This is the fourth 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.
Eight days after Kyle Handley was arrested in connection with the horrifying kidnapping and torture of a medical marijuana dispensary owner, his close friend and high school pal, Hossein "Adam" Nayeri, flew to Iran, Nayeri's ex-wife Cortney Shegerian said.
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In court documents, she said Nayeri told her he had no intention of returning to the United States. She said he wouldn't have been able to come back anyway. He wasn't a United States citizen and his green card had expired.
This December, Shegerian testified against Handley, who was later convicted of kidnapping, torture and mayhem in connection with the case.
Nayeri is scheduled to go to trial in March for his alleged role in the crime. He denies any involvement. Handley's attorney, Robert Weinberg, said he's appealing the judgment.
In court, Shegerian described what she said were her initial attempts to cover for her then-husband and protect him from police inquiries. She later had what a prosecutor called a "come-to-Jesus moment" and made the ultimate decision to cooperate with local and federal authorities in a dangerous and delicate ruse to lure Nayeri out of hiding overseas.
Not Talking
In the spring of 2013, Newport Beach police notified Shegerian that she could pick up her Chevrolet Tahoe, still in a police impound yard months after it had been involved in a police pursuit.
Shortly after she'd been notified about that chase, she lied to police about who the driver was when officers came to her door and she filed a false police report claiming it had been stolen, prosecutors said.
She had even refused to give police Nayeri's cellphone number in connection with the pursuit investigation, telling an officer she was a law student who had "learned not to trust the police because 'they lie,'" Newport Beach police Detective Peter Carpentieri wrote in court documents.
She later changed course, telling police Nayeri told her he'd been behind the wheel during that chase and said in court that he told her to file a false police report. If it came back that he was the driver in the pursuit, he would have gone to jail. At the time, he was on probation for a vehicular manslaughter conviction in Central California years earlier.
At the police station, she signed a release saying she was the person responsible for the items found inside the SUV — phones, small cameras and GPS trackers, all considered evidence in the kidnapping plot.
In April 2013, when Newport Beach police Detective Ryan Peters tried questioning her about her husband at the police station, Shegerian wouldn't talk.
"I was not cooperative in any sort of way," Shegerian testified at Handley's trial.
So police took another tack. They called her father.
"We had a great conversation," said Peters, testifying in Handley's trial.
During that call, Peters broke the news to Mr. Shegerian that his daughter was married to Nayeri. She had kept her relationship with Nayeri a secret from her family.
He wasn't happy.
Ever since that call, he said, the relationship between police and Shegerian has been good, in a major breakthrough for investigators looking to piece together the mystery surrounding her then-husband.
Shegerian and Nayeri had been in an off-and-on relationship for 10 years after meeting in the summer of 2003 at a Mimi's Cafe in Fresno. He was a 24-year-old server and she was a 16-year-old high school student.
He was physically abusive, she testified in court. It started with smaller things like pushing. Then it grew into "full-fledged violence." She said he beat her between 60 and 70 times in the time they were together. Neighbors would hear. Property managers would call the police, she said. She called police once to respond to their home.
By January 2011, she said, Nayeri had become extremely violent, "just beating me up every single day."
She said police once went to her house to check on her after Nayeri had been seen walking around Irvine, "kind of discombobulated with a knife being threatening." Days later she went to the police, pressed charges and Nayeri was arrested, she said.
"I just couldn't take it anymore," she said. "I was so afraid."
She hid what a prosecutor said was a "very sick, dysfunctional" relationship from her family.
"Hossein had made me feel I couldn't trust them," she said.
Cooperating with law enforcement meant putting herself in danger, she said. "I was terrified of him." But she was also facing serious charges, "classic aiding and abetting" in a case that carried a life sentence, prosecutors said.
"My frame of mind started changing," Shegerian said.
She started seeing a therapist and hired a criminal attorney, and she eventually told detectives everything she said could remember about her involvement before, during and after the crime.
The Lure
Police realized Shegerian was more than a witness. She could be the lure to coax Nayeri out of Iran.
She agreed.
She waited until Nayeri emailed her so that it didn't look suspicious. She had told him that she had been contacted by law enforcement.
She said it took a while for Nayeri to warm up, but eventually they talked.
By May 2013, she was saving his emails and recording every phone and Skype call to turn over to police.
Meanwhile, Newport Beach police, Orange County prosecutors and the FBI were calling authorities overseas to find a country willing to help to catch Nayeri.
They settled on the Czech Republic. They came up with a plan to fly him there, with Shegerian as their go-between.
She started hanging out with Nayeri's sister. She went to Nayeri's uncle's funeral. She made plans with Nayeri's sister to travel to Barcelona and have Nayeri meet them there to celebrate Shegerian's graduation from law school.
She mailed Nayeri travel documents, arranged through her law enforcement handlers, so he could enter the European Union.
The ruse had to look real enough that he'd feel comfortable. It had to be believable enough so that Nayeri's sister, who was kept in the dark, would go along.
Shegerian packed $20,000 in cash that her parents gave her and flew to Spain with Nayeri's sister, all under law enforcement direction and supervision.
"He was going to get some money, some electronics and some fun," said Heather Brown, an Orange County senior deputy district attorney.
