NEWPORT BEACH – Trial began Wednesday for a man accused of teaming up with two high school friends to kidnap, brutally torture and sexually mutilate a marijuana dispensary owner from Newport Beach in order to find a non-existent $1 million they falsely believed he had buried in the Mojave Desert.
Hossein Nayeri – who gained further notoriety for allegedly masterminding a brazen escape with two other inmates from an Orange County jail while awaiting trial – is the second defendant to face trial for the high-profile abduction and torture case. Kyle Handley, Nayeri’s friend and alleged partner in a marijuana growing business, was sentenced last year to four life terms behind bars.
The marijuana dispensary owner – who the Register is not naming due to the nature of the crimes – suffered “horrible, unspeakable acts,” Deputy District Attorney Heather Brown said Wednesday during opening statements in a Newport Beach courtroom.
“There is nothing I can say right now that can prepare you for the things you are going to see and hear about during the course of this trial,” Brown told jurors. “The motive was money, a million dollars this victim never had. He would have gladly given a million dollars to avoid the unspeakable acts that were done to him.”
Nayeri’s attorney, Sal Ciulla, said Nayeri has nothing to hide, and plans to testify during his trial. The defense attorney raised the possibility that another group of men actually carried out the crimes.
“I’m telling you right now, this man right here, Hossein Nayeri, did not do it,” Ciulla told jurors.
In the early morning hours of Oct. 2, 2012, three men wearing ski masks broke into a home on the peninsula in Newport Beach and abducted the marijuana dispensary owner, who was renting a room at the residence, and the girlfriend of the person who owned the house, who was spending the night. The intruders bound and blindfolded the man and woman, ransacked the home, then forced them into a van.
During the more than two and a half hour drive to the desert, the marijuana dispensary owner was beaten, repeatedly shocked with a Taser, whipped with rubber piping and burned with a blow torch, the prosecutor said. The assailants repeatedly demanded $1 million – which the owner told them he didn’t have – and threatened to shoot the man and woman and set them on fire.
Once they arrived in the desert, the masked men poured bleach on the marijuana dispensary owner, forced him still bound out of the van, and placed a zip-tie on his genitals. Brown said the men “laughed and cackled” and chanted “back and forth” as they cut his penis off with a knife. The missing body part was never found.
““When he was left out there, he just laid there thinking, almost hoping he would die,” Brown said.
Both the man and woman were left abandoned and still bound in the desert. The woman was able to free herself and walk barefoot to a highway, where she was spotted by a sheriff’s sergeant heading to work. The torture victim was then located and received treatment for his injuries.
The first break for detectives came when a neighbor to the Newport Beach home reported seeing a suspicious vehicle, and who she believed to be workers with a ladder, at the residence prior to the abduction. The woman provided police with a license plate number to the truck, which led them to Handley.
A search of Handley’s pickup truck turned up a blue latex glove, which investigators tied through DNA to Nayeri, according to the prosecutor. A discarded zip-tie at Handley’s residence would later be tied through DNA to Ryan Kevorkian, who also went to high school with Handley and Nayeri and is suspected to be the third person involved in the abduction, the prosecutor said. Kevorkian is awaiting trial on charges of kidnapping, torture, burglary and aggravated mayhem.
Newport Beach investigators realized that less than a week before the abduction, a vehicle belonging to Nayeri had been impounded after a police chase. Nayeri’s attorney acknowledged that Nayeri had driven away from a traffic stop since he had marijuana and cash in his car, had managed to elude a motorcycle officer and had abandoned his car before police arrived.
Searching Nayeri’s vehicle, which was still impounded, investigators found surveillance cameras and GPS trackers, along with hundreds of hours of surveillance footage of the home where the marijuana dispensary owner was living. Nayeri’s then-wife, Cortney Shegerian, ultimately agreed to cooperate with investigators after Nayeri fled to Iran following Handley’s arrest.
Shegerian told police that Nayeri and Handley had been involved in the abduction, and said she saw Nayeri destroy multiple items involved in the kidnapping, the prosecutor said. She also claimed that she had thrown away “bloody socks” for Nayeri, Brown added, and helped convince Nayeri to fly from Iran to the Czech Republic, where he was taken into custody.
Nayeri’s attorney told jurors that Shegerian lied to police about Nayeri’s involvement in the abduction and torture. Shegerian had just passed the bar exam, and was already planning to leave Nayeri for another man, Ciulla said.
“The reasons are the oldest reasons, the oldest motives in the world: Sex and money,” the defense attorney told jurors. “She gets a new life, she gets a new lover, and she walks away with a lot of money.”
Ciulla said the marijuana dispensary owner had made several sizable marijuana buys from Handley, and owed him “big money.” Handley had asked Nayeri to keep tabs on the owner, worried he would disappear before paying Handley back, which led to the surveillance footage found in Nayeri’s vehicle, the defense attorney said.
A former prison inmate who served time with an ex-wife of Kevorkian’s contacted Nayeri’s family prior to the trial, Ciulla said. She told them that Kevorkian’s ex-wife had admitted recruiting two men with gang ties to help Kevorkian with a kidnapping, the defense attorney said.
Testimony in the trial is expected to last several weeks.
