One Dispensary From Murder

 It’s October 2 of 2012 in Newport Beach California. A show I watched described Newport Beach as where you move when you have more money than you know what to do with. Mary Barnes, a 53 year old Florida woman just moved to Newport Beach to live with her boyfriend at a house he shared with a roommate named Michael. Michael had been renting a room in the house for about 8 months and Mary had just moved in 2 days before this day of October 12, 2012. This house is just a block from the beach in a nice area, but from the sounds of it, there aren’t bad areas in Newport Beach. Michael, Mary’s new roommate, was like a teddy bear in her eyes. He seems like a sweet guy and since she’s only been there 2 days, Mary barely knows him. All she knows is that he’s 28, and he’s an entrepreneur. In fact, Michael has just found his niche in the marijuana business which at the time was just newly voted in as legal for medical use. Though he’s involved in what can seem like the drug business, Michael’s not some shady drug dealer. He’s got a legitimate business and runs it as one. Since it was legal in the state, but not federally, marijuana could only run as a cash business. Marijuana dispensaries couldn’t do business with banks. I know there’s some safe banking acts trying to rectify this now so that these businesses can become more mainstream. However, back in 2012, it was completely all cash and that meant Michael often had a lot of cash on hand to conduct business. October 2 of 2012, it’s a Monday night and being early fall in central California, it’s 70 degrees with clear skies. Mary’s boyfriend if away on a business trip, so it’s just Mary in sleeping in one room and Michael sleeping in another on this particular evening. At around 2:30 in the morning, Mary is startled awake to the feel of metal pressed agains the back of her head. A man whispers into her ear, “don’t worry, this isn’t about you.” He tapes her mouth, blindfolds her and zip ties her ankles together and then her hands behind her back. She’s carried downstairs and she can hear Michael fighting and crying in another room. The intruders are yelling, “where’s the money?” Michael replies that he has $2,000 in a sock in a drawer, but they say no – where’s the million dollars? Mary then hears them dragging Michael feet first down the stairs, his head banging loudly against each step on the way down. Now she hears Michael near her and the two of them hear a vehicle pull into the garage. They’re then tossed into the back of this vehicle. They can tell it’s either a covered truck bed or a van. Two assailants are in the back of the vehicle with them while a 3rd is driving. Mary pays attention to every detail she can, noticing that by the speed the vehicle is going that they must be traveling on a highway. While in this truck, the men continue to beat Michael mercilessly. He’s whipped with a rubber hose, shocked repeatedly with a stun gun and burned with a blow torch. They leave Mary alone, but she’s horrified hearing the suffering that Michael is enduring and she has no way to help him. This continues for hours with Michael telling them over and over again that he didn’t have a million dollars in cash but that he had $100,000 in a safety deposit box that he would get for them. They would just say that’s not good enough and go back to torturing him, yelling at him to reveal where he’s buried the million dollars. Finally, Mary hears the unmistakable crunch of gravel and she knows they’re somewhere rural. The vehicle has stopped in the middle of the Mojave desert. Mary and Michael are pulled out of the truck and laid down in the dirt side by side in the dirt. They’re sure this is where they get executed and left to die. The masked men are sure Michael has a million dollars buried somewhere near their location in the desert and they’re determined to find it. For the final time, Michael swears to them that there is no million dollars and it’s definitely not buried in some desert. The men decide that if they’re not getting the money, they’re going to leave with something from Michael that he values more than cash. They yank down Michael’s pants and cinch a zip tie to the base of his penis. With a serrated kitchen knife, one of the men begins to cut while saying in a singsong voice, back and forth, back and forth until he had cut off the penis. Michael passes out from the pain but is jolted back when a liquid is dousing his body. Mary can hear the glugging of a liquid coming out of a bottle or can and she’s sure they’re going to be set on fire. Michael pleads with the men, “if you’re going to burn me, just shoot me instead.” But instead of the smell of gas, the sharp tang of bleach fills the air. It eats into Michaels cuts and burns. Mary is shaking in fear, still blindfolded and bound, when one of the men crouches down by her, pressing a knife against her hand. He says “I’m going to take this and I’m going to throw it. If you can get to it and cut through your sip ties, then today’s your lucky day.” He then throws the knife. Mary hears the knife hit the ground somewhere and the men get into the truck and drive away. When Mary can no longer hear the tires on the gravel, she is able to dislodge her blindfold with her knees. She could see something glinting in the sand a ways away and she butt schooched herself to it; it was the knife. She struggled and was able to cut the zip ties around her ankle while holding the knife in her bound hands behind her back. She tried to cut the ties around her hands but couldn’t get the grip right to make it happen. She went over to Michael and pulled off his