♪
Some stories are unforgettable.
This is one of them.
I feel very inspired by my dad.
He was such a good person.
I realized I had missed calls.
There was just this pit in my stomach.
The doctor said, "We were not able to save him."
This story started, like many we cover,
with a family trying to make sense of the unthinkable.
I went blank.
Are you telling me that Bob is dead?
It quickly took a sharp left turn
into less familiar territory.
He's a prominent person in the tech world.
A friend texted me, "Tell the police
to check the footage of the Millennium Tower."
It's a large high rise. A lot of people live there.
And almost all of them have money.
Yes.
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.
Khazar puts the two of them on kind of a collision course.
On this beat, I see a lot of video evidence.
What I saw in this case was quite unusual.
We have them getting into the elevator.
I think he was out for blood that night.
I felt my stomach drop.
[gunshot]
That is the most far out story I've ever heard.
♪
This is Dateline: Unforgettable.
I'm Josh Mankiewicz with a fresh look at
Under the Bay Bridge.
April 4, 2023.
The 911 call came in around 2:30 AM
from this lonely block on the streets of San Francisco.
The man never gave his name.
He had only one desperate plea, for the operator
on the other end of the line,
and he kept repeating it.
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.
He fumbled with his phone and then somehow
managed to get up and take a few more steps.
Within a few minutes, officers arrive
to find him unresponsive.
Where you stabbed, man?
They did CPR.
The average adult male has about five quarts of blood.
This guy had already parted ways with a lot of his.
♪
San Francisco has long been a destination for pioneers
and explorers, up to and including
the more modern gold rush of the digital age.
Then, as now, a place to stake your claim
in the California dream.
It's also a city where you can become both famous
and infamous,
and where success and failure get an equal amount of ink.
So when fate and fortune collided in the shadow
of the Bay Bridge,
people may have thought they knew what happened.
Well, this was no ordinary crime,
nor ordinary circumstances.
And that man on the ground was no ordinary victim.
This story was competitive.
Meaning we weren't the only national news outlet
covering it,
largely because of who that man was.
And for both reporters and police,
who he was raised two intriguing questions.
What was a guy like that doing under the Bay Bridge
in the middle of the night? And who was he with?
A lot of people thought it was obvious what had happened,
including one person with a very big megaphone.
They were wrong.
The truth turned out to be much more complicated.
On that April night, San Francisco police sergeant
Brent Dittmer got the call.
And I figured, well, maybe this is gonna be
something minor.
- Didn't turn out to be minor. - Not quite.
Sergeant Dittmer went to the scene
at the corner of Main Street and Harrison
in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.
We just don't have a lot of call outs to that area.
Um, it's not an area where there's a lot of violent crime.
They knew where the victim had collapsed.
Who attacked him and where, still unknown.
And you find a blood trail. - That's right.
Which points where?
So the blood trail moves up this sidewalk,
along the building, toward Harrison Street.
He ends here, which means he came down here.
That's right.
There were some, uh, blood swipes
on the building itself, but then it was blood drips
that were moving down the sidewalk,
up towards Harrison Street.
You can tell from the droplets the direction
that the person was traveling. - Yes.
And as we get close to Harrison here,
the blood drops went across the street
over toward the west sidewalk.
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.
There's a knife over here.
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.
- That's probably your knife. - Probably the knife.
- Blood on it? - Yes.
That blood was on the blade of this small paring knife.
The blade only three and a half inches long.
And the brand? Joseph Joseph.
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?
Sometimes it's a couple of weeks,
sometimes it's months. Sometimes it's over a year.
Detectives started knocking on doors.
Maybe someone had seen or heard something.
This is Main Street, after all.
Except the 911 call came in around 2:30 AM.
Witnesses? - Um, 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.
Sergeant Dittmer's team began pulling videos
from buildings around the area.
Is that an area where there are a lot of cameras?
There's some.
There aren't as many as you'd like.
There's never as many as you like.
- Never. - Right.
And they're never as good as you want them to be.
It was during the search for video
that Dittmer got a call.
The victim had been identified.
We were notified that, uh, the victim was Bob Lee.
You ever heard of Bob Lee before?
- No. - What do you hear
from the hospital about what his injuries were?
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.
Uh, one of those punctured his heart.
So who was Bob Lee?
And just as important, what brought him to
that downtown street in the small hours
of that April morning?
My focus was just, let's figure out
what happened here and who did it
and just get on that trail.
That trail would lead to some strange places.
That was a text that you got? - Anonymous text.
"I fear that I will be stabbed too."
To a slew of rumors.
What is going on in San Francisco that, like,
you know, this could happen.
To some unforgettable characters.
I mean, in San Francisco you have money,
but you don't wear your money.
And she wears her money.
And the family at the center of it all.
She also just kind of seemed like she was there
to help her brother however she could.
All culminating in a trial about what really happened
under the Bay Bridge.
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.
♪
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.
I woke up around 6:30, like I usually do.
When I grabbed my phone, I realized I had missed calls.
Three missed calls in fact,
all from the same unknown number.
So she looked it up.
It was San Francisco General Hospital.
And I found that to be a little strange.
Who's calling you from the hospital?
Exactly.
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."
Dad was Bob Lee.
Divorced from Krista for years,
but maintaining a close friendship
and co parenting relationship for their two children.
I don't know why, but there is just this feeling,
this, you know, pit in my stomach.
And then Scout, 14 at the time,
told her where the phone seemed to be located.
It was at the police station.
Specifically the SFPD's Southern Station.
I remember my stomach just, like--
like I felt nauseous, kind of.
Like, I didn't know why.
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.
I'm like, "This is a little odd."
I'm not going to let my overactive imagination
take hold just yet.
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.
And the operator had said, "Oh, I'm so sorry.
We were probably just verifying or confirming an appointment."
