Bob Lee Part 4: The Made-for-TV Murder Trial

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Previously on Tuesday.

Boom.

Heys, please, Hey, who did this to you?

They're saying he took a kitchen knife from his sister's apartment to his car with Bob, got in the car, went somewhere else, and then attacked him.

It just didn't make sense.

Didn't make sense to me.

All of a sudden, his name became a household word for the worst of reasons, and it just pissed me off.

Nima Momenti's murder trial started on October fourteenth, twenty twenty four, a year and a half after the killing. I was there for the entirety of the trial. It would ultimately run for eight weeks. Nima showed up to court every day in a suit. He was seated alongside a large group of defense attorneys. He listened intently and took notes. If you didn't go in knowing he was on trial for murder, you might think he was one of the lawyers.

Well, he certainly doesn't seem, you know, sad. The way he walks in, he struts in, I mean he always struts in, you know, kind of confident of himself.

This is Paul Kroda, a seasoned photojournalist in the Bay Area. He took photos of Nima showing up at his arrayment with his chest puffed out and arms swinging. He also took photos of Nima in his jail cell.

When I met him in jail, Yeah, he was upbeat, a bat attitude. You know. He poses for me in the jail cell, and he gave me several different looks. He's almost proud to be him, you know, even though what he did. You know, he's proud to be him.

The New York Post published these photos under the headline quote bone chilling photos show cash app founder Bob Lee's allege killer Nima MOMENTI smiling in jail. By the way, Nima has sued the photographer and the New York Post, among other outlets that published these photos. As of this recording, that lawsuit is still pending. For the first year and a half, that smile, that strut were the only insights we had into how Nima felt about any of this. He never gave a statement. He also turned on my

Prior to his arrest. As dramatic as it might sound. Is when I personally started preparing for this as a self defense case and for my cross examination of this lying story. He would tell where he had to defend himself. How did you know that there's only two defenses? Really who done it? The other defense is self defense. Knowing that we had him driving Bob under the bridge and as the last person with him, he wasn't going to

The evidence was stacked against Nima. After the police found Bob bleeding out on the sidewalk, they followed a trail of blood to the murder weapon, a kitchen knife that had been tossed over a fence. When investigators tested the knife, they found Bob's DNA on the blade and Nima's on the handle. The brand of the knife also matched a

This should have been a three week trial.

This is Brad Cohen, one of Nima's defense attorneys.

It was ridiculous. This was the crazy case. I thought that, and it was off the rails, and I think that this should have been a three week trial that turned into a three month trial.

The trial of Nima, MOMENTI was anything but a straightforward proceeding. The jury heard from a parade of unreliable narrators, their stories filled with frustrating plot holes. They followed twists and turns. They watched not one but two secret videos. There were salacious details about drug use and around the clock partying. It became a media circus. Here's lead prosecutor omit to lie.

I felt it from the first day in court at the arraignment, when I was walking through to see reporters trying to get into the courtroom, where I couldn't really get out of the courtroom because reporters were blocking the exit.

Despite the international attention, almost nothing has been reported about the people who would ultimately decide Nima's fate.

The jury.

The jurors included a restaurant owner, a costco greeterer, a Harvard graduate. A few of them worked in tech. One of them was knowledgeable about drugs and had colorful stories. San Francisco is a small town, so I've run into a few of them out and about, and I've been surprised when I've approached them that they seem so standoffish, almost scared. It turns out the jury made a pact not to say anything to the press, so until now we haven't known what mattered to them at the trial.

On April third, the day before Bob Leae's death, she was under the influence of cocaine nitrous oxide also known as whippets, as well as LSD and GHB.

I just want to point out this is a Monday afternoon. At around five pm, Bob heads out, leaving Kazar and jeremy boyfriend behind. Hours pass that night, around nine pm, Bob gets a call. It's Kazar's brother Nima. He's upset. We mentioned this phone call in the previous episode. Nima was interrogating Bob, asking questions like, what were you guys doing, What was going on with my sister?

What did she take?

How about the girls getting naked? Later, Bob's friend, who had overheard the call, testified on the witness stand. He said it was really strange, we weren't there, and the idea that it was girls getting naked was so far from the vibe and situation that I saw and experienced. Here's Prosecutor Dane Reinstead.

