didn't do it.
There was no sexual assault at any point.

Speaker 1 Whatever happened at Jeremy Boivan's apartment didn't matter, argued Nima's attorneys. They were about to offer a whole new theory about what happened that night.

Speaker 19 When we tell our story and we explain exactly how it transpired, it's eye-opening.

Speaker 1 Nemo Momeni's attorneys were prepared to turn the case upside down. While the prosecution blamed Nima, they were going to blame Bob Bob Lee.

Speaker 19 When we tell our story and we explain exactly how it transpired, it's eye-opening.

Speaker 1 The defense focused on Bob's partying in the days and hours leading up to his death. Bob, they said, was sleep-deprived and full of drugs and alcohol.

Speaker 1 Nima's attorneys argued a drug-fueled bender like that could have caused Bob to become violent.

Speaker 19 It's 2 a.m., flights in seven, eight hours, and he is still actively

Speaker 19 just partying like a rock star, which to me suggests he had no plans on sleeping and consuming, consuming.

Speaker 1 Zhang and A said Bob, not Nima, was the one with a knife, and it could have come from Khazars or somewhere else.

Speaker 19 I don't think he took the knife for

Speaker 19 as a weapon. Bob's doing Coke.
He's been doing Coke for multiple days. This is what you do.
You take the knife, you use

Speaker 10 the bottom to break up the bag, and then.

Speaker 1 Even though he pleaded not guilty, Nima was about to admit he was responsible for Bob's death. He said it was self-defense.

Speaker 19 He's been chomping at the bit, man, for so long to be able to tell his story.

Speaker 1 Prosecutors knew a lot hung on Nima's performance on the stand.

Speaker 11 We had great evidence, like the DNA, but ultimately, if Nima Momeni is believable, believable, credible, sympathetic, if he tells a good story, we lose.

Speaker 1 He walks away.

Speaker 11 I think so.

Speaker 26 The three stab wounds.

Speaker 1 Reporter Sergio Quintana was in court for Nima's testimony.

Speaker 9 He went on the stand and, on direct,

Speaker 9 followed what seemed to be a pretty tight script as to what to say and how the night went down.

Speaker 1 Nima said the night unfolded like this. Yes, Khazar told him Jeremy assaulted her.

Speaker 1 At first, he was upset, but when he spoke with others at that party, he concluded his sister was probably exaggerating. He denied being angry at Bob.
Nima also said a couple of other things.

Speaker 1 He confirmed his sister had an open marriage. And he said he, Khazar, and Bob all did Coke together.
before Nima and Bob left the Millennium Tower.

Speaker 1 They talked about going on to a strip club, and Nima offered to give him a ride.

Speaker 19 They start driving because they're going to go towards where the strip clubs are. That's when they had the little hiccup.
Nima's like, hey, he spilled his beer all over him.

Speaker 1 Nima told jurors he pulled over to that area underneath the Bay Bridge to help clean up the mess.

Speaker 1 That's when Bob noticed something in the back seat.

Speaker 19 He found some whippet canisters back there because Khazar had left it in his car. He did a few hits, took a few bumps, and then got out of the car.
He thought he was going to puke. Nima went.

Speaker 19 They're outside, and then that's when the conversation went from normal to adversarial.

Speaker 1 Nima said he made a joke, a bad one, he admitted.

Speaker 9 He was like, Well, why would someone like you with the family be out here? Why wouldn't you just be with them, right? Go instead of trying to go to some strip club.

Speaker 9 And that apparently, according to Nima Momeni, enraged Bob Lee. At some point, Bob produces a knife from his jacket and he lunges at Nima Momeni.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 Nima manages to redirect the knife. The way he tells it on the stand is really a gloss over.
He barely even mentioned that he happened to have tapped him twice in the chest, right?

Speaker 1 Nima even had an explanation about why he threw the knife over the fence and drove away.

Speaker 9 He thought Bob Lee was fine. It seemed from his testimony that he didn't even realize that Bob Lee was injured.
The defense team asks, well, why did you toss the knife?

Speaker 9 And I said, well, so he couldn't get to it afterward.

Speaker 1 Defense attorneys were prepared to show jurors exactly how they claim Bob attacked Nima.

Speaker 19 We had a digital animation made.

Speaker 1 That's Nima on the right wearing the beanie. Bob's on the left with the knife.

Speaker 19 He swung, right? Which is what our animation shows. that it was a swinging motion.

Speaker 1 The defense said it was at this moment that Nima grabbed Bob's arm and pushed the knife toward him. That's how Bob got stabbed in the chest.