And I felt, "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 10:00 AM
Bob is up and running.
- He would always text you back. - Always.
Yeah, either text, call, anything.
Uh, we were always in contact with each other.
- So that's weird. - It was very strange.
By 10:00-11:00 AM, I still had not heard from him.
Krista did hear from someone else,
a friend of Bob's.
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 returned my messages either."
The friend told Krista he'd go down to
the police station just to check.
And said, "By any chance
this guy by the name of Bob Lee here?"
And the woman, uh, said, "Are you family?"
That's never good when they ask that.
And it wasn't good.
The police told the friend Bob was at the hospital.
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. - Mugged, car accident,
hit by a car, hit by a self driving car
in San Francisco.
You know, every-- every little scenario.
And so we get there and, uh, 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?
What happened?
And shortly after that the nurse
and the attending doctor walked in and said,
"Are you Bob Lee's wife?"
I said, "Yes, I'm his former wife."
And he said, "Well, I'm so sorry.
We did everything we could, but we were not able
to save him."
Bob, she was told, had been fatally stabbed.
He was 43.
At that time, I just, I-I went blank.
I stared at the doctor like,
"Are you telling me that Bob is dead?"
And... [sighs]
Um, it was in that moment that, you know,
you almost fall to the floor.
Uh, you don't think it's real.
Um, my whole body, I mean, just went flush.
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.
Like, they're getting out of school.
It's 3:00 in the afternoon. I need to go now."
Krista rushed home to her children,
Sirius, then 17, and Scout,
who'd been taking an after school nap.
She's like, "We're going to your sister's room."
And I'm like, "Okay, what's happening?"
And that's when she breaks the news.
I remember I thought that I was, like, still dreaming.
Like, I really wish that I was.
Sergeant Dittmer spoke with Bob's family.
And when you say to Krista, "Is there some obvious suspect?"
She says... - There wasn't.
She didn't have any idea why this would happen.
Hard to find people who didn't like Bob Lee?
I can't think of anybody who said
they didn't like Bob Lee.
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.
♪
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.
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.
But people in the tech industry knew who Bob Lee is.
Soon, police were starting to learn
what the tech world already knew.
Bob Lee was a big deal.
Bob was, I think, a very rare person
in the tech world. He invented so many things.
Bob's friends and former co-workers Ajit Varma
and Carlos Witt.
He was building some of the best tools on the planet.
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,
and he was a top executive at Square and Mobile Coin,
just to mention a few.
Way beyond just what he created individually.
He empowered so many other people
to create amazing things.
You must have been proud of him.
Yeah, very, very proud of my brother.
And he continually amazed me with things.
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.
You can imagine, you know, two boys close in age,
growing up at the Midwest.
We, um, we built a lot of forts in the woods.
You know, we did everything together.
Their dad, Rick Lee, an engineer,
sparked an interest in technology.
We wanted a computer, and so we bought a Tandy 1000,
uh, on time payments because it was almost $3000.
He saw it as, like, an investment in us.
And so we started messing around with that computer,
and then we just built from there.
And your parents encouraged this,
because you're explorers? - Oh, absolutely.
It's like, "If they take it apart,
they'll probably put it back together", right?
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.
[chuckling]
Bob went to college, but not for long.
The Dot Com Boom of the late 90's beckoned.
He was at the breaking wave of tech.
Yeah, it was the wild west of many parts of tech, you know?
And he, uh, wanted to go solve problems on his own.
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.
Oliver said his brother had big money offers
to sell the software he had created.
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.
Life was not all computers for Bob.
Not long after Code Red, Bob met Krista.
Bob made you feel immediately you could feel your worth.
He was present in the conversation
just like you and I are right now.
How'd Bob talk about his work and what he did for a living
and what he wanted to do? - 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.
Bob and Krista had their first child in 2005.
A Star Trek themed wedding followed in Vegas.
- Honeymoon on Rigel VII. - Exactly.
- Yeah. - Yep, yep. Klingons only.
[laughs]
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, you know,
we could care less about.
By 2008, they were a family of four.
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,
like, being calm in, like, 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.
- Rockabye baby! - As the Lee family grew,
so did Bob's influence in the tech world.
Financial success followed and all that comes with it.
Lavish trips, VIP lounges, private parties.
We would have parties or, you know, yacht parties.
Private jets were not an unfamiliar thing.
Oh, he definitely spoiled us.
Oh, there is not a point where I was not living
in a cush luxury life.
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.
After 10 years of marriage, Bob and Krista split up.
Generally, divorce in America equals friction of some kind.
- Sure. - But not here.
No, no, it-- Actually, um, I think he and I
became more loving towards each other.
Uh, we had a whole newfound respect for each other.
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.
It's difficult for her to talk about.
Because that was the last time I ever saw him.
[crying]
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.
Moments after he's been stabbed,
Bob approaches a car stopped at a red light,
and it looks like he's asking for help.
Instead, the person drives off,
and a badly wounded Bob drops to the ground.
No matter how many times I see it,
that video doesn't get any less disturbing to watch.
Some families I meet want to know everything they can
about their loved ones' last moments,
no matter how painful the details.
Others do not.
Bob Lee's family fell into both camps.
There's video of him, which you've probably seen.
Actually, no, I can't bring myself to watch it yet.
Well, it is tough to watch
because he is stumbling down the street.
He's clearly been hurt.
My son watched the footage, and his response to me was,
"It only showed me how strong my father was,
that it looked like he was trying to survive
whatever had happened to him."
And I trust his opinion on that one.
Any evidence that would have made any difference
if somebody had picked him up and taken him to the hospital?
- As far as surviving? - Yeah.
I don't think so.
In life, Bob Lee's name was once known
primarily to tech insiders.
Now, in death, he was about to achieve
a whole new level of notoriety.