The murder was not a question of what it actually happened to Jeremy boyfriend's apartment. That's maybe this subject of another criminal case. But what mattered for purposes of our case and our trial was what Nemo MoManI thought had happened in Jeremy Boyfn's apartment.

It appears that after Bob left Boyven's apartment, Kazar had a girlfriend join her. Jeremy Boyven served them both GHB, the so called date rape drug, which they drank voluntarily. Kazar said that he described it to her as ecstasy that last fifteen minutes, so she took three shots of it, then she passed out. When she came to, she was upset and confused. She suspected that she may have been sexually assaulted. The details of the alleged assault are fuzzy.

She testified herself that she was very unclear on the details. That at one point she woke up and her pants were part way pulled down. She believed she'd been sexually assaulted, but I think she herself because of her lack of consciousness or hazy memory around it didn't know exactly what had happened.

In some text messages, Nima refers to what happened to Kazar as rape, and he may have thought that Bob was involved, because remember, Nima wasn't there. He couldn't have known what time Bob left the party or when exactly his sister took JHB. After Nima and Bob spoke on the phone, Bob said Nima a text inviting him to a strip club. At twelve thirty am, two hours before the stabbing, Bob heads over to Kazar's apartment in Millennium Tower. At two am. Bob is seen on camera leaving with Nima.

What the hell happened here?

This is Brad Cohen, one of Nima's defense attorneys.

These guys are getting along, they're two good buddies in the elevator. They look like they're having fun. They're talking to each other, they're laughing. The guy's saying, hey, do you want to go to a strip joint? And the next thing in thirty minutes later, someone's stabbed and dead and the other guy's getting charged.

The footage of the actual stabbing is very hard to see. It's dark and grainy, taken from a nest camera in a nearby apartment window. Bob and Nima are just pixelated blobs. Bob is wearing black and Nima is wearing white. You can see them standing around for several minutes, and then very quickly, the figure in white advances three or four times towards the figure in black. It's just a few quick movements. This is the best glimpse we get into

Self defense looked plausible.

Cohen, it should be said, is a high profile attorney known especially for representing hip hop artists. He's obtained federal pardons for Lol Wayne and Kodak Black from President Trump, whom he's also represented. They actually go pretty far back. Here's Cohen competing on season two of The Apprentice.

My plan backfired.

Mister Trump thought that that was a stupid decision.

I was the only individual who went to the board when without a bag.

Nima was in fact represented by five lawyers, a testament to how seriously his family took this case. The defense argued that Bob was sleep deprived and on cocaine, which made him a radic. They said that Bob pulled a knife on Nima, but Nima grabbed Bob's hand with the knife still in it, and redirected it back towards Bob.

Because Nima MoManI had killed the only witness, there wasn't somebody who could say exactly what happened.

These are the prosecutors. Again, did self defense ever feel plausible to you?

Um plause? Like, did I believe it might be self defense? Is that you're asking like that?

Yeah?

No.

While the DNA on the knife and the security footage suggests that Nima killed Bob, it still leaves open the very big question why here's Cohen?

I think that the state had no motive. They were scrambling. They knew that self defense was definitely an issue here because these two guys are getting along in the elevator. There's no real fight between them. Nobody's arguing, No one testified there was this big fight, big blowout.

The juror I spoke to said that at the start of the trial, the entire jury was confused about the motive.

They said, none of us could agree. Why the hell Nima would kill Bob. Why wouldn't you kill Jeremy. That's the guy your sister said raped her. Why go after Bob when he wasn't even there.

Jeremy Boyven has not been charged with sexually assaulting Kazar, and as a reminder, he declined to be interviewed for this podcast. Whether or not they knew it, the state had an uphill battle ahead of them. Can you tell me what you.

See the motive as to me, it's not convoluted at all. I think it's very simple.

Oh me to lie again. The lead prosecutor on.

The case, Nima Momeni, believes Bob Lee contributed to his little sister being sexually assaulted or raped, and that pissed him off. That made him angry, That made him act as one would when they are pissed off and angry. That's the motive for to lie.

There was no shortage of evidence pointing towards Nima as the aggressor.

It was him driving bobly to the location, him clearly being the last person with Bob, and the text messages from Kazar to Bob where she said that her brother came down very hard on Bob and that he handled himself with class.