Not all of Shegerian's law enforcement handlers were confident that she'd pull it off.
"On multiple occasions, many people, including myself, said they thought you were going to tip him off," Matt Murphy, a veteran prosecutor, told Shegerian during her testimony in Handley's trial.
But she didn't.
Nayeri was arrested Nov. 7, 2013, after getting off a plane at Václav Havel Airport in Prague, where he thought he was going to make a connecting flight to Barcelona. He was met by Czech authorities, US Marshals, and FBI agents from "Project Welcome Home," a unit that helps U.S. authorities capture fugitives abroad.
Prosecutors and police, who'd worked for a year tracking him down, were thrilled.
"I have never been more ecstatic in my entire career," said Brown, a 20-year veteran.
More Arrests
Two others were arrested in the case: Ryan Kevorkian, the third suspected kidnapper, and his ex-wife, Naomi Rhodus.
In the months leading to his arrest, two plainclothes Newport Beach detectives followed Kevorkian into a 24-Hour Fitness in Palmdale. While playing pickup basketball and doing their own workout, the officers kept their eyes on him as he did squats and leg presses with heavy weights. Kevorkian was a former Clovis West High School wrestler with Nayeri.
In the bathroom, Kevorkian wiped his hands on a towel, set it on the counter and walked out of the gym. The plainclothes cops scooped up the towel, put it into a bag and sent it to the crime lab for DNA testing.
Police said Kevorkian's DNA matched physical evidence from the investigation, found on a zip tie in a trash bag at Handley's Fountain Valley home.
Kevorkian is a former California correctional officer. His father is a retired deputy commissioner for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Ryan Kevorkian reportedly resigned from his correctional officer job in 2010 under the shadow of suspicion after an inmate became impregnated at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla where he worked, according to Eric Schweitzer, the attorney for Kevorkian's ex-wife, Rhodus.
A spokesman for the CDCR confirmed Kevorkian worked at the facility as a corrections officer, but did not disclose whether he had any complaints about improper sexual relationships with inmates or the reason he left the department, citing peace officer privacy laws.
Ryan Kevorkian's attorney declined to comment for this story about his client's actions on the job or the kidnapping and torture allegations.
Rhodus is not suspected participating in the kidnapping or torture. She's accused of buying the surveillance equipment through a phony email account as well as supplying the guns and renting the van used in the crime.
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She also went to high school with Nayeri, Kevorkian, Handley and Shegerian. She later worked as a budtender, trimming marijuana for Handley and Nayeri when they were in the pot business together, prosecutors said.
She got a friend to rent the white Ford Econoline panel van on Sept. 25, 2012 that was later used by the kidnappers as a "rolling torture chamber," prosecutors said.
It was returned on Oct. 3, 2012, a day after the crime.
She bought a Glock semi-automatic pistol on March 7, 2012 in Fresno and returned it on Oct. 24, 2012, less than three weeks after the crime, prosecutors said.
From her storage locker in Fresno, detectives seized ammunition and a 12-gauge pump-action pistol grip shotgun, a "big gun that makes big holes," said Murphy, the Orange County Senior deputy district attorney who prosecuted Handley and has been involved in the investigation for years.
Prosecutors said Rhodus also traveled to Turkey at least once with $10,000 cash for Nayeri while he was on the run.
Schweitzer, Rhodus' lawyer, said his client was coerced into providing guns and the van.
"It appears that Mr. Nayeri fed my client various lines of baloney in order to get his way," Schweitzer said. "Recent events indicate that this is a pattern with him. He gets people around him to give him whatever he needs at the moment. He does this through sympathy, intimidation, or a combination of both. She had no idea what the stuff was being used for."
He told her he needed the van to move, Schweitzer said. He needed the guns for protection. He had her order surveillance equipment because he was afraid his wife was cheating on him, the lawyer said.
"He's got a line for everything," Schweitzer said.
The whole group were friends. They'd gone to high school together.
Nayeri was the godfather to Kevorkian's first child and was best man at Ryan and Naomi's wedding.
A Nazi Prison
After his capture in the Czech Republic, Nayeri spent more than 10 months in a cell at Pankrác Prison in Prague, which once housed the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation, while awaiting extradition to the United States.
Nayeri said in an interview with NBC4 that nobody spoke English and he communicated with hand signals. He described his experience like something out of "The Twilight Zone."
While there, Nayeri got a package from his wife — she wanted a divorce.
She claimed their marriage was void because Nayeri had already been married to a woman in Iran at the time he married Shegerian on June 25, 2010. Their marriage was eventually dissolved by a California court on grounds of bigamy.
Nayeri was extradited to the U.S. on Sept. 14, 2014. He was escorted in handcuffs by U.S. Marshals on a 9-hour flight from the Czech Republic to New York.
In New York, he was met by Detective Peters and his partner, who escorted Nayeri on the last leg of the journey. Nayeri had a window seat next to Peters. Nayeri stared out the window without saying a word to Peters the entire 4-hour flight back to Southern California, the detective later said.
Catching Nayeri was a big coup for the veteran detective, his department and Orange County prosecutors — but the case was far from over.
