Monday was a big day of testimony in the trial of Nima Momeni for the April 2023 killing of tech entrepreneur Bob Lee, and one in which the jury heard the first-hand account of sister Khazar Momeni about the final hours of Lee’s life.
A sordid picture of non-stop partying emerged in testimony Monday from Khazar Momeni, who began giving testimony on Thursday in the murder trial of her brother, Nima Momeni. From the earliest days of the case when police and prosecutors were filing charging documents, a narrative emerged that placed Khazar Momeni at the center of the story, and of her brother’s possible motive for killing Lee.
And while Khazar Momeni’s story doesn’t do any great favors for the defense, having been one of the last two people to see Bob Lee alive, her narrative of the night is important — though it’s not at all clear that she and her brother were on the same page that night about what happened to her.
Ms. Momeni, who also goes by the married name Elyassnia, admitted in court Monday that she and her husband were funding her brother’s defense, which no doubt is getting very expensive. And much of her testimony has been vaguely hostile to the prosecution, contradicting not only her own text messages at the time, but also the defense’s own theory of the case. In a seeming knee-jerk response to an opening question from prosecutors last week about when she learned that her brother had killed Lee, she responded “My brother was not the one that killed Bob.”
The defense has settled on a strategy of self-defense, so, they actually admit that Nima Momeni committed the stabbing in question.
When she was pressed Monday about what she meant in a key text message that she sent to Lee in the hours after he was already dead, the now infamous text in which she said “Nima came down wayyy hard” on him and she thanked him for being “classy,” she continued to pivot to calling Lee “erratic” — something that she has likely been coached to do by the defense team.
As Mission Local reports, Judge Alexandra Gordon directly asked, “What did you mean by that, Ms. Momeni?”
“Bob was not a calm person. He was very erratic, he would get in your face,” she replied.
“Sorry, I meant, just this sentence here, ‘thank you for being such a classy man and handling it with class,’ — What did you mean by that?”
“I always encouraged him to be the better version of himself,” Momeni replied, per Mission Local. “And as much as he could be erratic, he also was able to compose himself well, too, if he wanted to.”
As KRON4 reported, this last statement caused Lee’s brother, Timothy Oliver Lee, to storm out of the courtroom.
The brother told Mission Local outside the court that he was frustrated that his brother wasn’t there to defend himself, and, “He was a calm, awesome person… so describing him as erratic and things like that is way off base.”
Khazar Momeni described being in touch with and seeing Lee over several days when he was in town, ostensibly on business, after relocating to Miami. Prosecutors showed a text message on March 30 in which she reached out to Lee, writing “Doing anything tonight special man?”
Lee did not reply, because he was apparently sleeping, but he met up with her and her friend the next night at The Battery social club. He later met up with them at Khazar’s apartment, she testified, per KRON4, and he invited them to a “Twitter afterparty” around 4 am on Saturday, April 1. She testified that she went to a different party instead.
And the partying continued all that Saturday, and Khazar said she had a “gathering” at her apartment on the morning Sunday, April 2, at which Lee brought his drug dealer, who was introduced to her as his friend, Jeremy Boivin.
She made the comment on the stand, “We don’t get close to our drug dealers, or even invite them upstairs, [but] he was introduced to me as Bob’s friend. Therefore I was nice to him.”
Boivin allegedly brought with him a large bottle of GHB, as well as Khazar’s drug of choice, whip-its. They continued partying into Monday morning, April 3, at which point Khazar ended up at Boivin’s apartment at 1550 Mission. Lee and his friend and colleague Borzoyeh “Bo” Mohazzabi later joined them at this apartment, and Khazar testified that she was creeped out by Mohazzabi, which led her to tell Boivin to get rid of the two men.
Prosecutors showed evidence of Lee reaching out to Khazar on multiple platforms, including WhatsApp, after she’d blocked his phone number, trying to get her to leave with him. And she confirmed that he was aggressively trying to pressure her into leaving, and she was annoyed by it. (She further testified that she never had a sexual relationship with Lee, contrary to what investigators have said.)
But, after consuming apparently too mich GHB — as well as LSD — both Khazar Momeni and a female friend who arrived at the apartment, Arranza, found themselves incapacitated. Momeni describes Boivin “walking around in tiny little red shorts” while she and her friend were “passed out… both face down” on his bed.
“I woke up in a one-piece swimsuit,” she said, per KRON4. “I started crying, I’ve never cried like that before.” She also has a memory of Boivin slapping her ass, and pinching her, she says.
She described Arranza vomiting and “her eyes were completely gone,” and she said she begged Boivin to let her go and not to touch her.
It’s at this point that she began contacting family members — including her mother, who apparently called the police on Boivin — and she dropped a pin because she wasn’t sure where she was, so her brother could pick her up. She insists, through all this, that her brother remained very calm.
“I was shocked how mature he was and how he was handling it,” she said, per Mission Local. “He was very calm and just being a bigger brother and just asking me what it was that I was taking, basically.”