Which brings us to the first of our four key components of the trial, the testimony of Nima's sister, Kazar MOMENTI. For the Press, Kazar was the star of the show. She was cast as a glamorous van fetale who somehow drove her brother to kill Bob.

Somehow, everyone in this trial seems like they're made from TV.

This is a photographer, Jong Hoo Kim, who I met in the courthouse. Specifically, he had been asked to take photos of Kazar. Can you say which outlet sent you out there?

I was working for Zuma Press with the photos going to the New.

York Post, okay? And what kind of photos were they asking you get?

In this particular case, the specific quest was for full body photos of Kazar. MOMENTI why full body glamour.

The first day of Kazar's testimony, she showed up to court wearing oversized sunglasses, stiletto pumps, and the perfectly tailored blue silk dress. The Daily Mail said it was Valentino. A source close to Nima's defense team told me that from Nima's arrest onward, the family was instructed to dress like they were attending a funeral, Kazar dress like she was going to a movie premiere.

A lot of the media has focused on her as an interesting character because visually there's a lot to work with there, and I think in terms of her testimony, it's become quite drama filled and salacious.

Out to the latest out of Sam Francisco.

In day four of testimony and the murder trial for tech executive and cash app founder Bob Lee.

Kazar was there to support her brother, that much was clear, but she was also a critical witness for the prosecution since her testimony could provide a motive. Here's Omit Lai, the lead prosecutor on this case.

She set this emotion. She told her brother things happened to her. Those things upset her brother. She's not to blame for Bob being killed. It's nima MOMENTI but she, in my mind, set this all in motion.

But she was an uncooperative witness leading up to the trial. She refused to speak with the authorities. Here's the other prosecutor, Dan Rihinstead.

She had declined to ever speak with us. She had declined to speak with the police. It meant that to a large extent, we were going in blind as to what exactly was she was going to say.

Huzzar MOMENTI was soft spoken. Initially. She placed her clutch and some oversized sunglasses on the witness stand.

Cameras and recording devices were banned from the courtroom, so I have a voice actor reading the transcript.

Prosecution, have you followed the news, Cuzar, I've stopped watching the news. Prosecution, have you heard the claim that your brother killed Bob Lee but in self defense?

Czar? I have stopped watching the news.

I remember asking her at the very beginning, when was it that you first found out that your brother was the one that killed Bob? And that was the answer to which she said, well, my brother wasn't the one who killed Bob.

Prosecution, are you learning today for the first time that your brother has killed Bob Kazar? My brother has not killed Bob Lee, and I don't know anything else about the case.

By that point, it had been clearly telegraphed that it was a self defense claim and that Nemo was in fact the one that he had killed Bob. It was just a matter of how he had killed him, and the fact that she appeared not to be up to speed. With that being the narrative that the defense was putting forward was surprising, not the answer I expected.

The back and forth between Rhinestead and Kazar continues this way. It's repetitive and evasive. She says more than once that she knows nothing and remembers little, blaming the cocktail of drugs she was on.

Prosecution, was your brother also doing cocaine with you?

Kazar?

I did not see him do any Prosecution you texted him no, bitch. Blow messed up your mind and makes you act lunatic. Kazar, I don't know why I sent that text message. Prosecution reading her text rape case, Nima, you're fucking psychotic. No one enjoys that company. You scare me, Kazar. We're brother and sister. We bigger when we talk. I have no idea what this is about.

The other reason the prosecution needed Kazar was that she sent several potentially incriminating text messages shortly after Bob was killed, including texting Bob, sorry, Nima came down way hard on you, and texting Nima, Nima, you scare me. Sometimes.

Kazar was a hostile witness to us, certainly, but one that we affirmatively wanted to put on in our case, primarily to authenticate the text messages that she had sent, but also to provide some of the context and color around what had happened leading up to the murder.

What Dane did with Kazar, and really within the first ten to fifteen minutes while I'm sitting there, I'm a spectator like everyone else. That was one of the few moments that I thought, I think, I think we're fine. Not only did he so calmly and methodically, kind of surgically take her apart and get all those text messages that we wanted in the defense looked like their heads were going to explode.

Listen, she testified the way she testified.

Brad Cohen again from the defense team.