blindfold and gag. She tried to cut the ties off his hands but his skin had already swollen around the plastic and with her own hands still bound, she only managed to cut his hands a bit before giving up. Michael was losing a lot of blood by this point, so Mary knew she had to go get help. She could see lights moving in the distance and she decided to run the direction of them. She stumbled, barefoot across the desert gravel and sagebrush as fast as she could but being barefoot, it was slow going. She makes her way across the dirt and sticks and close to a road where a lone car was coming by. It happened to be a cop who noticed this barefoot woman stumbling through the dirt in his direction. Seeing her condition, he immediately begins to take photos of her with the zip ties bound around her wrists knowing that this will be leading to an investigation. She tells him what’s happened, and that Michael is still laying out there, bleeding and hurt very badly. She gets into the cop car and is able to lead him back to the crime scene. As he stepped out of the car, the scent of bleach blows into the officer’s face. He calls for back up and takes photos of everything, including Michael, before touching him. Michael’s injuries are terrible and they see he’s missing his penis. They search all around for it, hoping that if they can find it, it can be reattached, but of course, it was nowhere to be found. When paramedics cut away Michael’s bleach soaked clothes, they see prints from his attackers that had been chemically seared into his skin. I’m taking this to mean shoe prints, but it could have been something else they were referring to in the articles I read. Mary and Michael both can’t think of anyone who would do something like this, so police had to start from ground zero. They head to the pair’s house and start canvassing the neighborhood in Newport beach. One woman said she had seen something suspicious the day before the incident. A white pickup had parked behind Michael’s house. Three men dressed in construction gear stood outside, which in itself wasn’t weird, but this woman had some third sense going on and she took notice. The officers ask if she would possibly be able to describe the truck in more detail in the hopes they could get any more information. She relipes with, “will the license plate number help?” She had taken down the information since it had felt so off to her. The truck is registered to a man named Kyle Handley. Michael tells them he knows Kyle but couldn’t think of a reason Kyle would be tied to the crime. Kyle lives in the area and the two had become friends through the marijuana business. Kyle, in fact, was one of the growers who supplied medical marijuana that Michael sold at his store. Michael even described how he had treated Kyle to a party trip in Vegas along with some friends. Police get a warrant to search Kyle’s house. The white truck which has a topper on the back, is parked there, but Kyle’s not there. They go ahead and search the house anyway. There’s not much to search as the place turns out basically to be a grow house dedicated to growing weed. There’s no furniture and barely anything there other than grow supplies. However, they do find a canister of zip ties like those used on Michael and Mary. Then, in the back yard they find big black trash bags and a large green bag. Inside the green bag, they find a cut zip tie and towels covered in bleach. Returning to the truck, they open the back of it up and are immediately hit with bleach fumes. Police decide this is enough evidence to charge Kyle and a warrant is issued for him for kidnapping, aggravated assault and mayhem. He’s found and arrested on October 6th. Now, they’re hoping he turns on his accomplices. Inside the truck, they had also found blue nitrile surgical gloves. These gloves were sent in for DNA analysis and were found to have the DNA of a new suspect. Hossein Nayeri. Hossein had been in trouble with the law before, so fortunately his info was in the database. He was born in Iran and had come to the US with his family as a young boy. He grew up in Fresno, California, he’s a middle child with two hard working, successful parents. His dad is a doctor, and his mom a lawyer. He grew up to be an athletic, outgoing teen, but he was also kind of the black sheep of the family. He was rebellious and got into a lot of fights. He parties a lot after high school and decides to join the Marines which he claimed he did to get more structure in his life. In the Marines, he’s assigned to an upper level position due to his smarts and skills. He was only in the marines for 2 years, though because he just couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble. He got into fights, stole things and at one point, he was even dishonorably discharged, but went to court and got it changed to just “discharged.” After the Marines, he returns to Fresno and works as a waiter at a Café. He’s handsome, obviously charismatic and able to talk his way out of shit and he’s now 24. While working as a waiter, he meets a beautiful young woman named Cortney Shegerian. Cortney was only 16 at the time she started dating Hossein. Cortney comes from a good and successful family, much like Hossein. Cortney’s parents of course don’t like the idea of her dating an adult man at such a young age. They meet him and immediately peg him as bad news and that they don’t want her to be with him. Because of this, she begins hiding the relationship with him from her parents. Hossein is one of those people that are extremely talented at manipulation. And since Cortney is just 16, that makes her even more vulnerable