Newport Beach pot grower, jail escapee gets life in prison for kidnappings, torture
By Sean Emery
Orange County Register
October 30, 2020
A former Newport Beach pot grower and jail escapee accused of masterminding the headline-grabbing kidnapping and brutal torture of a marijuana dispensary owner was sentenced Friday to life behind bars.
More than a year after a Newport Beach jury found Hossein Nayeri guilty of the 2012 abduction of a man and woman he carried out with two high school friends in order to find a non-existent $1 million they apparently believed the dispensary owner had buried in the Mojave desert, Orange County Superior Court Judge Gregg L. Prickett ordered Nayeri to serve two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, one for each kidnapping charge.
He also received a third consecutive term of seven years to life for a torture charge.
Nayeri has continually denied playing any role in the kidnapping. He has admitted to surveilling the dispensary owner prior to the abduction.
On Friday, the dispensary owner described for the judge the lifelong physical and mental scars he suffered from being beaten, tortured and left for dead.
The man – who the Southern California News Group is not identifying because of the nature of the crimes – said he still looks over his shoulder and has difficulty sleeping.
He suffers a loss of hand and finger dexterity from being bound, has scars from the beatings and the burning of his skin by a blow torch, and his penis was severed.
“These are reminders of the violent savagery inflicted upon me,” he said. “What kind of human being does such a thing?”
Prior to sentencing, Nayeri said he is “truly sorry” for what the victims went through, describing it as a “horrific nightmare.” Nayeri added that while he has “many flaws, wanting to hurt someone is not one of them. …
“People were presented with incomplete facts and distorted reality,” Nayeri said. “Appearance of justice is not the real thing. … John Wayne would have been dazzled by this wild west style of justice in Orange County – shoot first and ask questions later, but hey, as I always say, ‘God Bless America.’ “
Senior Deputy District Attorney Heather Brown told the judge that there was no punishment strong enough to fit the acts carried out by Nayeri.
“The motive behind this crime was just pure and utter greed,” Brown said. “Mr. Nayeri wanted something he believed the victim had, and he was willing to do anything to get it.”
In the early morning hours of Oct. 2, 2012, three masked men, at least one armed, broke into the Newport Beach home where the dispensary owner was living and abruptly woke him up.
The intruders bound and blindfolded the man as well as the girlfriend of the home’s owner, who was out of town on business, and forced them into a van.
During a two-hour-plus drive, the men tortured the dispensary owner with rubber piping, a Taser and a blowtorch, demanding he give them the $1 million and ignoring his pleas that he didn’t have the money.
When they arrived in the desert, the kidnappers cut off the dispensary owner’s penis. They left him and the woman bounded and drove off.
The dispensary owner survived, though authorities were unable to recover his missing body part.
Investigators ultimately identified Nayeri and the two former classmates at Clovis West High School in Fresno – Kyle Handley and Ryan Kevorkian – as the men believed to have carried out the crimes.
Naomi Rhodus, Kevorkian’s estranged wife, was accused of purchasing the weapons used in the kidnapping and helping to rent the van.
Nayeri, himself a Newport Beach pot grower, fled to Iran. He was persuaded to visit another country where he could be arrested and extradited by his then-wife, Cortney Shegerian. Unbeknownst to Nayeri, she was cooperating with the police.
Matt Murphy, a former senior deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case, said Nayeri “assembled this crew of miscreants to commit this horrible crime. …
“Nayeri is a psychopath,” Murphy said after the sentencing. “He is a truly diabolical criminal.”
While awaiting trial, Nayeri teamed up with two other inmates to lead a daring escape from Orange County jail, cutting through half-inch steel bars to gain entry to plumbing tunnels behind the walls of the central jailhouse in Santa Ana, climbing rungs inside the tunnel to the roof and using a rope of bedsheets to rappel five stories down.
He then kidnapped a taxi driver to get to San Francisco, prosecutors said, spending a little more than a week on the lam until recaptured.
Jurors in Nayeri’s trial were unable to reach a consensus on a mayhem charge – related to the cutting off of the body part – or an enhancement that specified that Nayeri himself carried out the torture.
A lone juror resisted for four days before the jury reached a consensus on the kidnapping and torture charges.
In recent months, an attorney representing Nayeri unsuccessfully argued for a new trial, alleging that the hold-out juror was improperly pressured during deliberations.
Handley, the first to go to trial, was convicted and sentenced to four life terms in prison.
Kevorkian and Rhodus are awaiting trial, though prosecutors say they have been cooperative, were willing to testify against Nayeri if needed, and are likely to reach plea deals.
Nayeri will remain in local lockup for now, before heading off to prison, because he faces a trial for his alleged escape.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said his office will “make sure that every single crime (Nayeri) committed he will pay for.
“There is no one who deserves to die in prison more than Mr. Nayeri,” Spitzer said after the sentencing. “He is literally the poster child for how evil a person can be and still be in this form we call a human figure.”
1 comment:
I thought drugs were victimless crimes.
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