Oh, she's going to answer everything for the defense and nothing for the state. Well, it's her brother.

A source close to the defense told me that after Kazar's testimony, because she turned out to be such an unreliable witness, Nima's lawyers distanced themselves from her. After her three days on the witness stand, we didn't see Kazar again, not even on the day of the verdict. So the first key component of the trial, Kazar's testimony seemingly not helpful to Nima, which brings us to our second key component,

I remember Sergeant Goff calling saying, Hey, I'm headed back from South Bay. You got to see this.

Sergeant David Goff is an undercover cop who had been following Nima since the day after Bob was killed. GoF had recorded something he wanted to show the prosecutors, and.

He wouldn't even really explain it to us. He just wanted us to see it. The homicide inspectors do not have these fancy offices. They're all kind of in cubes, cubicles next to each other. So we were standing and Sergeant Goff put in the video and we just pressed play and you kind of, I think a couple of times says he said, just wait, just wait, like just just wait for it. Wait for it.

That day Goth followed Nima from a sandwich shop to a parking lot, which happened to be at his criminal defense attorney's office. He filmed Nima standing there chatting with a private investigator who worked for his attorney. In the video, Nima's talking, talking, smoking a cigarette, and then he makes three quick horizontal jabbing motions. Then he seems to mimic throwing something in the air. His gestures map onto the

I think I laughed inside, you know, thinking like this is absurd. I have never, and probably never will see a murderer re enacting the crime that he had committed a few days before, on a bright sunny day in public, and then throw the murder weapon.

And I think equally important is what he's not showing, right. He doesn't reenact any kind of a struggle. He doesn't reenact any sort of washine or a redirecting in any way.

In other words, Nima's movements on the video don't resemble a struggle where he's defending himself. The jury member I spoke to told me that in the deliberation room. They weren't completely convinced by the jabbing motion Nima made that it looked like it could have been a stabbing movement or a punch, But when Nima appears to toss an invisible knife, that felt unmistakable to them. The juror told

All the women were going, oh my god, Sergeant Goff, there's no way he can do plain clothes work. How do you not notice you're in a public parking lot and there's a guy who's really hot in a car filming you.

Anyway, the defense made a motion to suppress this video, arguing that was protected by attorney client privilege. Ultimately, the judge decided that the video was fair game. The defense was furious about this ruling. Here's Cohen that.

A conversation with an attorney or an attorney's employee in a parking lot that's empty, where there's no one around except for a police officer who was spying on this attorney client privileged conversation, and to be able to use that I think is unusual.

I think that's going to come flying back on.

Appeal coming up next will answer one of the biggest questions looming over the trial. Would Nima take the stand? That's after the break. When the defense called Nima MOMENTI to the stand. There were audible gasps throughout the courtroom. Because often defendants don't testify in their own we didn't know for sure whether we'd hear from him until that very moment. Under oath, Nima told the story of the

Nima, we were outside. He wanted us to go back to his place to grab more stuff. I was resistant, just trying to avoid it to get out of it. I made what you call a bad joke now that I look back on it. Defense, what was that, Nima? If it was my last night in town, I would go hang out with my family instead of fucking around in strip clubs.

It was Bob's last night in town because he was supposed to fly back to Miami the next day.

Defense, How did he take that? Nima? Not good at all? It just set him off, Nema.

Moment he testified that it was Bob Lee who attacked him with a knife. He said over a bad joke that he had made. Nima said that he told Bob if it were.

Defense, what does mister Lee do? Nima?

He's yelling, cussing at me, starts going around, circling, moving around me, and gets in my face.

He says. Bob Lee went from zero to one hundred after hearing that, hold a knife from his pocket and attacked him.

Nima, I was scared for my life. I had to defend myself. Defense. Were your actions in response to that emotion?

Nima?

Yes, I just reacted, He described and demonstrated, redirecting the knife back at Bob and says at some point Bob just walked away unresponsive to Nma, asking him, Hey, what was that?

What just happened?

He said he had no idea that Bob Lee was fatally injured.

So the defense hinged on Bob Lee having the murder weapon, the knife on him all along and attacking Nima with it. I do remember thinking that at least part of Nima's account sounded plausible. I'm just speaking as myself here, as someone who had been following this story. I thought that when Nima described this bad joke that he supposedly made to Bob that he should be hanging out with his family instead of with Nima, who would eventually kill him. The substance of this joke felt real to me.