to it. He’s able to convince her that her parents didn’t have her best interest in mind and that he was the only one she could really rely on. The pair continue to date into Cortney’s adulthood. Though Hossein is so smart and charismatic, he could probably get a great job easily, he decides he wants quick money instead. He realizes that the pot business would probably be a quick payday. Hossein, along with 2 of his old high school buddies begin growing marijuana to sell to all the new dispensaries popping up. His high school buddies are Kyle Handley and a man named Ehsan Tousi. Cortney described Hossein as kind of the alpha dog of the group who the other guys just kind of followed along with. Their grow business booms and does really well until tragedy strikes. One night – a few years before the torture of Michael – Hossein and his bestie and business partner, Ehsan, are out partying at a casino. They both had some drinks and shots and for whatever reason, Hossein decides to drive himself and Ehsan home. Hossein loses control of the car and rolls it. Ehsan dies in the crash. Hossein now faced a vehicular manslaughter charge. Instead of facing up to the charges, he flees to his home country of Iran. A judge puts out an arrest warrant and now Hossein is an international fugitive. Cortney isn’t surprised he ran, he’d do anything to get out of trouble. The two broke up then. He’s in Iran for about a year living with family and had even married an Iranian woman which no one in the US is aware of. When he decides he’s going to sneak back into the US. He gets caught, but instead of facing hefty charges for running, he receives a suspended sentence with time served and 5 years probation for pleading guilty to it. Kyle and Hossein once again begin their grow operation. In 2008, Cortney is attending Cal State, Fresno studying law. Somehow she gets sucked back into Hossein’s love trap and the pair get back together. Cortney says that things started out great but got progressively worse. It started as verbal abuse, and manipulation. Comments that broke her down and manipulations that separated her from her friends and family. Eventually Hossein became physically abusive to Cortney. Cortney had kept the rekindled relationship a secret once again from her family which further alienated her. She even marries him. At this point, they’ve been together years and she’s terrified of Hossein. One fight was so violent that he held her down with a box cutter against her neck. She’d finally had enough and called cops. He was able to swindle a deal and only received anger management classes as a punishment. He doesn’t even end up with a domestic violence on his record. It seemed to Cortney, the more Hossein got away with, the more he pushed the boundaries. Having no one else in her life, no confidence and still believing Hossein was the only one that cared for her, she took him back. On the outside, their life looks great – she’s still attending law school and her parents are bank rolling her life. They’re funding her expenses while she’s in school. She would charge whatever Hossein said he needed to their credit cards, funding Hossein and Kyle’s grow business. I’m not sure why this is – maybe the business isn’t doing as well as it had previously or maybe it just wasn’t enough for the lives they wanted to live. For whatever reason it was, they decided they needed a quick payday. It was after that trip to Vegas that Kyle took with Michael that the two come up with the idea to rob Michael. He’d been flashing money all over Vegas, so he must be rolling in it, they think. They do some fucked up math in their heads and decide he must have a million dollars in cash somewhere. They devise a scheme to follow Michael around to see where he’s putting all his money, knowing that it’s not being put in banks. They first think he must be stashing it at his parent’s house in Huntington Beach and they set up cameras to watch the house. Hossein planned to break in and search it, but there was a problem. Michael’s parents had a black lab/pit-bull mix that would bark his head off when Hossein would come near. To solve the problem, he laced hamburger patties with some kind of poison (according to Cortney) and fed it to the dog. However, it didn’t kill the pup. Hossein and Kyle also put up surveillance cameras around outside of Michael’s house to watch his comings and goings. They also attach GPS equipment on his car. They watch Michael for something like 6-10 months when Hossein thinks he’s figured it all out. He excitedly shows Cortney GPS records from Michael’s car on his computer. He points at the screen showing a path out into the Mojave desert and says, “doesn’t that look like the perfect place to bury a bunch of money?” Michael had gone out into the desert. He was meeting with a casual acquaintance about investing in an investment deal on a gold mine. A week before they decide to execute the kidnapping plot, Hossein is out partying again and driving Cortney’s Tahoe. A motorcycle cop tries to pull him over, but Hossein decides he’s not going to get caught. A high speed chase ensues. He gets ahead of the cop, abandons the vehicle and flees on foot. A police helicopter and squad cars arrive to aid in the search for the perp, but they can’t find him. They’re right next to the ocean and that’s where Hossein had hidden, swimming to where it was safe to get away. He then runs to a friend’s house for the night. Since the Tahoe is registered to Cortney, cops show up at her townhouse in the wee hours of the morning to let her know her SUV had been in a high speed chase with police just hours earlier. She