After additional cross-examination from a San Francisco Police Department crime scene investigator Wednesday, a close friend testified in the Bob Lee murder trial and detailed the drugs they used when they partied with Nima Momeni’s sister the day before the technical director was murdered.
Lee was stabbed repeatedly 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 murder, was arrested nine days later. Prosecutors allege he stabbed Lee with a kitchen knife after a heated argument about his sister’s relationship with Lee and their alleged drug use.
During 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 had been conducted properly. The interrogation was a follow-up Tuesday’s testimony focused on how well the crime scene was preserved by police.
Vicki Behringer
On 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 at a friend’s apartment with Lee and Khazar Momeni earlier in the afternoon.
He said they stayed for less than an hour before leaving to go to Lee’s hotel room and eventually to his own apartment. As he left the apartment, a friend of Khazar arrived. The women took the drug GHB and reacted poorly, leading to Khazar’s brother Nima to pick them up.
He also testified about the drinks and drugs they consumed throughout the evening, including “whip-its,” a slang term for nitrous oxide bottles that people inhale to get high. He noted that both he and Khazar Momeni used nitrous oxide in the apartment.
Mohazzabi described a phone conversation between Lee and Momeni in which he said Momeni questioned Lee about what his sister had done and whether she had gotten naked. He said Momeni sounded “overprotective and scary” on the other end of the line.
Attorney Shannan Dugan was in court Tuesday and offered her analysis of the testimony.
“I think Bo has made Bob human again. And it’s a murder; Bob can’t talk, but Bob speaks to the jury. They see him smiling. He’s still alive in a sense and speaking to the jury,” Shannan explained . ‘And that is very important, because it is not an abstraction. This is a human being who has lost his life.”
She said the jury was fascinated by the testimony of Mohazzabi, who described himself as a close friend of Lee for more than a decade.
‘I think the jury was entranced. “I saw the jury looking at Bo,” she said. “Their eyes remained glued to his testimony. He talked about his decade-plus relationship with Bob Lee, how Bob was legendary in the engineering community and the smartest engineer he had ever known. It was a very personal testimony unlike the scientific evidence we heard.” this morning.”
This all happened before Lee went to Momeni’s sister’s apartment in the Millenium 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, and later of the two men arriving at Mohazzabi’s apartment.
Lee was seen smiling and walking normally with his friend, something Dugan says strengthens the prosecution’s argument that Lee’s demeanor was calm before he was killed.
“It’s an exaggeration to say that Bob suddenly became aggressive or that he was so sleep deprived that he couldn’t function,” Duggan said. “If that happened after midnight, it seems like there would be evidence of that.”
But she also noted that the testimony was ripe for defense scrutiny.
“He’s trying to undermine the credibility of this witness because if you find a witness statement to be false in one area, you can ignore it all. And I have a feeling this is what they’re going for,” she said. “I think this witness better be prepared for a rough morning tomorrow.”
The testimony of the key witness in the trial, Momeni’s sister Khazar, is expected sometime this week. Prosecutors have had already shown a text message she sent to her brother stating that he was behaving “psychotically” that day.
Charging documents allege a relationship between Lee and Khazar Momeniwho is married to a prominent San Francisco plastic surgeon, and described other concerned text messages she sent to Lee about her brother confronting Lee. The Wall Street Journal reported that Lee and Khazar Momeni belonged to a sex- and drug-fueled underground party scene known in wealthy tech circles in the Bay Area as “The Lifestyle.”
Nima Momeni has pleaded not guilty to the murder and his lawyers will argue this against their client acted in self-defense to what they call a ‘flash of aggression’ from a cocaine-addicted Lee.