Elon Musk is talking about it and saying--
Calling you out specifically. - Yes.
♪
Krista Lee was stunned.
The father of her two children was gone.
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.
When you hear about Bob, you hear words like, you know,
brilliant, uh, innovator, visionary, uh, selfless, right?
"Murder." Not one of them.
No.
I mean, that just seems inconceivable.
I mean, I think murder is always
the last thing you expect.
Police in San Francisco are investigating
the stabbing death of Bob Lee.
His death sent shockwaves through the tech industry.
News of Bob Lee's death made national headlines.
Police are trying to solve a murder mystery.
Yeah, it happened early Tuesday morning.
That's when investigators...
Especially when that dramatic video
of his collapse outside the apartment building
became public.
It is just one of the latest high profile crimes
that's increased safety concerns around the San Francisco area.
Reporter Sergio Quintana said many believed Bob's death
was a symptom of a bigger issue in Bob's beloved San Francisco.
Hey, get the med kit, please.
In 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.
People get attacked sometimes in the streets.
And that was the perception of San Francisco at the time,
that this was a dangerous city.
And this crime exacerbated that perception.
Even Elon Musk joined the discussion
about Bob Lee's murder, writing...
Although that clearly was not true,
it made an impact.
The attention on this case was immediate.
And, you know, for someone like Elon Musk t-to post this,
he had just bought Twitter and had just come to San Francisco
to run that company.
In the post, Musk mentioned
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins,
who had recently taken office.
Brooke Jenkins was elected after the previous DA was recalled
because many voters perceived him
to be soft on crime.
In her campaign, Jenkins vowed to be a tough prosecutor.
Now, Bob Lee's stabbing was shining
a very bright spotlight on that promise.
Elon Musk is talking about it
and calling you out specifically.
Yes. He was basically saying that it was because of
lawlessness in our city and a need to, uh,
prosecute repeat offenders and tagging me in that tweet.
And at that point, nothing was known about
who'd killed Bob Lee, uh, whether it was a repeat offender
or whether it was a, uh, a person living on the street
or whether it was something else.
Nothing publicly had been disclosed
as far as the, uh, investigation.
He had no information about that crime.
So you know, it's just kind of ratcheting up the attention
for this case.
With all that attention on Bob's death,
his friend Ajit was left angry and shocked.
How could this be allowed to happen?
Like what is going on in San Francisco that like,
you know, this could happen and-and just like you come to,
like, these conclusions.
- What's the world coming to? - What's the world coming to?
Yeah, and so you know, it's like a lot of like anger,
like, you know, this is a great person
getting taken away from us, uh, 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 crime downtown? - Never, 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.
He would have said, "Hey man, let me buy you a meal.
Please don't hurt me."
Sergeant Brent Dittmer was sure from early on
that the person who stabbed Bob to death
wasn't after his money.
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 here?
Maybe, but very quickly.
It really doesn't appear to be the case.
And he's still got his watch and his wallet.
- He does. - Let me guess,
you're wondering if Brent Dittmer is a giant
or maybe I'm a hobbit.
That's what some viewers asked a little more politely
when this story first aired.
Well, I'm 5'9", Dittmer's about 6'5",
and yes, that camera shot was awkward.
Anyway, here's the actual point I want to make.
Homicide detectives are notoriously tight lipped
about the cases they are actively working.
They don't like to show their cards.
Which is why to Dittmer, the random crime narrative
that was so popular was a gift.
If that's the story people are gonna run with,
that is an advantage for us because the people
who are responsible,
we don't want to know what we know.
So you leave the robbery story out there,
even though you know right here that's probably not it.
Let everybody think that this is whatever's on Twitter
at that time.
We'll work on what actually happened.
The idea of a mugging didn't seem plausible to you,
but Bob being targeted, that's even harder to believe.
Yes. Yeah. W-We were all confused.
Confused and scared.
Especially after Krista received a mysterious text message.
"I heard that you were talking to the police.
Please tell them to check the footage
of the Millennium Tower.
I'd like to remain anonymous.
I fear that I will be stabbed, too."
♪
Bob's impact was discussed in all corners of Silicon Valley,
in the tech world and beyond,
as his family and friends gathered for memorial services.
Carlos Witt attended the service in San Francisco.
People are talking about Bob's stories,
crying, et cetera.
But you could feel the absence of Bob everywhere.
And walking around, and it was--
You know, it was a beautiful party,
and it was, again, beautiful to see everybody, but...
But somebody wasn't there.
It wasn't just, like, minus one person.
It felt like it was minus, like, a thousand people,
with one person not being there.
I'll record myself, too. I got myself. Hey!
He just made people feel so amazing.
Are you gonna send this to Mom?
Yeah.
And he knew just how to help people.
Like, he was so charismatic, and he just, like,
knew how to, like, solve any issue that he came across.
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.
There was a investment in a hair salon
and another investment in a restaurant.
These were not investments he expected to get back.
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?"
And the answer was, "I'm gonna 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.
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.
On it, you can see a white car.
From some of the angles, yeah.
You could tell it was a white, uh, BMW Roadster.
In another video, where Bob lifts up his shirt,
maybe to see how badly he's wounded.
There's the white car again in the background.
You'll see behind him,
this vehicle pull away from the scene.
A vehicle that we determined was this, uh,
white BMW Z4 small coupe.
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.
Then they lost sight of it.
Had the driver seen something or was the driver involved?
Can't get a license number? - No.
But you start looking for that car
on other cameras of other buildings.
Yes.
Sort of back tracing where it came from?
Yes.
How many other angles of that car
do you get along its trip? - Probably six or seven.
- Can you tell who's inside? - No.
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.
Everybody in San Francisco knows the Millennium Tower?
- I think so. - It's famous or infamous maybe.
Well, I think the short version is, uh,
is a large luxury high rise apartment building.