absently told them that her husband had the car that night, but then backtracked and ushered them away. Hossein later appeared at the townhouse, soaking wet and angry that Cortney had talked to cops. He told her to go file a fake police report about how the vehicle had been stolen that night. Meanwhile, Hossein and Kyle begin amassing tools to use for their planned kidnapping of Michael. Cortney saw then with a taser, a butane torch, ski masks and fake construction worker outfits. That’s when they go and carry out their unsuccessful plot to get Michael’s millions. Because Hossein had wrecked her Tahoe, the police still had it in their custody after the kidnapping had occurred. Now knowing that Hossein is somehow involved in the kidnappings and torture, they decide to go give the SUV a once-over. Inside, they find two surveillance cameras and a GPS tracker. When they look at the camera footage, they see all of the surveillance of Michael’s house so now they have proof that Hossein was involved. Hossein hears that Kyle has been nabbed by police and once again, he runs off to Iran. Unbeknownst to Cortney, she wasn’t the only woman helping Hossein. Another one of his high school friends, Naomi Rhodus, was a side chic of Hossein’s. Hossein had Naomi buy GPS devices for him to help cover his tracks before the kidnapping. When Hossein fled, Cortney had connected with him a couple of times in Dubai and brought him clothes, medicine and cash. More money that she’d taken from her parents. Naomi had also done the same thing, once again, unbeknownst to Cortney. It turns out that Naomi’s estranged husband, Ryan Kevorkian was the 3rd man who had been involved in the kidnapping. He’d been brought in at the last minute as muscle. Apparently neither of the former couple knew the other was involved with Hossein as of that time. So cops know they somehow need to get to Hossein overseas, but Iran is one of the countries that doesn’t extradite to the United States. They decide Cortney is the key to luring him into getting caught. Hossein hears that all of his possessions in the car, the cameras, the car itself, are all ready for release from the police station. He tells Cortney to go pick it all up. When she arrives, police pull her into an interview room. They present her with all the evidence and that they know she’s been involved somewhat in the kidnapping and torture stunt. Being an accessory to the crime, she could be held liable for just as much as the men involved. One cop at the station knows Cortney’s dad who has connections. He tells Cortney’s dad the situation and he's shocked. He didn’t know she was with Hossein, let alone married to him. He immediately gets on the phone with Cortney and convinces her to work with police despite her fear of Hossein. It would be the only way to guarantee her safety in the future. Now with the help of Cortney, they plan the trap for Hossein using her as the bait. The plan is that Cortney needs to convince Hossein that she wants to go on a romantic vacation with him to Spain. Hossein would have to take a layover in Prague which is a place they could legally arrest him to take him to the states. Cortney is terrified that he’ll figure out the deception and have her killed or do something to ruin her life. On the day they’re to meet in Spain, she can’t get a hold of him and she’s sure he’s figured it out and that she’ll end up being the one to spend her life in jail. Finally, though, he calls her back and says he accidentally slept in but he’s on his way. He steps off the plane in Prague and police there grab him, strip search him, cavity search him and toss him in a jail there. He waits an entire year in Prague in what he described as a medieval stone dungeon style crib. During this year, Cortney not only divorces him, but she’s able to get the marriage annulled. But this isn’t the end of the story. (break) On September of 2014, Hossein is now in California, about to go on trial for the assault and kidnapping charges. While awaiting trial, he’s held in a low-level jail only a few miles from where Cortney is living. She’s terrified knowing he’s so close and to make it worse, he even sent her a card for her birthday, so he obviously knows where she’s living. Hossein, being the guy he is, somehow gets his hands on a cell phone and records himself in the jail. He and 2 other inmates plot to escape the jail. He records how he plans to do it, cutting through a grate behind his cell and tunneling out. On the night they decide to go for it, he records himself escaping into the space between the walls along with the 2 other guys. They show how they make harnesses to climb walls and make It outside and onto the roof. They then use the sheets they made the harnesses with to rappel 4 stories down the outer walls and run off into the night. The next morning, cops arrive at Cortney’s place to see if she might know where Hossein is. She’s horrified, believing he’ll be coming after her before doing anything else. When the Deputy Distract Attorney heard that Hossein had escaped, she said: “My first reaction was: Oh my God, they let Hannibal Lecter out. He is sophisticated, incredibly violent and cunning.” The fugitives had many hours head start on authorities since they weren’t discovered missing from their cells until the morning after they had escaped. Instead of showing up at Cortney’s, though, they call for a cab. The driver doesn’t realize he’ll be in for the ride of his life. They hold the taxi driver at gun point. The poor dude barely speaks any English and is just trying to make an honest living. The cabbie is Long Ma, an immigrant from