If you're going to make something up, you wouldn't make that up right. That's why when he told me that, I was like, sounds very credible to me, because you don't know what sets people off.

So far, momenty is coming off as calm and a rather credible witness. His own defense attorneys have been telling us that he's been dying to tell his side of the story, and today marks his first chance to do just that.

The San Francisco Standard wrote that quote Momenti's testimony appears to undermine the prosecution's narrative. It was convincing, or at least satisfying in a way. The prosecution's explanation of what went down never quite achieved. Meanwhile, the DA's office was following all of this coverage.

So a lot of the articles talked about what Nima said and how this version may have been believable, And so I'm reading that kind of you know, seething and almost salivating.

So the next day to lie came in hot.

I can be in your face a little bit, and I was, and I repeated it a few times. He's a murderer. He's a dumb murderer. He's not a smart murderer. It's for Nima MOMENTI to hear, I think you're not just a murderer, but you're a dumb one. So when he gets up there, he's a little more likely to snap at me, like he repeatedly did.

It didn't take long for Nina to start getting sarcastic with the prosecution. For instance, the prosecutor asked Nima if it was a coincidence that the police were never able to recover the jacket that he was wearing the Knight Bob was killed.

Nima, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to save it. I hadn't talked to an attorney. If you guys would like to go back and gather new evidence, we can help you with that, no problem.

Once Nima got riled up, he stayed riled up. He responded sharply, saying things like, quote and you've done a great job finding the things you want, and I think you're mistaking the timeline here.

He was constantly interrupting me. He was at times criticizing me. I know there was at least one occasion where his own lawyer or lawyers told him I think you know, shut up, like just answer the questions like they from across the courtroom had to control him.

My source on the jury said Nima's testimony was the most damning. Oh my fucking god, he did it.

He did it.

It's so obvious. My bullshit meter was red flagging. His story keeps changing. He was so belligerent and stand offish with the prosecution's questions. Did that guy do something to hurt you because you hate his guts? I never saw someone so unwilling to answer the simplest of questions. He was like, why are you asking that question? Someone who was innocent wouldn't say that.

The prosecutor got Nima to react basically exactly the way he wanted him to.

Dane and I've cross examined murderers in the past. It's easy to cross these individuals when they're lying like it's a lot easier when they are liars. It's even easier, in my opinion, when they think they are smarter than you. And I think he thought that he could out charm and out smart me.

Here's Cohen from Nima's defense team.

I think that he held up well to a certain point, and then he got frustrated. I think with the state, I think that the state did a good job in trying to get him to be confused or get him frustrated, or asking the same question over and over and over again to the point where he would be like, hey, I already answered D and he'd seen combative.

The trial was nearing its conclusion, Nima's team had one more piece of evidence they wanted to enter, one final element they thought would make it obvious to the jury that Bob had the knife fall along and Nima was only acting in self defense. During closing arguments, one of Nima's other attorneys, Sam Zanganay, played a new video recording.

Zangana showed the jury surveillance video, he says, shows Lee with a friend snorting cocaine from a knife hours before he was killed.

Here's Cohen very clearly in the video that we showed, no one has an excuse for what is in his hand that he's holding that clearly looks to me like a knife that he's snorting cocaine off of.

I watched the video. Bob does look like he's snorting cocaine off of something.

This thing's three inches long. It's not a key. He's holding it like this, and it's like, I am one thousand percent in my opinion, sure that that was a knife. He's holding it like a knife and he's snorting cocaine with it.

After we saw the video, I stepped out into the hallway. One journalist called it a mic drop moment. A court observer said to me, so Bob had the knife all along, And I remember thinking, Wow, if some people in the gallery were persuaded that Bob maybe had the knife, what does the jury think or other?

Top story right now in the hands of the jury, deliberations have begun in the high profile murder trial of Nima MOMENTI how long.

Did the jury deliberate for?

It's eight days, he or nine.

I think it felt like a month, the longest I've ever had.

They told us to take our time.

My source on. The jury talked me through their deliberations.

The first few days were a waste. There was screaming and shouting and crying. We didn't get anything done.