Like as luxury as it gets? - Yeah. Yeah.
Uh, I think it was famous first because, uh,
Joe Montana was living there,
and then it became famous 'cause it started tilting.
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.
- Yes. - A lot of people live there.
And almost all of them have money.
Yes.
It was the same building mentioned
in that alarming text to Krista.
"I heard that you were talking to the police.
I fear that I will be stabbed too."
Without saying who it was they feared,
the texter provided Krista Lee a clue.
"Please tell them to check the footage
of the Millennium Tower."
That was exactly what police were doing.
And fortunately, the Millennium Tower
had security cameras.
Lots of them.
If Bob Lee had been killed in a different time
before there were security cameras everywhere,
there's a good chance his killer might not have been caught.
This story turned out to be one of the best examples
of modern crime fighting I've seen.
Luck was a big part of it
because as we often see on Dateline,
security cameras don't always work.
Sometimes they're not even turned on.
This time they were.
Sergeant Dittmer sent an investigator
to pull that footage for any sign of Bob.
Right away, they saw something interesting
from a camera outside the building.
We saw 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.
Nima Momeni.
Police now focused on him.
There was just one problem.
Is there any evidence that Nima and Bob
even knew each other before that evening?
Not really, no.
And that's where Khazar comes into play in all of this.
♪
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-- Nima Momeni
It was still unclear how Nima fit into their case,
so Sergeant Dittmer decided to put off talking with him.
My first plan at this point is to figure out
who this Nima Momeni is.
We didn't want to go into the Millennium Tower
and start knocking on doors or anything like that
because we don't wanna tip anybody off
at what is really a pretty early stage
of this investigation.
And maybe you're not on the right track here.
That's possible.
When you run him, ask people about him,
learn more about him, w-what picture emerges
of Nima Momeni?
Uh, Nima Momeni has a consulting tech business.
He lives over in the East Bay.
He's in the same business, broadly, as Bob Lee,
but he's way down on the food chain below Bob.
Yeah. 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. Yeah.
Investigators would learn Nima was born in Iran,
and at 14, he moved to the Bay Area
with his mother and his sister, Khazar.
His mother, Manaz Tehrani.
How'd your son adjust to moving to the United States?
Both my kids, they were so strong.
And we decided when we were leaving Iran, uh,
we accepted all the difficulties we're going to face.
- What about your daughter? - The same.
She was hard working.
Uh, she started working at a very young age,
at the age of 13 when we came here.
Manaz says she and the kids all worked hard and scraped by.
It all seemed to pay off.
By 2023, Nima and his family
appeared to be doing pretty well.
He had a nice white BMW. He had a couple boats.
He was talking about buying a ranch.
Eleni Balakrishnan is a criminal justice reporter
for the news site Mission Local who did some digging on Nima.
People described him as being extremely generous
and, you know, well off.
He had a nice loft in Emeryville where he lived, as well.
His personality? Quiet, low key.
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.
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?
- Not really, no. - 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.
They don't. And you know, that's--
That's where Khazar comes into play in all of this.
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.
Is your son protective of your daughter?
My son, very supportive, yes.
Very supportive of her since the day one.
You know, since they were little kids.
Nima and his sister spent a lot of time together.
And if Nima was fairly muted, Khazar was anything but.
Reporter Sergio Quintana.
Khazar Momeni probably stands out
because she's pretty glamorous.
I mean, in San Francisco, again, you have money,
but you don't wear your money, and she wears her money.
Khazar is also married to Dino Elyassnia,
a top plastic surgeon in the Bay Area.
There's this glamorous spread in a San Francisco magazine
of her and her husband Dino, who they're, like,
being photographed in this skyrise apartment
overlooking the city.
And she's glamorous and gorgeous.
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.
They'd met about eight years earlier at The Battery,
an exclusive social club in San Francisco.
Definitely friendly acquaintances, you know,
talked, texted, uh, back and forth
about hanging out together, things like that.
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.
It was Khazar Momeni, not Nima,
who lived in the glitzy Millennium Tower.
Police discovered she and her husband
lived in separate apartments on separate floors.
That living arrangement appeared to mirror their lifestyle
and their marriage. Khazar's married,
but she doesn't live with her husband.
That's right.
And they have some kind of open marriage.
I don't know.
Uh, it certainly seems clear that they know that,
you know, she sees other people.
That's been described as an open marriage.
Yeah, I don't know how to describe that,
but, uh, uh, yeah, her husband was--
I think they were open minded in some ways.
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.
On the onset, I think some people
might have been assuming that there was something more
going on beyond just friendship.
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.
For detectives, it all felt like a possible motive.
Did you have any suspicions to whether or not
Khazar might be involved in this?
I did.
You know, certainly that's on the table.
We know that Bob knew her and, you know,
didn't seem to know Nima, as far as we knew.
Turns out Khazar and Bob had been together
just hours before he died.
Khazar Momeni had spent time with Bob
the day before the killing.
She was at a party that included Bob, some friends,
and some pharmaceuticals.
Nothing surprises me about drug use anymore.
And this was Silicon Valley, which has a reputation.
Among its success stories,
there is also a culture of extremes.
Bob Lee's murder turned out to be a window
into some of those excesses.
Some people can code hard and play hard at a level.
Carlos Witt said his friend Bob Lee
was at a much higher level.
It would not be weird for us to put a 100 hour week in,
on a regular basis, and sometimes string weeks
and weeks together.
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.
And sometimes playing hard is staying up all night
shooting pool or playing Nintendo.
Something harmless.
It's like Wii Tennis 'til like 5:00 in the morning.
Bob was just built different because he could do the parties,
but he would also be one of the number one engineers
on the entire planet.
Bob was part of this scene with this array of substances,
the alphabet of drugs, K and E and G and cocaine.
