Bob Lee murder trial: Momeni family tried to erase, replace phones pre-arrest
The lead police investigator in the case against Nima Momeni — likely the last witness prosecutors will call in the ongoing murder trial for Cash App founder Bob Lee — revealed today that Momeni's brother-in-law researched how to erase iPhones in the days after the killing.
Sgt. Brent Dittmer, who was questioned for less than two hours by prosecutors, primarily served to pull together the past 10 days of testimony from other witnesses he interviewed or police officers he oversaw during the investigation of the case.
His testimony did not answer questions that remain, however, about the motive or premeditation of the killing, which prosecutors will need to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt to convict Momeni of murder.
When Momeni's home was searched during his arrest nine days after the stabbing in April 2023, several phones were found.
Dittmer said today that those phones had all been activated shortly prior to Momeni's arrest. Both Momeni and his sister Khazar had handed their phones over to Momeni's attorney at the time, Paula Canny. They both received new phones. It's unclear if the new phones were among those found in the search.
Eventually, police obtained the phones from Canny. Dittmer did not indicate that any data was deleted from them, but called it "unusual and suspicious" that Momeni had given up his phone.
Around the same time, Khazar's husband, plastic surgeon Dino Elyassnia, researched deleting data from iPhones, Dittmer testified.
: So that is the web history report from the extraction ... it says title, 'how to erase iPhone' Google search ... And then a category that says 'deleted: yes.'
: ... What do we see here?
: "This is a report for searched items from the iPhone ... under 'deleted,' it says 'yes' and there is nothing under account. The second item ... again the value is 'how to erase iPhone.'
Whether any data beyond these searches was deleted from Elyassnia's phone is unclear; Dittmer did not say and was not asked about it. Earlier another witness testified that Momeni's mother and sister attempted to sell his BMW in the weeks after his arrest. Police had been searching for the vehicle and finally found it at a San Francisco BMW dealership.
Prosecutors today also attempted to introduce text messages extracted from Elyassnia's phone, but the judge agreed with the defense attorneys' objection and would not allow the question.
Dittmer said he wrote around 20 search warrants in this case, interviewed Lee's family and other witnesses who knew Lee and the circumstances of his killing. He also oversaw various police officers who responded to the scene of the killing, analyzed crime scene evidence, obtained surveillance camera footage of Lee's and Momeni's whereabouts, and tracked Momeni's movements after the stabbing.
"I think what we've seen today is Dittmer put together a really strong case. And it's really clear what happened here...selling the car, deleting off phones," said Oliver Lee, Bob Lee's brother, who called Momeni's family "as crooked as the tower they live in," referring to Millennium Tower.
Dittmer acknowledged that the surveillance video shown of the alleged incident, where two figures — presumably Momeni and Lee — can be seen standing near the Caltrans parking lot on Main Street, was blurry.
"They're blobs. You can't make out arms and legs, you can't make out heads, you can't make out faces," Dittmer said. "So I don't feel comfortable with, in any way, describing what exact movements with any body parts are occurring. I don't see how someone could."
But based on context, Dittmer said he believed that Lee and Momeni were the two figures in the video. The two men left the home of Khazar Momeni together in Momeni's white BMW, and the BMW was on that street before Momeni eventually drove away in it to the East, and Lee bled out in the street.
But what's still unclear is whether — as the prosecution has alleged — Momeni planned to kill Lee when he led him to that dark area of Main Street.
Prosecutors began their case saying Momeni stabbed Lee over some indiscretion or inappropriate behavior with his sister, but what that issue was has still not been made clear.