And at one point, you know, we could hear them yelling in the back, and another point one of the jurors came in and said, listen, I don't want to even be on this jury anymore. There's so much yelling, pounding on the table.

Disappointed that that room was not sound proof, the whole yelling part. Everyone has been holding two months of secrets, two months of their thoughts. You can't talk to anyone, you can't watch the news.

My source said that the jurors took the instructions from the court very seriously. They didn't discuss the case with each other or with their families for the extent of the trial. While the jury talked, the legal teams were restless. How did you feel and what were you doing with yourselves while they were deliberating.

Pacing and you were trying to read the tea leaves on every note that we get from the jury during the course of the liberations and thinking about Okay, what does this mean? How does this signal? They may be thinking or leaning on X, Y or Z issue.

In the hallways, we the press were trying to read the tea leaves too. We were kind of going nuts. One day, one of the jurors forgot to buckle his belt. What did that mean? Was he looking dishovel because he was stressed. There was one guy sitting on the bench alone. He looked like he had been crying, and we were wondering was he a holdout?

There was a holdout who wanted to review every inch of evidence.

That's my source on the jury again, they said that there was one massive point of disagreement in the deliberation room. That final video the defense showed of Bob seemingly snorting cocaine off of some object that for almost everyone on the jury, they simply did not believe that object was a knife.

We know, no fool is going to snort off a knife. People don't carry bare knives in their pockets. That's just stupid. They're going to accidentally stab themselves when they sit down.

But my source told me that there was one person on the jury who was convinced that Bob must have had the knife all along.

He thought he was smarter than the cops. And the prosecutors, and he wanted to do his own investigation. He thought he could prove that Bob had the knife. He was sitting at the laptop that had the surveillance videos, asking how do I rewind? How do I slow down? How do I zoom in? He was at that for many hours. The court specifically told us we aren't supposed to do our own investigation, so we were screaming at him, what are you doing. You're not a cop, You're not a detective.

My source said that finally one of the other jurors zoomed in on a piece of police body camera footage that showed a cop pulling something out of Bob Lee's pocket.

It looked like it.

Could have been a key or a USB stick. Couldn't this be what Bob had been using to snort cocaine out in the halls of the courthouse. Sam zanganay Nima's lead attorney, was usually sort of a cocky guy who likes to joke around, but by day six of jury deliberations even he seemed worn down.

I mean, these guys are committed. I gotta give it to him. They're really in there working hard. That's all you can really ask them to do in.

Your experience, can you provide any context? Is to how unusual or maybe on brand it might be for a deliberation like this to take this long.

I've never had a murder case take longer than two days. The longest delibration I've ever had was ten days, and it was a federal case, and it was like two million documents. I'm sorry, guys, I'm just emotionally drained, as you can imagine.

The juror I spoke to said they poured through the text messages, They watched the videos again and again, dozens of times.

Everyone wasn't sleeping well every time we'd meet. Did you sleep no? Did you eat no? Some of us had nightmares. Some people had dreams that they were on the witness stand. One person said they dreamed that Bob walked in. He looked like a walking corpse because we had looked at that Morgue photo again and again. Some people got freaked out. Is he a ghost? Is he here right now?

House?

Nina?

I mean, imagine when you have other people deciding your fate, waiting an hour is an eternity.

Nima's attorney, Sam Zanganay again.

Imagine waiting six days, and I'm sure that all the parties, including the leads, I feel for them. I feel for everybody in a case like this, you know, especially in this time where you're waiting right, it's not an easy thing.

It's a gut wrenching thing.

I know.

After this, Zanganay flew home. Three out of five of Nima's lawyers returned to Florida and they didn't come back. Eventually, the holdout came to agree with the rest of the jury. Nima had the knife. Then the question became is Nima guilty of first degree murder? To meet that bar, the killing had to be three things. Willful, premeditated, and deliberate.

Let's figure out all the evidence. Let's figure out what we agree on. Wilful means the defendant meant to kill. You look at the evidence and say, okay, did the defendant mean to kill? If you were angry at someone, you would not stab them in the chest. That's wilful. We check that off. The next requirement premeditated, meaning you planned the act in advance. There's a knife at the scene. We felt it like premeditated. People don't randomly.

