Khazar Momeni, the sister of the man accused of killing tech executive Bob Lee, insisted that her brother is innocent as she took the stand at his murder trial Thursday, delivering testimony that at times undermined both her credibility and claims that she was sexually assaulted.
“My brother was not the one that killed Bob,” Khazar said almost immediately after taking the stand, adding that she didn’t recall much of what she did in the days around the slaying, as she was in a drug-induced haze, and “wasn’t doing well.”
Khazar, who is married to a plastic surgeon and has two apartments in the Millennium Tower, was the third witness to testify in the murder trial of her brother Nima Momeni, who allegedly stabbed Lee to death with a kitchen knife under the Bay Bridge on April 4, 2023. The trial started Monday and has so far featured statements from two police officers and a friend of Lee’s.
Prosecutors have alleged that Momeni stabbed Lee over a dispute the pair had about Momeni’s sister and have presented DNA evidence linking Momeni to the knife. But attorneys for Momeni have argued that their client turned the knife on Lee only after Lee attacked him, and that Momeni was actually angry with the man who allegedly drugged and assaulted his sister: Lee’s drug dealer Jeremy Boivin.
Much of Khazar’s testimony and the questions from the prosecution Thursday centered on Boivin and the events around Lee’s death, but from the start, Khazar maintained her brother’s innocence.
Despite such claims, prosecutors produced a bevy of text messages indicating that she both feared her brother and may have suspected him of the murder. Those messages also indicate that she may not have been assaulted.
“I’m going to get to the bottom of this and find out what happened to Bob,” she texted her brother after the killing. “I’ll ask or the cops will,” she texted later, according to the prosecution.
When prosecutors asked Khazar about the texts to her brother, she claimed on the stand that they were clouded by her drug use.
“This is not the real me talking, I was under the influence. … I don’t usually threaten to call the cops on my brother,” she said on the stand. “I exaggerate and get dramatic. I may have said this, it’s possible.”
Drugs and partying the day before the killing
On April 3, the afternoon before the killing, Lee, Khazar, and a group of friends met at the apartment of Boivin, who provided the group with a “bowl of blow,” according to the testimony of one of Lee’s friends.
After taking drugs, Lee and his friend Borzoyeh Mohazzabi left, leaving Khazar behind with Boivin and a friend of hers. On the stand, Khazar told prosecutors she used cocaine, nitrous oxide, and LSD. Within hours, Khazar woke up almost naked after taking or being given a date rape drug called GHB, according to court documents.
After she woke up, her friend helped her call her brother and husband, who came to get her. In security camera footage from the apartment building’s elevator shown in court Thursday, Khazar is seen leaning on Boivin as he tries to tidy up her hair before she leaves.
“My brother picked me up and asked me what had happened at Jeremy Boivin’s house,” she said in court. After picking up his sister, Momeni called Lee from his car to ask what had happened, said Mohazzabi, who was with Lee in his hotel room as he talked on the phone.
“It was the type of questions that this person was asking that seemed very unusual,” Mohazzabi said of Momeni’s call with Lee. “It was almost like a detective asking questions. ‘Why?’ ‘What were you guys doing?’ ‘What was going on with my sister?’”
After Momeni dropped his sister off at home, he texted her: “That was a really low point you took us to today.” In another message, he wrote: “I’ll help start the case against these guys, but you fucked up, fucked all of us over … gonna have to work your way out of this yourself.”
Later that night, Lee, Khazar, and Momeni met up again — at Khazar’s apartment. Soon after, the two men left together, court documents and video show. Prosecutors say they then went to a spot under the Bay Bridge where Momeni stabbed Lee, who then staggered down the street and collapsed on the sidewalk.
Prosecutors focus on the alleged assault
The next day — hours after the killing — Khazar invited Boivin to her house. In court, prosecutors asked why she invited him over hours after he had allegedly sexually assaulted her. “Due to the hardships I had as a child and the abuse,” she responded. “I sometimes go back to my abuser.” (The Momenis left Iran, in part, to flee from their abusive father, their mother wrote in a letter of support for Momeni.) Khazar contended that she does not see Boivin “socially,” as “he only provides certain services.”
When Khazar found out Lee was dead, she said she was devastated. Prosecutors asked her about a text exchange she had with her brother in which she tried to confirm whether Momeni was one of the last people to see Lee alive. Khazar said she didn’t remember sending the messages.
In the text exchange, as her brother pressed her about the alleged sexual assault, she responded: “Lol, you dumb fuck, Bob never touched me. No one did.”
During the lunch break on Thursday, prosecutors and police asked Khazar if she wanted to open a sexual assault case. She declined.