Yes, he did partake in parties and drugs,
but he was never the kind of guy that would get out of control.
A-And you never thought to yourself,
you're making a big mistake? - No, no.
'Cause I never saw drug use as being abused or an addiction.
However, his brother Oliver says he did worry about
Bob's chemically fueled adventures.
He was 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.
Now Bob's after hours partying was about to point investigators
to a suspect
and another disturbing piece of evidence.
Up until that point, we didn't think
we were gonna have any video of the killing.
So having something was very significant.
♪
Police were retracing Bob Lee's movements
before he was fatally stabbed on a San Francisco street.
They discovered he'd spent his last days
balancing the scales of work and fun
with a small group of friends.
I got a phone call from someone who played
a large part in the case, uh, Mr. Mohazzabi,
who said that he had been spending time with Mr. Lee
the evening before his death.
And during that conversation he mentioned Khazar Momeni.
Bob's friend Bo Mohazzabi
is a tech entrepreneur and DJ.
According to Bo, he and Khazar were with Bob
at a small afternoon get-together.
Their host was a guy named Jeremy Boivin.
Who's Jeremy Boivin?
Jeremy Boivin is a friend of Bob Lee,
who is also his drug dealer.
Bob and I met a few years back.
We vacationed together.
Really got to be pretty close.
Jeremy was convicted of drug dealing in 2022.
He didn't want to talk with me about that,
but he did talk about that get-together
with Bo, Bob and Khazar.
I ordered some pizzas.
Uh, we partied a little bit.
Some of them partied with alcohol, cocaine
and nitrous oxide, also known as whippets.
To the uninitiated, that being me,
what's a whippet?
A nitrous oxide canister
used to whip cream or get high
if you snort the gas out of it.
Were you aware that Bob was on drugs?
Uh, yeah, I knew Bob was having a good time,
and he was off work.
It was not uncommon for Bob to use drugs?
On the weekends after his work was all completed,
yeah, he enjoyed himself.
What was Khazar's relationship with Bob?
I knew that they were friends, um, for the past few years,
on and off again, just seeing each other casually,
nothing sexual, just actual friendship.
And that day, Jeremy says
he felt a connection with Khazar.
She has some, you know, pretty captivating qualities.
You know, not just her physical looks,
but at times she can be pretty, pretty funny
and fun to hang out with.
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.
Their next stop was the bar at Bob's hotel
and later up to his room
where they started calling family and friends.
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.
And it was just sweet and loving, you know,
hey, baby, talking about you, miss you,
come meet up with us.
And at this point in time, it was already
about 8 o'clock at night.
And the last words that we actually spoke to each other
were "I love you, good night."
From Bo, police learned Bob got another call later,
this one from Nima.
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.
What sort of things does Bo overhear?
Bo overhears, uh, Bob telling Nima
that nothing happened, everything's okay.
He wasn't there, but, you know, everything's fine.
Bo told police Nima was upset with Bob.
It wasn't clear why.
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.
Bob didn't want the party to end.
Bo said that he thought Bob was gonna go see Khazar,
who lives at the Millennium Tower.
In a lot of the stories we cover,
there is a moment that stands out in hindsight.
For Bob Lee, this was that moment,
the one that seemed to seal his fate.
There is a reason parents who set curfews
tell their kids nothing good happens
between midnight and 6:00 AM.
If Bob had called it a night
when his pal Bo did and gone home,
odds are there would be no Dateline story to talk about.
Instead, Bob headed to Khazar's.
By then, Khazar had left Jeremy's
and was back home.
Investigators dug frame by frame
through video from the Millennium Tower,
eventually finding the moment Bob arrived,
just after 12:30 AM.
Then a little more than an hour later,
Bob left.
And this time, he wasn't alone.
There's Nima Momeni next to him,
wearing a black beanie.
It's a little weird watching the two of them
walk out of the Millennium Tower together.
Yeah, it's always strange to watch
someone's last moments on a video.
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.
A clearer picture of what happened that night
was starting to emerge.
That first moment, we wanna 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.
It was time for police to start tailing Nima Momeni.
What that surveillance would capture on video
would shift the course of this investigation.
I think he's showing exactly what he did.
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.
That's a huge part of this case, yes.
That interview sets us on the path.
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.
That phone call Bo witnessed one end of
coupled with the video evidence connecting Nima to Bob,
had turned Nima Momeni into the prime suspect.
Investigators still were not ready to bring him in
for questioning.
They did put a tail on Nima.
Initially, uh, 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.
Uh, we see a different vehicle that's registered to him.
And officers start following Mr. Momeni.
And what's he doing?
They see him, uh, in a parking lot,
and he's talking with someone we later learn
is a private investigator.
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.
As he spoke with his lawyer's PI,
the undercover officer tailing him hit record.
What do you see in that video?
I think I see him pantomiming
stabbing Mr. Lee.
That's Nima showing somebody else what he did.
It is.
Remember, Bob was stabbed twice in the chest.
On the video, police believe Nima makes
some stabbing motions toward the PI's torso.
Then Nima does this.
To investigators, he seemed to be demonstrating
how to throw the murder weapon over that fence.
A suspect reenacting the crime for your surveillance
is something that doesn't happen every day.
That was a first for me, yeah.
It was all suggestive.
But would it be enough to convince a jury
or the D.A.?
We wanted to make sure that at the point
at which Momeni was arrested that we did have a solid case.
And so we asked that the San Francisco police
make sure that they collected
every ounce of evidence that they could
prior to that.
And they did find some more evidence.
In this case, we were able to see
texts on Bob's phone.
Specifically messages Khazar sent to Bob
hours after he left her home that night.
These are texts that Khazar sends to Bob
not knowing he's already dead.
That's right.
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.
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-it's time to arrest this guy.