Speaker 19 And it shows him walking backwards with what appears to be his hands up in the air, right? And then goes to the other side of the sidewalk, tracks in the northerly direction.

Speaker 19 It shows him bending down, picking up the knife, and then throwing it over a fence.

Speaker 1 And according to the defense, that's how Nima's DNA. got on the knife handle.
Nima's attorneys had hoped to play that animation in trial. The judge did not allow it.
That is the most

Speaker 1 far-out story I think I've ever heard in my life. Bob's brother Oliver watched the trial and thought Nima's story was ridiculous.
You saw Bob on drugs.

Speaker 1 Did he become a violent, angry guy when he was using drugs? No. He would tend to be,

Speaker 1 you know, more outgoing, like when he was on drugs, but he would never be violent. So when you heard that at trial.

Speaker 1 absolute insanity, right? It is the most opposite thing of what Bob was.

Speaker 11 I thought he gave a pathetically comical story that made no sense.

Speaker 1 Then prosecutor Talai cross-examined Nima.

Speaker 11 You know, I had a strategy coming into the cross-examination. I am trying to provoke him, and within about five, ten minutes, I could tell he wasn't going to be able to control himself.

Speaker 9 There were multiple attempts by the prosecutor to try to poke holes in his story, and he did hang on to dear life to that story.

Speaker 9 And you could see on the stand that his nature is to get a little combative and will turn and start asking you questions of what's going on.

Speaker 1 Even Nima's own attorney admits his client lost his temper during cross-examination.

Speaker 19 The prosecutor, to his credit, really quickly got under his skin. The same guy that had been calling him a coward and a dirtbag for 18 months.
But here's what I'll tell you.

Speaker 19 His testimony didn't change.

Speaker 1 It also doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 3 What doesn't make any sense?

Speaker 19 Why don't you tell me what you didn't?

Speaker 1 What? Bob attacks him, but Nima doesn't realize that he stabbed him. Then Bob walks away, and then I threw away this knife that he tried to use on me, doesn't ask for an ambulance.

Speaker 1 That's not the most credible story.

Speaker 19 Well, I mean, listen, leaving the knife within a few feet of the scene, right, is maybe subjective of someone that is panicking.

Speaker 19 I don't think it's as cut as dry and you guys are making it out seem at all.

Speaker 1 I don't, respectfully. Respectfully, to me, those are the actions of someone who knows that they did something wrong and is trying to avoid responsibility.

Speaker 19 Yeah, but then why would you leave the knife at the scene?

Speaker 1 Why wouldn't you call the police and say, someone tried to kill me and I had to defend myself?

Speaker 19 Well, when you're dealing with an immigrant like Nima, someone that, you know, is an average Joe, and then the person that you're claiming tried to kill you is Bob Lee, probably not something you want to get yourself into.

Speaker 1 Nima's attorneys thought their case was strong enough to sway the jury, and they still had one last card to play.

Speaker 9 The defense attorney, Sam Zangane, says, Look, that's the knife.

Speaker 4 Very dramatic.

Speaker 1 Jurors had heard two different accounts about what happened in the early morning hours of April 4th, 2023.

Speaker 1 In one of them, Nima Momeni was the attacker. In the other, he was the victim.
During his closing arguments, Defense Attorney Sam Zanganay had one more surprise.

Speaker 19 From a strategic decision, we held off, we didn't talk about it, we entered it in evidence.

Speaker 1 Reporter Sergio Quintana was in the courtroom when the defense played a new security video.

Speaker 9 The video is outside the battery and it's of Bo and Bob and they walk out onto the street.

Speaker 9 Bob does a motion where he scoops something

Speaker 9 and then does this whole thing.

Speaker 1 The defense told the jury Bob was doing cocaine using a small object.

Speaker 9 The defense attorney, Sam Zangane, says, look, look at the thing that he's got. Look, it's about as long as what we know is the murder weapon, and he's using it to do, that's it, that's the knife.

Speaker 9 Very dramatic.

Speaker 1 The defense said this was proof Bob had a knife that night, not Nima.

Speaker 19 That looks to me like a knife.

Speaker 1 And you're convinced that's the knife that eventually became the murder weapon.

Speaker 19 What else would it be? Because nothing else was recovered that looked like that on him.

Speaker 1 Nothing. This is not some TV legal show.
You knew this was coming.

Speaker 11 We've watched video from the battery. We've watched hundreds of hours of video.