Bring a knife premeditated check third requirement deliberate defendant considered scenarios four and against the act and chose to act anyways.

That was the hardest part. There was no evidence that says that we're not in his head. There's no manifesto, there's no video of him pacing in the hallway deciding whether or not to do it. Did the suspect think about every scenario and decide to murder? Can any of us say we saw any evidence that tells us that shit.

No, At the end of these six they still weren't all in agreement. Then my source on the jury told me a different front. Duror told a personal story about how her father had been incarcerated. She told everyone she believed that he had actually been wrongfully convicted, and she said, if there had been one person on the jury like the holdout, maybe things would have turned out differently. She

It took all of the air out of the room. We've been shamed. At that point, we were like, fuck, let's vote.

We'll be right back.

After seven days of deliberation spread out across three weeks. We finally heard.

Within the past hour, we learned jurors have reached a verdict.

Here's amet to lie.

When the verdicts are read, what happens is the forms go to the judge. The first page is first degree murder, the second page is second degree murder, and then all the way down Judge Gordon. She kind of sifted through that first page pretty quickly and looked at that second page more closely. I leaned over to Dane and said, it's a second, like it's not a first, it's a second, because she took some extra time there. Once I saw that, I was actually pretty calm.

Ranking news out of San Francisco, California in that high profile murder case involving a Bay Area tech executive, here's your headline in this one. A jury has just found Nimo Momenti guilty of second degree murder in the killing of cash app founder Bob Lee.

Some of us said, first degree feels right. Obviously there was some planning, but we have to do what the law says, even though we feel we really want first degree. Second degree is okay too. If you don't meet all three scenarios, it devaults to second. That's what it says in the law. That's what it says in our packet.

The verdict of.

Second degree murder means that Nima faces a sentence of sixteen to life. If he had gotten first degree, he would have been looking at twenty six to life. After the bailiff read the verdict, it was chaos. Bob's family and friends filled half the courtroom and they crowded the hallways. TV crews were already set up for Bob Lee's family. The judgment came as a relief of vindication.

We're happy with the results today. We're having that name on money, will not be on.

The streets, no longer gets the opportunity to harm anybody else in the world.

The burd burger will cut him away for a long time.

Just in this case was.

Extremely larger proof and just a Nima's word versus my brothers were which he's not pared or it would be.

To be able to hear those things.

Bob's brother and former told me that they felt robbed of the chance to grieve his death. They've been navigating waves of media coverage and then the trial itself. I think they seemed relieved that this part of the ordeal was finally over, that they could finally grieve their family member. But for Nima's family, it was a solemn day. Here's Nima's mom Mana's well.

Definitely, it's very disappointing in.

That moment when you heard the verdict and you were able to make eye contact with your son.

At that moment.

There's no reason, no I would rather do have I contact with the jurors because this is their decision. My son is not such a thing, such a person. He is the kindest person. Every mother would love to have a son like him. I know my son and he never does that.

A source close to the family so that during the trial, Nima's mom expressed faith in the defense strategy. She maintained hopeful optimism and also maybe a bit of denial. The guilty verdict felt like yet another blow. From the moment news of bob Ley's death went public, there were so many things that distracted from Nima Momeni and Bob Lee and whatever actually happened between them that night. First, there was online misinformation. Was Bob killed by a homeless person?

We all know that after Bob Lee was murdered, Elon Musk took to Twitter to make an effort to really shame San Francisco and to make it seem like this was about lawlessness in San Francisco and about what's going on out in our streets, and we knew it something different, and I think today proved once again.

I asked Jenkins in a later interview, why bring up Elon Musk after all of this.

I felt that he was somebody who was incapable of admitting when he was wrong, and so I perhaps was still holding on to a little a few feelings about that, and this was like my last chance to sort of throw in his face, you were wrong, and you owe us another tweet to say that you were wrong, right, and that we do what we're supposed to do in this city when it comes to, you know, accountability.

Her response reminded me that even for the DA, even though the killer was caught and put away, the Bob Lee murder trial still felt deeply tied to the city of San Francisco and its legacy. It's almost like a hangover from those initial days of wild online rumors. The conversations about San Francisco that Bob Lee's death said emotion that there was a dangerous city ruined by liberal leaders, even though the substance of those conversations had nothing to

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