Nine days after Bob's murder,
SWAT officers arrived at Nima's condo
outside San Francisco to make the arrest
and execute a search warrant.
So simultaneous to that, we served warrants
at Khazar Momeni's apartment
and her husband Dino's apartment
at the Millennium Tower.
I'm looking for Joseph Joseph knives.
I was also seeking to speak with Khazar,
uh, and/or Dino to see if-if they would
give up any kind of an interview with us.
How willing were Khazar and her husband
to speak with you?
Uh, Khazar said that we had to speak
with her attorney,
and Dino refused to even provide his name
to the officers searching the apartment.
In that search, police did find
a Joseph Joseph knife in Khazar's kitchen,
the same brand as the murder weapon.
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?
I believe that's the case, yes.
We start out with our breaking news
out of San Francisco.
A person accused of fatally stabbing
local tech executive Bob Lee is under arrest.
When you heard there was an arrest, do you feel better?
Yes, absolutely.
I was very relieved at the arrest
because at least we-we knew we were gonna
start getting answers.
I was shocked.
I didn't know what to do.
I became like a dead person walking.
I'm sorry.
You wanna stop a second?
Yeah, I, um...
There's-there's nothing harder, is there?
Yeah, it was very, very difficult.
The thing that still eluded police
was any clear motive.
Why would Nima want Bob dead?
When you arrest Nima, what's your theory of the crime?
The theory is he's upset with Bob
over something that happened with his sister.
We don't know exactly what?
We don't know exactly what happened.
In my job, I see the best and worst
of family dynamics.
The reality is people, not infrequently,
get their family members into serious trouble,
sometimes inadvertently.
Khazar Momeni turned out to be a textbook example.
Khazar is sort of the engine
that made this whole thing happen.
Khazar's relationship with her brother
and her relationship with Bob is what puts
the two of them on kind of a collision course.
It had been 1.5 years 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.
We have thought it was going to be
a difficult case for various reasons.
Cameras were not allowed inside the courtroom
in which prosecutors Omid Talai and Dane Reinstedt
would present their case.
The one person who can truthfully tell us
what happened isn't with us.
There's no live eyewitnesses.
There's no witness.
So that allows the defendant and the defense
to tell any type of fantastical story
they can come up with.
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.
We have them on great surveillance
getting into the elevator at the Millennium,
walking through the lobby,
walking out to Nima Momeni's car.
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.
He quite possibly was very furious.
Prosecutors first played that 9-1-1 call.
In court, that was a painful moment
for Bob's family.
They had never heard that call before.
The 9-1-1 call just keeps, like, ringing in my head.
Being so in shock that he can't say anything else.
And he just keeps repeating, "help"
over and over again.
Where are you stabbed, man?
And they played for jurors that body cam video
showing officers trying to revive
a close to lifeless Bob Lee.
Nima Momeni is driving home in his nice BMW
and hoping to go on with his life
like nothing ever happened.
One question, 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.
We eventually found the car about a month later
at a BMW dealership where his family
was attempting to sell it on his behalf.
You think this is the family trying to help him
dispose of evidence?
I-I feel confident this is one of many ways
in which the family was trying to help him.
Then jurors watched that undercover police video of Nima
speaking with his attorney's private investigator.
The court required Nima's mouth to be blurred
so the jury couldn't try to make out the conversation.
I've, uh, never had a piece of evidence
where a suspect is reenacting
his or her crime.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's an understatement.
You're confident that that's Bob and that's Nima?
I'm confident, um, given that the-the car that we see
the two of them get into is perfectly tracked
to that exact location of the incident.
Together, the security videos prosecutors played in court
captured Bob's encounter with his attacker
before, during, and after his stabbing.
That is extremely rare.
It's basically a royal flush of evidence.
However, most criminal attorneys will tell you,
betting on a jury's perception is a sucker's game.
While prosecutors argued the videos
placed Nima at the scene,
the backbone of their case was the forensics.
Those DNA tests ordered on the knife had come back.
99% Of the DNA from that handle
comes back to Nima Momeni.
From the blade of that knife, it comes back to Bob Lee.
The state is not required to prove motive,
but prosecutors wanted to address the burning question,
why would Nima wanna kill Bob?
Khazar, how do you feel about testifying today?
To answer that, they called Khazar Momeni,
Bob's friend, and the defendant's sister.
Khazar's testimony was
the most awaited part of the trial.
There were cameras everywhere.
Reporter Eleni Balakrishnan was in the courtroom.
She's very well dressed.
Um, 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.
Through a subpoena, Khazar was forced to testify
against her own brother.
It was clear she did not wanna be there.
She was very soft spoken.
She kind of looked down a lot of the time.
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 Boivin's place.
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.
Then Khazar said something horrible happened.
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.
Prosecutor Dane Reinstedt.
She testified that she told Nima
she had been sexually assaulted at Jeremy Boivin's.
That's a pretty clear indication of motive.
In fact, that tense phone call Bo witnessed
between Bob and Nima
was all about the alleged sexual assault.
What kinds of things is Nima saying in that phone call?
He's interrogating Bob.
He's questioning him about what was happening
at Jeremy Boivin's place.
When Bob visited Nima and Khazar
at The Millennium Tower later that night,
Prosecutors believe Nima was furious.
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.
Some sort of argument or Nima yelling at Bob.
Correct.
But it would appear that by the time they departed,
he had made nice.
Prosecutors confronted Khazar
with those text messages she'd sent to Bob.
Her explanation as to many texts,
that she was high out of her mind
and didn't know what she was saying.
And that was her attempt to help her brother.
On the stand, at least, Khazar insisted
there was no beef between Bob and Nima.
According to Khazar, everything was fine,
there-- that there had actually never been
an issue between Nima and Bob.
Still, prosecutors believed they had enough evidence
to piece together their motive.
Nima understood Khazar to have been sexually assaulted
because she told him that.