Vietnam. The men force Long Ma to stay with them while they steal his cab and drive their way to a motel. Not wanting a witness to go tell cops where they are, they keep Long Ma with them at the motel for the entire 3 nights they stay there. When they leave the motel, they dump the cab and steal a white van. On day 4, they drive up to Northern California. Hossein once again tries to be the alpha male and dominate the other men. Conflict begins to erupt in the crew about whether they should kill Long Ma. Hossein, always thinking ahead, starts taking photos with Long Ma on the beach and wherever they go, posing his involvement as voluntary. One escapee really likes Long Ma and feels like his life is really in danger with Hossein and the other man. He takes the cabbie in a different car back down to Southern California, sets Long Ma free and turns himself in saying that Hossein was far scarier than jail. Hossein and the other escapee end up in San Francisco. They’re living in the stolen van, videotaping themselves living life on the run, smoking weed and eating bananas. One day, Hossein steps out of the back of the van where he’s spotted by a homeless man. This homeless man is a self-proclaimed news junkie and he had just read an article about the escapees when Hossein pops out of the van right near him. He immediately reports them and another chase ensues, but fortunately, they’re caught. Now the trial begins. There’s a ton of evidence against Hossein and defense has a big obstacle in trying to claim his innocence. They try all the techniques they can like trying to infer that the blue surgical gloves were planted in the car to try to pin the crimes on Hossein. Fortunately for the prosecution, they have Cortney and everything she knows and she’s willing to testify for them. She’s very well spoken and she’s able to paint the picture of the two polar sides of Hossein’s personality. On one hand, he can be charming, caring and great, but on the other hand, he can be cunning, manipulative and unbelievably cruel. Typical of this kind of narcissist, Hossein insists on taking the stand in his own defense. Everyone wonders how one man could have had so much power and influence over so many people, but when he takes the stand, it becomes apparent. He’s charming, persuasive and handsome. He looks a little like a young Stallone somehow. He painted Kyle as the mastermind of the plot but police consistently describe Kyle as something of a dimwit in every show and article I saw. Hossein claims that Kyle hired him to do video surveillance on Michael and that he wasn’t privy to what the kidnapping plan was. He claimed that Kyle was a pot kingpin and that Michael owed Kyle $300,000. He said that Kyle paid him to keep an eye on Michael to make sure that if he tried to run without paying, they’d know how to find him. He was actually very good on the stand, working the jury like a magician. He cries on the stand, trying to build sympathy with the jury. The prosecutor could tell it was working on at least one juror on the panel. He had to do something to keep this creep from escaping justice once again. On cross, the attorney really began to push Hossein, getting under his collar, so to speak. Hossein began getting testy and trying to intimidate the prosecutor. But when the prosecutor wouldn’t back down like most people did, Hossein’s true character became visible. He even threatened the lawyer while on the stand, implying he’d have him hurt or killed. He denounced the trial saying that the jury was receiving “incomplete facts and a distorted reality,” and that, “John Wayne would have been dazzled by this wild wild West style of justice in Orange County.” Michael, who doesn’t share his last name anywhere, took the stand and detailed the injuries he had suffered from. From chemical and taser burns, the genital mutilation to profound psychological damage. Prosecutors piece together details of what took place from all those involved. Hossein had attacked Michael in his home while Ryan helped. Kyle was the getaway driver while Hossein tortured Michael with what the others described as “gleeful sadism.” The genital mutilation was Hossein’s idea as well. He wanted Kyle to do it to make sure he was a part of the violence and less likely to rat him out. But when Kyle tried to do the cutting, he started retching and couldn’t finish the job. Hossein took over while doing the creepy sing-song thing. When the jury went to deliberate, the vote was 11 to 1. The woman who had been obviously swayed by Hossein’s tears on the stand wasn’t convinced of his guilt. The jury was almost forced to declare a mistrial but thanks to another juror who worked like an investigator to lay out all the evidence and tie it all together on a whiteboard, the holdout was finally convinced. Hossein was given 2 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole for kidnapping and another 7 years to life for the torture. Kyle Handley received 4 life terms, 2 without the possibility of parole. Ryan Kevorkian plead guilty to 2 kidnapping counts, burglary, and assault with a firearm for which he was sentenced to 12 years. He was eligible for parole last year, but I didn’t see if he made it out or not. Cortney Shegerian was given immunity for her testimony and help in capturing Hossein. She is an attorney in California and is remarried. Michael remains in the marijuana business and is happily married. abcnews.go.com, 20/20 S42, E21: Catch me if you can, latimes.com, washingtonpost.com, rollingstone article by Tom Dickinson called A Gruesome Mutilation. A Global Manhunt. Inside One of the Most Twisted Crimes Ever