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Twisted, Part III: The Testimony

This is the third in a six-part series.

A marijuana dispensary owner and his roommate are abducted in the middle of the night at gunpoint from their Newport Beach home by three masked men.

Driven to the Mojave Desert while the man was tortured, the disturbing events of that night became known as one of Orange County's most horrific crimes.

Part I: The Kidnapping

Part II: The Investigation

The kidnapping investigation took detectives to a high school friend of Kyle Handley's, the first man arrested in connection with the brutal crime.

Hossein Nayeri's ex-wife, Cortney Shegerian, testified against him and said her former husband was also involved in the crime.

Nayeri denies the allegations against him and his trial is slated to begin next month.

At Handley's trial, Shegerian detailed what she said was an abusive relationship with Nayeri, the months he allegedly spent planning the crime, and his frantic efforts to flee to Iran before he could be arrested.

In 2012, Shergerian said, her ex-husband set aside marijuana dealing — a venture he did not deny during a jailhouse interview with NBC4 — and focused on a new venture: spying on a marijuana dispensary owner he believed to be very wealthy.

Come take a look, Nayeri told his wife one day while looking at a map on his laptop.

"'Why would someone be circling out in the desert?'" Shegerian said he asked her. "Would that be a great place to bury money?"

"Yeah. Sure. Probably," she said she responded.

Shegerian described for the jury odd behavior in the months before the victim was kidnapped and tortured.

Shegerian said Nayeri became obsessed with the surveillance. She said he asked her to search the Internet for the victim's name. She said she rode along with him to locations in Orange and Los Angeles counties where he set up and took down small cameras and affixed GPS devices on cars "to see where they were going."

She said she peeked over Nayeri's shoulder as he pulled up maps that corresponded to GPS tracker locations on his laptop just about every other day.

It was his "100 percent focus," she told the jury.

Shegerian testified as part of a deal with prosecutors that grants her immunity. A lawyer, Shegerian is also under investigation by the State Bar of California for her involvement in the crime.

Two weeks before the kidnapping, Shegerian said, Handley came to the apartment in Newport Beach she shared with Nayeri. She said Nayeri and Handley went into the garage where she heard them laughing while playing with a blowtorch.

She testified she also saw a hard hat that Nayeri had nicked by throwing it on the ground, rolling it around.

"Does that look like it's been worn?" she said he asked her.

Nayeri borrowed her pink stun gun, prosecutors said.

The Pursuit

On Sept. 26, 2012, just days before the kidnapping, Shegerian said she was home alone.

She got a knock at the door in the middle of the night. It was the police.

Her Chevy Tahoe had been in a high-speed pursuit. It was found parked on a tiny street on Balboa Island, nestled in the Newport Bay between the Balboa Peninsula and mainland Newport Beach.

The driver was nowhere to be found. The Tahoe was impounded by police.

She said she lied at the time about who had the SUV.

"I knew Hossein had the car," she said. "I don't think I told them that."

Hours later — at 4 or 5 in the morning — Shegerian got another knock at the door.

It was her husband. He was drenched. She later told investigators that he told her he had been in the pursuit, ditched the Tahoe, and managed to avoid being caught by police by hiding out in the chilly waters of the bay under an overpass.

She said he asked her to go to the police station and file a police report saying the SUV had been stolen, which she did.

If it came back that he was the driver involved in the chase, he would've gone to jail. At the time, he was on felony probation for a vehicular manslaughter conviction in Central California years earlier.

He then asked her to drive him to Handley's house so he could take a nap, Shegerian said.

Burner Phones

On Sept. 29, 2012, Nayeri asked her to buy four burner phones, Shegerian testified.

She said she was instructed to keep one and give the other three to her husband.

That night, before dinner, she said Nayeri was frustrated because Handley was having a problem.

"'Here, can you talk to Kyle?'" she said her husband said as handed one of the phones to her. "'He can’t set up the pay-as-you-go phone. Tell him how to do that.'"

She said she walked Handley through the set up, a short conversation, outlining the instructions laid out in the phone's activation packet.

She said she didn't know who was going to get the fourth phone.

Nayeri told her to make calls from his iPhone, she said.

Oct. 1, 2012

Shegerian said she remembered Oct. 1 well. It was her birthday.

Nayeri was not around, she said. She spent the day making calls and texting herself on his iPhone as he instructed, from their apartment.

He told her to make sure she used his cellphone in the vicinity of the house that night. "So I did," she said.

She said in court that the next time she talked to her husband was the next morning.

"He called me from his pay-as-you-go phone to my pay-as-you-go phone and said that I need to put money in the meter where Kyle's truck was parked," she testified.

She said Handley's Dodge was parked near a restaurant on the Balboa Peninsula, which was about a half-mile away from the location where the kidnapping occurred earlier that morning.

Shegerian found the truck and put money in the meter before she went to her law clerk job in Cerritos.

She talked to him later that day. This time, she said, Nayeri asked her to buy him four more burner phones.

"After I gave him the four new pay-as-you-go phones, he told me to destroy my previous one," she said.

When she got home, Nayeri wasn't there, but she noticed socks in the trash and the apartment was "somewhat disheveled." She said she thought her dog had gotten into it.

She bagged up the trash and disposed of it at a Target store in Costa Mesa, about an eight minute drive from her apartment.

Then she called Nayeri.

"What's going on with this trash? What's happening? These socks were in there," she said she asked him.

"'Oh, you know, those socks,'" she recounted him saying. "'It's good that you threw them away. Those socks are fine, but it's good that you threw them away.'"

After Handley's Arrest

After Handley was arrested, days later, Shegerian said Nayeri was frantic. They immediately saw a lawyer.

Nayeri began destroying documents, phones, a laptop, and "every single electronic in the house," Shegerian said.

"He went through and cleaned out our entire apartment over the course of like four or five days."

He didn't stop there, she said.

Nayeri went to his old pal Handley's house and removed several items, including a flat-screen TV right off the wall. He also took a Tiffany watch, Shegerian said.

Nayeri said he was going to Iran and told Shegerian to sell the items so he could have spending money while he was abroad.

"Anything that he could take with him, he took," she said.

When investigators learned the Tahoe was still in impound after the kidnapping, they got a search warrant and found mini cameras, GPS trackers and magnets that allow someone to affix the trackers onto metal like on a car. On the cameras, detectives discovered hundreds of hours of footage. In one video, police saw the victim walking from his shop to his truck, prosecutors said.

According to court documents, police found a cellphone containing emails with receipts for the equipment dating back to March 2012. The equipment had been shipped to Handley's Fountain Valley home, officials said.

Police ramped up their hunt for Nayeri.

Part IV: The Manhunt 

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