Speaker 11 You could watch that video a thousand times and you will never see a knife, no matter how many times you get in a jury's face and yell, that's the knife.

Speaker 1 That's not Bob Lee doing cocaine off the knife that ended up being the murder weapon.

Speaker 11 That's correct. That's not Bob Lee with the knife that just happens to be a Joseph Joseph knife that Khazar Momeni had in her place.

Speaker 1 Bo told us he never saw Bob with a knife that night or ever.

Speaker 1 What would jurors believe?

Speaker 1 As they filed into the deliberation room, all everyone could do was wait and wait.

Speaker 8 You feel confident? I have had my heart broken in this town before, so confidence is

Speaker 8 always going to be limited on anything.

Speaker 1 First day goes by, there's no verdict, you're not worried. Correct.
Second day, third day, you're okay.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 1 You didn't answer as quickly then.

Speaker 11 You know, around the fifth, sixth day, which was the deadline that the judge had previously given the jury for when their service would be done, it's at that point in time that I'm a little concerned.

Speaker 1 Six days went by, Still no verdict.

Speaker 9 On the sixth day, as we're all waiting there, we see some odd things with this jury because they go to lunch early and then they come back and then they go on their afternoon break and we see one juror sitting with his head down like this.

Speaker 9 two benches away from us. We're the media, right?

Speaker 9 We can't get video of him because you're not, we're not allowed to interact with the jurors, but we can see that him sitting by himself with his head down. The rest of them, they leave the building.

Speaker 19 I thought that it was going to be a mistrial. You did? Yeah.
I thought that if they didn't come to a decision on that day, they were going to hang.

Speaker 19 And I thought that that's what it was going to be.

Speaker 1 Finally, after seven days of deliberations, jurors sent word they had reached a decision. But it was late in the day.
Everyone would have to return the next morning. How'd you sleep that night?

Speaker 1 I didn't.

Speaker 1 Honestly, I threw up a couple times that morning. And you got to be thinking to yourself, why has it taken so long and what does that mean? All of that.

Speaker 7 I don't think anyone slept that night.

Speaker 5 I just remember being very like on edge and just like overly anxious.

Speaker 1 The hallway was packed as prosecutors and Bob's family made their way into the tense courtroom.

Speaker 11 I find myself getting the most nervous. You know, you're powerless.
You're sitting there and you're waiting.

Speaker 1 And you've done all you can do.

Speaker 11 I've done everything I can do.

Speaker 1 And perhaps it wasn't enough.

Speaker 1 Nima Momeni was found not guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 5 The moment when I heard not guilty for first-degree, I just like felt my stomach drop and I felt like

Speaker 5 I felt like a ringing in my ear and that like I was gonna pass out.

Speaker 21 Bob Lee's children were sitting right behind me as that verdict was read and I wanted them to be able to walk out and know that their father's life wasn't lost in vain.

Speaker 1 Well, the jury wasn't done. The verdict for second degree murder,

Speaker 1 guilty.

Speaker 1 Second degree.

Speaker 1 You okay with that?

Speaker 11 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 It was such a relief that they had come to the decision to have justice for Bob. And we think it is justice for Bob.

Speaker 19 When the verdict came in,

Speaker 10 you absorb it.

Speaker 19 I wasn't happy with it I thought I think the jury I mean I don't think they got it right

Speaker 5 Nima Mometi will face 16 years to life when he's sentenced he plans to appeal the conviction his mother spoke after the verdict but this is not a fair trial and we will stand and we will continue we are strong we have been in a difficult time together I was hoping for my dad to get justice, but also it was a really like bittersweet feeling because I was waiting for him to get, like, I was waiting for like the murderer, obviously, to like get what he deserved.

Speaker 5 But also, it really sucked to like know that like no matter what the verdict was going to be, I was never going to get my dad back.

Speaker 1 The Lee family say they plan to sue the Momenis in civil court for wrongful death.

Speaker 7 What they did to my children alone is unforgivable.

Speaker 1 Krista sees every day day how much Scout and Sirius miss their dad.

Speaker 7 This is not the way that Bob Lee should have died ever.

Speaker 7 He should have died an old man, a more successful man.

Speaker 7 The murderer robbed this world of a great mind.

Speaker 7 And I will never, ever forgive this family for what they did to him.

Speaker 12 That's all for this edition of Dateline, and check out our Talking Dateline podcast.

Speaker 12 Josh Mankiewicz and Blaine Alexander will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 12 We'll see you again next Friday at 9-8 Central. I'm Lester Holt, for all of us at NBC News.
Good night.

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