Comes to a conclusion that
the people responsible were Jeremy Boivin and Bob Lee.
And when he gets an opportunity later that night
to act against one of those two people, he does.
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?
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 Boivin's apartment
is not important.
What Nima Momeni thinks happened
in that apartment,
that's what is important.
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.
For nearly a month, Nima Momeni's mother, Mahnaz,
watched prosecutors portray her son
as a cold-blooded killer.
My son is not that type of person.
I have raised a very kind son.
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.
Defense attorney Saam Zangeneh came from Miami
to represent Nima.
He is innocent.
The DA here, right, had unbelievable pressure
on this case.
And you think charging Nima is a sort of reaction to that?
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.
That's it.
He insists Bob Lee's stature in the tech business
added a different layer to the case.
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?
When you have someone who's in that victim plus era--
- That's Bob Lee. - That's Bob Lee.
He's victim plus, squared, right?
He sought to take apart the prosecution's case,
starting with the murder weapon.
The blade's this big. It's a little parrot knife.
Okay, but you can be killed with a blade that big.
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-a ton of knives there.
You're gonna pick the smallest, weakest one?
The defense went after that grainy video
prosecutors say showed Nima stabbing Bob.
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 something that occurred
look different than what actually occurred, right?
Smoke and mirrors, my man. Smoke and mirrors.
Also not credible to the defense,
that undercover police video of Nima speaking
with his attorney's PI.
What's happening in that video?
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 gonna do?
They're going to assume and speculate
and try to force a square peg into a round hole.
And Zangeneh 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.
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.
They took it back to the dealership.
According to the defense, the weakest part
of the prosecution's case was the motive.
What reason would Nima Momeni have to wanna kill Bob Lee?
Their story was that Nima killed Bob Lee
because Bob Lee's friend touched his sister's ass.
Didn't make any sense.
2 And 2 didn't equal 4, right?
Why would he go after Bob Lee for something his friend did?
Nima's motive might be to take out his anger
on Jeremy Boivin and not on Bob.
Right, but he doesn't.
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.
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 what? Brother, this--
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.
The prosecution's like, oh, it's under a bridge.
Bro, it's on a place called Main Street.
It is a busy street.
And in a very odd moment,
even though Khazar Momeni and her husband
helped bankroll Nima's defense,
Zangeneh told jurors she had no credibility
and to disregard her version
of what happened that night.
You believe anything comes out of Khazar's mouth?
No, no, no, I don't.
And let me tell you why.
Because she's an addict, okay?
You can't ask the jury to believe something
that doesn't really pass the smell test, right?
On the stand, Khazar said she had sought help
for her substance abuse problems
and completed a rehab program.
Jeremy Boivin was never called to testify.
While he admits smacking Khazar's backside,
he denies ever assaulting her.
Did you abuse Khazar?
No, not once.
We had a physical relationship after the fact
and continued to have a physical relationship
for many months after that.
So her saying these allegations
is just baseless and really unfounded.
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.
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. - So to you, at least,
she's admitting to lying on the witness stand.
Um, hey, it's none of my business, really.
Bottom line is, I didn't do it.
There was no sexual assault at any point.
Whatever happened at Jeremy Boivin's apartment
didn't matter, argued Nima's attorneys.
They were about to offer a whole new theory
about what happened that night.
When we tell our story and we explain
exactly how it transpired, it's eye opening.
Criminal defense attorneys have a fairly small playbook,
and at Nima Momeni's murder trial
the evidence was stacked against his team.
There was video putting Nima at the scene of the stabbing.
His DNA was found on the knife handle.
Bob's blood was on the blade.
Facing all of that, Nima's attorneys
were about to get creative.
They were going to blame the victim.
When we tell our story and we explain
exactly how it transpired, it's eye opening.
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.
Nima's attorneys argued a drug fueled bender like that
could have caused Bob to become violent.
It's 2:00 AM.
His flight's in seven, eight hours
and he is still actively just
partying like a rock star.
Which to me suggests he had no plans on sleeping
and consuming, consuming.
Zangeneh said Bob, not Nima,
was the one with a knife
and it could have come from Khazar's
or somewhere else.
I don't think he took the knife for,
uh, 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 the-the-the bottom to break up the bag.
And then... [sniffing]
Even though he pleaded not guilty,
Nima was about to admit
he was responsible for Bob's death.
He said it was self-defense.
He's been chomping at the bit, man,
for so long to be able to tell his story.
Prosecutors knew a lot hung
on Nima's performance on the stand.
We had great evidence, like the DNA.
But ultimately, if Nima Momeni is believable,
uh, credible, sympathetic--
- If he tells a good story... - We lose.
- He walks away. - I think so.
The three stab wounds...
Reporter Sergio Quintana was in court
for Nima's testimony.
He went on the stand, and on direct,
followed what seemed to be a pretty tight script
as to what to say and how the night went down.
Nima said the night unfolded like this.
Yes, Khazar told him Jeremy assaulted her.
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.
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.
They talked about going on to a strip club,
and Nima offered to give him a ride.
They start driving because they're gonna 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.
Nima told jurors he pulled over
to that area underneath the Bay Bridge
to help clean up the mess.
That's when Bob noticed something in the back seat.
He found some-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 gonna puke.
Nima went, they're outside.
And then that's when the conversation went
from normal to adversarial.
Nima said he made a joke, a bad one, he admitted.
He was like, well, why would someone like you
with a family be out here?
Why wouldn't you just be with them, right?
Go-- Instead of trying to go to some strip club?
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.
And 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?
Nima even had an explanation about
why he threw the knife over the fence
and drove away.
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?
And I said, well, so he couldn't get to it afterward.
Defense attorneys were prepared to show jurors
exactly how they claim Bob attacked Nima.
We had a digital animation made.
