During opening statements today in the highly anticipated murder trial against Nima Momeni, who is accused of stabbing Cash App founder Bob Lee to death last year, attorneys presented two different versions of events: one in which Momeni was a hostile aggressor, the other in which Lee was a drug-addled, sleep deprived assailant.
“Stabbed through his heart — and left to die,” Omid Talai, the lead prosecutor, said slowly and deliberately to the packed San Francisco Superior Court courtroom, underscoring his version of events with images projected on two large screens of Lee’s lifeless and stitched-up body.
He also showed the jury of seven men and five women surveillance camera footage following Lee’s movements in the hours before his death.
Nima Momeni surveys the crowded courtroom before being taken back into custody on April 25, 2023. Photo by Eleni Balakrishnan
Saam Zangeneh, the lead defense attorney, started with a similarly dramatic opening: “Six. Six hours,” he said. Evidence would show, he said, that Lee slept only six hours in the 91 hours before his death. And during his waking hours, Zangeneh contended, Lee was on a bender of cocaine and other drugs.
Prosecutors have presented a case, which Talai repeated today, that Momeni was upset over some perceived interaction between his sister, Khazar Momeni, and Lee. Defense attorneys, meanwhile, have alleged that Lee was the actual aggressor, and that Momeni “stood his ground” and turned Lee’s knife on him.
The jury listened attentively to Talai’s nearly hour-long opening statement, then heard another half-hour from Zangeneh before prosecutors began calling witnesses to the stand. Momeni, dressed in a navy blue suit, sat among his five-person legal team and took notes with a pencil in a notebook.
Talai argued today that that DNA evidence could refute the defense’s argument. None of Lee’s DNA was found on the handle of the “Joseph Joseph” brand knife found near the scene of Lee’s death. The knife allegedly matched those in the home of Khazar Momeni.
Prosecutors have previously alleged that Lee’s DNA was found on the blade of the knife, and that Momeni’s DNA was found on the handle.
“None of Bob’s DNA was on the handle. Because he didn’t hold the knife, he was stabbed by it,” Talai said.
The packed hallway on the first day of Nima Momeni’s trial on Oct. 14, 2024. Photo by Eleni Balakrishnan.
Two police witnesses who responded to the scene were also called to testify today, and Lee’s 911 call was played for the courtroom.
In the call, he calls for help some 47 times, Talai said, seemingly not hearing the dispatcher’s questions about his location and identity. Eventually, his voice died out, and police officers could be heard arriving at the scene.
Images were shown to the courtroom of Lee’s body sprawled out on the ground as medics attempted to resuscitate him. The officers described a trail of blood that spanned the nearby blocks from the stabbing, under the Bay Bridge, to the location about a block away, where his body was found.
Video was also shown of Lee stumbling around on Main Street, with his hands bright red, presumably from blood.
Lee’s friends and family members, including his brother, his father, his former wife and two children, who early in the day took up two full rows of the courtroom, could be seen holding each other and wiping away tears.
Talai repeatedly called Momeni a “coward” and an “overprotective wannabe tough guy,” and described upcoming witness testimony from Lee’s close friend who overheard Momeni and Lee’s conversation about Khazar Momeni.
That friend of Lee’s, Talai said, will testify about an “aggressive, uncomfortable” phone call between Lee and Nima Momeni during which Momeni interrogated Lee over events earlier in the afternoon of April 3, 2023.
“Bob is trying to calm [Momeni] down, because he needs calming down. Bob is being Bob — mellow,” Talai said. Momeni, however, “our wannabe tough guy … he wants answers.”
But attorney Zangeneh disputed this argument during his opening statement, and said that there was no issue between Lee and Momeni. Zangeneh quoted to the jury friendly text messages exchanged between Lee and Momeni after the purportedly aggressive phone conversation.
Lee even invited Momeni out that night, Zangeneh said — a later message read “Gold Club,” the name of a high-end strip club in San Francisco. And later that night, the two men left Khazar Momeni’s home together.
“If there’s no fight in that apartment, there’s no need for Nima to steal a 3-inch paring knife — which candidly is a ridiculous thing to do if you’re gonna hurt somebody,” Zangeneh said. Without proof of a fight, he said, the prosecutors’ theory was speculation.
The “overprotective” messages Momeni sent to his sister, Zangeneh suggested in his opening statement, were misconstrued by the prosecutors and were actually referencing Momeni’s concern over his sister’s extramarital relationship with another figure in the case named Jeremy Boivin, not one with Lee.
Other text messages tell a different story, according to the prosecution’s opening statement: Hours after Lee was stabbed, Momeni’s sister sent him a text message that prosecutors say shows there was animosity between the two men.
“Just wanted to make sure your doing ok Cause I know nima came wayyyyyy down hard on you And thank you for being such a classy man handling it with class,” wrote Khazar Momeni in a text read aloud today in court.
In a later message, she wrote: “Nima you’re fucking psychotic at times.”
Khazar Momeni, the sister of the alleged killer, has been subpoenaed to testify and is expected in court tomorrow.
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