The knife found where Silicon Valley executive Bob Lee was stabbed to death in San Francisco tested positive for suspected killer Nima Momeni’s DNA and appears to have been taken from his sister’s unique kitchen cutlery set, a prosecutor said.
Momeni, who pleaded not guilty to murder Thursday, is accused of killing Lee, 43, on a dark downtown street early in the morning of April 4. A judge denied his request for bail, finding that Momeni poses a danger to the public if released ahead of trial.
Traces of Momeni’s DNA were found on the handle of the knife and blood on the blade matched Lee’s DNA, Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai told San Francisco Superior Court Judge Victor Hwang during a hearing.
Talai said the knife “seems to be brought” from Momeni’s sister’s apartment, where Lee had been socializing hours before the stabbing and later was seen on surveillance video footage leaving in Momeni’s car. The prosecutor said a wound to Lee’s chest was five inches deep, not done by accident. “This is the very definition of premeditation,” he said.
Momeni’s lawyer, Paula Canny, said after the hearing that the prosecution’s version of events doesn’t add up. The more logical weapon would have been Momeni’s “Crocodile Dundee” knife, she said.
“Everybody knew that my client carries a Crocodile Dundee knife in his car,” Canny told the judge, referring to the 1986 movie starring Paul Hogan, who carried a bowie, a fixed-blade fighting knife.
Though Canny acknowledged it was Lee’s blood on the blade of the knife prosecutors are focused on, she implied that Momeni didn’t intend for it to be a weapon.
“People can have a fight and not know someone has been mortally wounded,” Canny said. If Momeni’s DNA was on the handle of the kitchen knife prosecutors point to, it was to cast it aside “to protect himself and make sure no one had access to it,” she said.
Canny also contested other parts of the prosecution’s narrative, saying the blade of the kitchen knife is “under four inches” long and that the DNA evidence “isn’t entirely right, either.” Canny previously said that camera footage cited by prosecutors as evidence doesn’t support a premeditated murder charge.
Lee, who was chief product officer at cryptocurrency startup MobileCoin and previously created Cash App, was revered in the tech world for his coding talents. His slaying initially served as fodder for critics of San Francisco, such as Elon Musk, who pointed to the stabbing as more evidence of the city’s decline. Since Momeni’s arrest, details of the case point instead to a personal conflict between him and Lee.
Prosecutors have said a friend of Lee’s who was having drinks with him and Momeni’s younger sister, Khazar Momeni, the day before the stabbing told investigators he overheard a FaceTime call in which Momeni confronted Lee over whether his interaction with Khazar involved “drugs or anything inappropriate” — which Lee denied.
A toxicology report by the city medical examiner who did an autopsy on Lee noted the presence in his corpse of cocaethylene, a compound that forms from mixing alcohol and cocaine. The examination also detected ketamine, which was originally designed as an anesthetic, but is also used to treat depression and as a recreational drug, known for producing hallucinogenic effects.
That prompted Canny to denigrate Lee’s drug use, likening his body to the “Walgreens of recreational drugs,” but she later apologized for that comment.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has called Lee’s slaying “planned and deliberate” and had urged the court not to grant bail to Momeni.
The judge said Thursday he didn’t think there’s a risk Momeni would flee if released, as Jenkins’s office had argued, but he did agree with prosecutors that the evidence showed there’s a “substantial likelihood” Momeni could harm others.
Hwang said he reviewed numerous letters from Momeni’s friends and family in making his bail decision, which he emphasized is not a reflection of his views of the merits of the case.
“I appreciated getting to know more about him, his childhood,” and Momeni’s efforts to improve life for himself and his family, Hwang said.