That's Nima on the right, wearing the beanie.
Bob's on the left with the knife.
He swung, right, which is what our animation shows,
that it was a swinging motion.
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.
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.
It shows him bending down, picking up the knife,
and then throwing it over the fence.
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 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.
Did he become a violent, angry guy
when he was using drugs? - No.
He would tend to be, uh, you know, more outgoing,
like when he was on drugs,
but he would never be violent.
So when you heard that at trial...
Uh, absolute insanity, right?
It is the most opposite thing of what Bob was.
I thought he gave a...
pathetically comical story
that made no sense.
Then prosecutor Talai cross examined Nima.
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 gonna be able
to control himself.
And you could see on the stand
that his nature is to get a little combative
and will turn and start asking you questions.
Even Nima's own attorney admits his client
lost his temper during cross examination.
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.
His testimony didn't change.
Uh, it also doesn't make any sense.
- What doesn't make sense? - I mean...
Why don't you tell me what you didn't--
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.
That's not the most credible story.
Well, I mean, listen, leaving this-- the knife
within a few feet of the scene, right?
Is maybe subjective of someone that is panicking.
I don't think it's as cut and dry
as you guys are making it out to seem at all.
I don't, respectfully.
Uh, respectfully, to me,
those are the actions of someone who knows
that they did something wrong
and is trying to avoid responsibility.
Yeah, but then why would you leave
the knife at the scene?
Why wouldn't you call the police
and say someone tried to kill me
and I had to defend myself?
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
trying to kill you is Bob Lee,
probably not something you want to get yourself into.
Nima's attorneys thought their case was strong enough
to sway the jury.
And they still had one last card to play.
The defense attorney, Saam Zangeneh says,
Look, that's the knife!
Very dramatic.
Jurors had heard two different accounts
about what happened in the early morning hours
of April 4th, 2023.
In one of them, Nima Momeni was the attacker.
In the other, he was the victim.
During his closing arguments,
defense attorney Saam Zangeneh
had one more surprise.
From a strategic decision, we held off.
We didn't talk about it. We entered it in evidence.
Reporter Sergio Quintana was in the courtroom
when the defense played a new security video.
The video is outside the battery,
and it's of Bo and Bob.
And they walk out onto the street.
Bob does a motion where he scoops something
and then does this whole thing.
The defense told the jury Bob was doing cocaine
using a small object.
The defense attorney, Saam Zangeneh 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.
Very dramatic.
The defense said this was proof
Bob had a knife that night, not Nima.
That looks to me like a knife.
And you're convinced that's the knife
that eventually became the murder weapon.
What else would it be?
Because nothing else was recovered
that looked like that on him.
Nothing!
This is not some TV legal show.
You-you knew this was coming.
We watched the video from The Battery.
We've watched hundreds of hours of video.
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.
That's not Bob Lee doing cocaine
off the knife that ended up being the murder weapon?
That's correct, that's not Bob Lee with the knife.
That just happens to be a Joseph Joseph knife,
uh, that Khazar Momeni had in her place.
Bo told us he never saw Bob with a knife
that night or ever.
What would jurors believe?
As they filed into the deliberation room,
all everyone could do was wait and wait.
You feel confident?
I have had my heart broken in this town before,
so confidence is, uh,
is always gonna be limited on anything.
First day goes by, there's no verdict.
You're not worried. - Correct.
Second day, third day, you're okay.
Correct.
You didn't answer as quickly that time.
[chuckles] - 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.
Six days went by, still no verdict.
I thought that it was gonna be a mistrial.
- You did? - Yeah.
I thought that if they didn't come
to a decision on that day,
they were gonna hang.
Um, and I thought that that's what it was gonna be.
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?
I didn't.
Uh, honestly, I threw up a couple times that morning.
And you gotta be thinking to yourself,
why has it taken so long and what does that mean?
All of that.
I don't think anyone slept that night.
I just remember being very, like, on edge
and just, like, overly anxious.
The hallway was packed as prosecutors and Bob's family
made their way into the tense courtroom.
I find myself getting the most nervous.
You know, you-you're powerless.
You're sitting there and you're waiting.
And you've done all you can do.
I've done everything I can do.
And perhaps it wasn't enough.
Nima Momeni was found
not guilty of first degree murder.
The moment when I heard not guilty for first degree,
I just, like, felt my stomach drop
and I felt like-- I, like--
I felt like a ringing in my ear
and that, like, I was gonna pass out.
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.
Well, the jury wasn't done.
The verdict for second degree murder?
Guilty.
Second degree. You okay with that?
Yeah, absolutely.
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.
When the verdict came in, um...
You absorb it. I wasn't happy with it.
I thought-- I think the jury,
I mean, I-I don't think they got it right.
Nima Momeni 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 difficult time together.
I was hoping for my dad to get justice,
but also it was a really, like,
bittersweet feeling 'cause I was waiting
for him to get--
Like, I was waiting for, like, the murderer, obviously,
to, like, get what he deserved.
But also, it really sucked to, like, know
that, like, no matter what the verdict was gonna be,
I was never gonna get my dad back.
The Lee family sued the Momenis in civil court
for wrongful death.
A ruling is pending.
What they did to my children alone
is unforgivable.
Krista sees every day how much Scout and Sirius
miss their dad.
This is not the way that Bob Lee should have died ever.
He should have died an old man,
a more successful man.
The murderer robbed this world of a great mind.
And I will never, ever forgive this family
for what they did to him.
Bob Lee was known for his brilliance
and his generosity.
His mistake was believing everyone else was
as nice a human as he was. They aren't.
And even recreational drug use comes with significant risks.
Partying at 2:00 AM with a guy he barely knew
cost Bob his life.
His family lost a devoted father
and beloved ex-spouse.
And the rest of us lost all the things
Bob would have invented.