Every time Khazar Momeni strode down the hallway of San Francisco’s superior court over the past week, she seemed somehow both prepared for the cameras and shy of them. Her blond hair bounced with each step, and her eyes were hidden behind giant sunglasses. When the press of TV news crews became too much, she ducked into stairwells for a few moments of privacy.
For four days, as the key witness and central player in her brother’s murder trial, Khazar was a fascinating character in the saga of Bob Lee’s killing: stylish and quietly glamorous, but telling confusing and contradictory stories of apocalyptic drug binges in high-end apartments.
What makes her even more compelling is that, according to the prosecution, she was the catalyst for Lee’s death.
Prosecutors have argued that her brother Nima Momeni killed Lee with one of Khazar’s kitchen knives because Lee was involved — or at least knew — about “inappropriate” behavior later revealed to be the alleged sexual assault of Khazar by Lee’s drug dealer, Jeremy Boivin. Nima Momeni’s legal team maintains that he defended himself against a drug-addled Lee, whom he otherwise had no reason to kill.
“I still don’t know what happened. I don’t want to believe it,” Khazar said on the stand, where she often brushed aside a strand of hair.
Since the killing of Lee in April 2023, Khazar has been both a mystery and a messy sideshow to the proceedings. She has become a main character with Main Character energy: from her high-flying life in the Millennium Tower, where she and her plastic surgeon husband, Dino Elyassnia, live in separate apartments, to her DUI, to her first appearance at her brother’s arraignment, where her style and beauty lent an air of celebrity to the murder case. Not a Hollywood celebrity, perhaps — something closer to a reality show on Bravo. Real Housewives of San Francisco.
Her performance this week was that of a woman used to getting her own way, who has suddenly been forced to lay the messy details of her life before the public.
Her testimony left many details unresolved — she claimed she took so many drugs she didn’t recall a lot of details. While she characterized her brother as a good guy, and Lee as “erratic,” everything is still in doubt, from timelines to motivations. Did Momeni defend himself? Was Lee involved in “inappropriate” behavior with Khazar?
By most accounts a full-time party girl, Khazar’s testimony has illuminated — without entirely clarifying — a messy, drug-fueled corner of the world of San Francisco’s elite, who party all night on unthinkable drug cocktails and then head to job interviews in the morning. They socialize at tony private clubs like the Battery — where she met Lee — and have pricey narcotics like cocaine, and cheap drugs like nitrous oxide, delivered to apartments (no dealers allowed inside the building) in places like Millennium Tower, where they huddle up on days-long benders.
Khazar, who only recently underwent a monthlong drug treatment, testified that over the course of two nearly sleepless nights in April 2023, she’d used GHB, acid, cocaine, nitrous oxide, ketamine, and alcohol — all of which at one point left her feeling like she was “on another planet,” leaving her memory, to say the least, spotty. Her shorthand was, simply, “partying.”
In short, the lifestyle that makes the case tabloid-ready is also what makes her a pretty lousy witness.
‘Imagine the things I don’t remember’
While Khazar said that she didn’t recall much of the days and nights that led to the killing, much weight has been put on the meaning of text messages exchanged by her, Lee, Momeni, and others.
On the stand, Khazar was questioned repeatedly about Lee’s friend (she only referred to him as the “drug dealer”) Boivin, who she claimed sexually assaulted her after giving her three shots of the party drug GHB. (He pulled down her pants and slapped her butt, she said.)
Her version of events, or at least what she could remember, told a story in line with her brother’s defense, claiming Nima had no reason to harm Lee. Rather, she said, her brother was upset at Boivin. When The Standard reached out to him, he denied the allegations. More shocking still, Boivin’s attorney Valerie Nechay said Khazar was in a “voluntary sexual relationship with Mr. Boivin.”
Prosecutors argued that Khazar’s continued meetings with Boivin after the alleged assault are not the behavior of someone afraid of Boivin. Just hours after she accused him of sexual assault, and hours after Lee was killed, Khazar texted Boivin to invite him over: “Come now. Sorry that was my brother on the phone ripping me [a] new one. He doesn’t even think I’m gonna talk to you again. Lol. He just doesn’t want me to talk to Bob anymore.”
As for the central event — the alleged sexual assault that prosecutors say precipitated the killing — Khazar offered no clarity and only further mystery.
“Imagine the things I don’t remember,” she said.
Khazar’s almost weeklong testimony culminated in an ongoing spat between her and Lee’s ex-wife Krista. It revolved around a nearly two-year-old text between in which Krista referred to Khazar as the “whore of high tower.” On the stand, Khazar took that as a threat.
“They were speaking ill about me and intimating me and threatening me, basically,” Khazar said.
Outside of court, Krista had her own reaction: “My husband was murdered. She has no right to make herself a victim in this. Our family was the one that got murdered. She can go fuck herself.”
The statement was caught on tape by the journalists and their cameras. It was one more moment of tabloid-ready drama to fill their time while they waited for Khazar to take the stage.