Friend testifies at Bob Lee murder trial about seeing Khazar Momeni, drug intake before Lee died
After additional cross examination of a San Francisco Police Department crime scene investigator Wednesday, testimony in the Bob Lee murder trial featured a close friend who detailed what drugs they took as they partied with Nima Momeni's sister the day before the tech executive was killed.
Lee was repeatedly stabbed in the early morning hours of April 4, 2023 in San Francisco's Rincon Hill/East Cut neighborhood and died on the operating table at a hospital. Nima Momeni, the man accused of his murder, was arrested nine days later. Prosecutors allege that he stabbed Lee with a kitchen knife after a heated discussion regarding his sister's relationship with Lee and their alleged drug use.
During cross-examination testimony Wednesday morning, Momeni's attorney Mike McMullen pressed SFPD Officer Rosalyn Check, the lead crime scene investigator, about evidence collection and questioned whether DNA testing on the knife was done properly. The questioning was a continuation of Tuesday's testimony that focused on how well the crime scene was preserved by police.
Wednesday afternoon, jurors heard from Lee's friend and fellow software developer Borzoyeh "Bo" Mohazzabi. He testified that on the night of Lee's murder, he was with Lee and Khazar Momeni at a friend's apartment earlier in the afternoon.
He said they stayed for under an hour before leaving to go to Lee's hotel room and eventually his own apartment. As he was leaving the apartment, a female friend of Khazar's arrived. The women consumed the drug GHB and had a bad reaction, which led to Khazar's brother Nima coming to pick them up.
He also testified about the drinks and drugs they had consumed throughout the evening including "whip-its," a slang term for nitrous oxide gas cannisters that people inhale to get high. He noted that both he and Khazar Momeni used nitrous oxide at the apartment.
Mohazzabi described a phone call between Lee and Momeni where he said Momeni interrogated Lee about what his sister had been doing and if she had gotten naked. He said that Momeni sounded "overprotective and scary" on the other end of the line.
Attorney Shannan Dugan sat in on court Tuesday and offered her analysis of the testimony.
"I think Bo humanized Bob again. And it's a homicide; Bob cannot speak, but bob is speaking to the jury. They're seeing him smiling. He is in some sense alive and speaking to the jury," Dugan explained. "And that's really important because its not an abstraction. This is a human being who lost his life."
She said the jury was captivated by Mohazzabi's testimony, who describes himself as a close friend of Lee's for more than a decade.
"I think the jury was rapt. I saw the jury looked at Bo," she said. "Their eyes stayed fixated on his testimony. He talked about his over decade-long relationship with Bob Lee, how Bob was legendary in the tech community, the smartest engineer he'd ever known. It was very personal testimony in contrast to the scientific evidence we heard this morning."
This all happened before Lee went to Momeni's sister's condo in the Millennium Tower. Mohazzabi characterized Lee's mood during those hours as calm and not angry.
Prosecutors showed surveillance footage of the men leaving the apartment and arriving at Lee's hotel, then later of the two men arriving at Mohazzabi's apartment.
Lee could be seen smiling and walking normally with his friend, something Duggan says reinforces the prosecution's argument that Lee's demeanor was calm before he was killed.
"It's a stretch to say Bob all of a sudden got aggressive or that he's so sleep-deprived he couldn't function," said Duggan. "If that happened after midnight, it seems like there would be evidence of that."
But she also noted the testimony was ripe for scrutiny by the defense.
"He's trying to undermine the credibility of this witness, because if you find a witness testimony to be false in one area, you can disregard it all. And I have a hunch this is what they're going for," she said. "Tomorrow, I think this witness better be prepared for a rough morning."
The testimony of the star witness in the trial, Momeni's sister Khazar, is expected sometime this week. Prosecutors have already shown a text she sent to her brother saying he was acting "psychotic" that day.
Charging documents have alleged some type of relationship between Lee and Khazar Momeni, who is married to a prominent San Francisco plastic surgeon, and described other worried text messages she sent to Lee about her brother confronting Lee. The Wall Street Journal reported Lee and Khazar Momeni belonged to a sex and drugs-fueled underground party scene known in wealthy Bay Area tech circles as "The Lifestyle."
Nima Momeni has pleaded not guilty to the murder and his attorneys will argue that their client acted in self-defense to what they call a "flash of aggression" from a cocaine-addled Lee.