Interestingly, Nima Momeni had a chance to confront Boivin directly after this, which we had not learned before. That evening, April 3, back at Khazar Momeni’s apartment with her husband and brother, she testified that Boivin showed up to retrieve his GHB — which, she said, her husband had poured down a drain.
“My brother told him, ‘I should have had six cops waiting her for you. [Boivin] said ‘Let’s go downstairs and fight.’ My brother is a nice guy. He doesn’t fight people,” she said on the stand.
(You can bet the prosecution has a witness or two who will say otherwise.)
Khazar Momeni, the sister of Nima Momeni, who is on trial for the alleged murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee, has been testifying since Thursday.
She called Lee “erratic” and “extra” on the days prior to his death.
By @miss_eleniushttps://t.co/AxLRJwmjRm
— Mission Local (@MLNow) October 22, 2024
Bob Lee made his fateful trip to Millennium Tower, to Khazar Momeni’s apartment, several hours later. Khazar Momeni went on to testify that Lee and her brother seemed like the best of friends during the hours that they were at her apartment, between midnight and 2 am on April 4, when she kicked them out.
“They liked each other. He had his arm around Nima’s shoulder. They were drinking together and talking,” she said, per KRON4. “They liked each other. They were talking together and just being buddies.” She describes how Nima questioned Lee about the drugs the had been taking, but it sounds like they were up doing cocaine, chatting, and Lee also shared photos of a woman he was dating. And, she said, the two men were headed to a strip club together, The Gold Club.
When asked if her brother was using cocaine, Khazar Momeni hedged, not exactly denying it. She replied, “I can see how you’re trying to connect this… but you’re wrong. He was totally fine that weekend.”
That contradicts a text that the prosecution has submitted into evidence in which she said to her brother, “You’re acting lunatic. You crazy when you’re on blow.”
She admitted that she lied to her brother and Lee about wanting to go to bed, and that she wanted more nitrous oxide — she both called Boivin to bring her more, and apparently walked to a smoke shop at 2:30 am to find some.
It was then, around 2:40 am, 20 minutes after the alleged murder, that Nima called her, and prosecutors asked what the content of the conversation was.
“He was asking what I was doing. He said the night had not turned out the way he wanted it to,” she testified, per KRON4. “He told me not to let Bob back home. He told me he was acting erratic. They had a disagreement of some kind. He just told me not to party with Bob anymore, not to let him back [in].”
In the days that followed, when news broke of Lee’s death, we know that Khazar Momeni questioned her brother about what happened, and called him “fucking psychotic.” He said something vague about dropping Lee off at a bar or strip club.
And, as the Chronicle reports, Nima Momeni continued to say he was going to bring a rape case against “two men,” including Boivin, as his sister questioned him about those final minutes with Lee. It’s unclear who the second man was that Nima Momeni was referring to. After things went silent with the texts, Khazar Momeni told the court that she felt it wasn’t “her place to ask questions.”
Subsequently, her brother’s newly hired defense attorney Paula Canny, whom he would later fire, instructed the entire family to give up their cellphones and purchase new ones — and, per the Chronicle, Khazar’s husband Googled “how to erase an iPhone.”
Another curious detail from Monday, per the Chronicle: After finding out about Lee’s death, Khazar Momeni reached out to his friend, Mohazzabi, who she said had creeped her out one day earlier.
Here we get the embarrassing cheapness that comes with texting after such a tragic event: “Love you cutie I’m so sorry,” she texted him, to which he replied, “: (so sad.”
She then replied, “Love you baby I’m so so so so sorry my heart aches.”
Prosecutor Dane Reinstedt questioned her about whether she actually “loved” Mohazzabi, and she clarified that she only felt sympathy for him, as Lee’s friend.
Speaking of contradictions, she seemed to say in court that she only met Boivin on April 2, but she has also hinted at some ongoing relationship with him.
When asked if she ever reported the sexual assault on April 3, she said, per KRON4, “I did not. He had threatened to kill me if I said anything. He physically assaulted me on numerous occasions. I’m scared of him.”
Boivin’s attorney shot back, via KPIX, saying that he looks forward to clearing his name. It is not clear if he will be called as a witness in this case.
“She should be cross-examined on the duration and frequency of her voluntary, sexual relationship with Mr. Boivin,” said attorney Valery Nechay to KPIX. “Her testimony proves she is not a credible witness. Mr. Boivin looks forward to clearing his name at the right time and place.”
Nechay said in a statement that Ms. Momeni’s testimony is “false and riddled with blatant lies.”
Khazar Momeni is testifying again today, Tuesday, and cross-examination by the defense may begin today as well.
Previously: Khazar Momeni Takes Witness Stand In Brother’s Murder Trial, Answers Questions About Drug Use
Top image: Khazar Elyassnia leaves the arraignment of her brother Nima Momeni on May 18, 2023 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)