The daughter of Bob Lee, the tech executive whose fatal stabbing nearly two years ago sent shock waves through Silicon Valley and stoked debate about violent crime in San Francisco, said she felt her “stomach drop” during the dramatic end to the trial of her father’s accused killer.
After seven days of deliberations, a jury in December acquitted tech consultant Nima Momeni of first-degree murder in Lee’s April 4, 2023, killing.
“I felt a ringing in my ear,” Scout Lee, 16, told “Dateline” in her first interview about her father’s death and the murder trial. “I just felt so overwhelmed.”
“I grabbed onto my mom’s hand and squeezed it and cried,” she added.
Scout — who described herself as her father’s “mini me” — said she felt some relief when, moments after the acquittal was announced, Momeni was convicted of the lesser crime of second-degree murder.
“But I don’t know if it was the type of justice that I wanted,” she said, adding that in her view, prosecutors had presented overwhelming evidence that the murder was premeditated.
The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office accused Momeni, 40, of committing the murder after his sister told him she’d been sexually assaulted by a man who Lee introduced her to.
That man, Jeremy Boivin, was never charged in the alleged assault. In his first interview since the trial, Boivin denied the allegation to “Dateline” and said he never assaulted Momeni’s sister, Khazar Momeni.
During the trial, which began in October, Momeni testified that he was defending himself when he mortally wounded Lee. He faces a prison term of 16 years to life and plans to appeal his conviction.
Momeni’s sentencing is set for May 16.
A night of partying turns deadly
Lee, 43, founded the popular money transfer service Cash App and was an executive at Square and Mobile Coin. He was stabbed three times with a paring knife under the Bay Bridge, east of downtown San Francisco. One of the wounds punctured his heart, San Francisco Police Sgt. Brent Dittmer told “Dateline.”
Lee called 911 around 2:30 a.m. and asked for help dozens of times before collapsing in front of a nearby apartment building, according to audio of the call and security video. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
In the aftermath of Lee’s death, some — including Elon Musk — blamed the killing on what they described as out-of-control violent crime in San Francisco. (The city saw a rise in homicides in 2020 and 2021, though that number has since fallen to a near-historic low.)
Authorities rejected the assertion — San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins called it “reckless and irresponsible” — and said the killing had been done by someone Lee knew.
At trial, prosecutors said that Momeni was furious after his sister alleged that she’d been assaulted during a small get-together at Boivin’s apartment on April 3. Khazar Momeni, who’d been friends with Lee for nearly a decade, testified that the alleged assault occurred while she was high on cocaine, LSD and GHB, a depressant linked to date rape and sexual assaults.
She testified that Boivin slapped her butt while her pants were down and she was unable to move.
Boivin did not testify at Momeni’s trial. In an interview, he acknowledged that he smacked her bottom but said he’d done so “casually.” He and Khazar Momeni had a physical relationship for months after that event, Boivin said.
“So her saying these allegations is just baseless and really unfounded,” he told “Dateline.”
After the alleged assault, Khazar Momeni testified, she told her brother about what she said happened.
A tense phone call between Nima Momeni and Lee followed. The call was overheard by a friend of Lee’s who later described the conversation to authorities.
“He is interrogating Bob,” San Francisco Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai told “Dateline.” “He is questioning him about what was happening” at the apartment.
In the hours after the call, Lee met with Nima and Khazar Momeni at her home. At trial, prosecutors accused Nima Momeni of taking a paring knife from his sister’s kitchen, where investigators later found the same brand of blade used in Lee’s killing.
Authorities had found the 3 ½-inch knife after following a blood trail from the apartment building where Lee collapsed to a fence a half-block away, Dittmer said. The blade was on the other side of the fence.
Momeni’s defense team described Lee’s death as an act of self-defense prompted by Lee’s drug-fueled bender.
Momeni testified that he’d initially been upset about his sister’s allegation of sexual assault, but after speaking with several people who’d been at Boivin’s apartment, he said he came to believe her account was likely an exaggeration. After he met with Lee at his sister’s place, Momeni testified, the two planned on hanging out together at a strip club.
They did cocaine together, Momeni testified, and while en route to the club, Momeni said Lee spilled a beer he’d been drinking. After pulling over to clean up the mess, Momeni testified, Lee found “whippit” canisters in the back seat and began inhaling nitrous-oxide.
When Lee said he thought he was going to throw up, Momeni ribbed Lee, asking the executive why he was going out to strip clubs instead of being with his family at home, Momeni testified.
“That’s when the conversation went from normal to adversarial,” Momeni’s lawyer, Saam Zangeneh, told “Dateline.”
According to Momeni’s account, the comment enraged Lee, who was divorced and living in Miami but visiting San Francisco. Momeni testified that Lee lunged at him with a knife, prompting Momeni to grab Lee’s arm and accidentally push the blade toward his chest.
Momeni testified that he left the scene believing Lee was fine.
The pain of the courtroom
Scout attended parts of the trial and described it as agonizing. The audio from her father’s 911 call, she said, “just keeps ringing in my head.”
Her older brother, Sirius Lee, believed he could handle seeing high-resolution security video of his father collapsing.
“I’m pretty strong when it comes to just not showing emotions,” he said. “The more and more I had to sit through that, the more and more I felt like I was going to genuinely pass out.”
Sirius knew about his father’s drug use, he said, but it never made him feel unsafe.
Scout was less aware of Lee’s vices, she said, and it was hard to see him portrayed in a manner at odds with the person she’d always known.
“He wasn’t just some party animal that was going out like every single night,” she said. “He was my dad.”
To her, Lee was a dedicated father who always helped with homework and had an approach to parenting that made her feel safe and calm. His death had been especially hard, she said, because in the days before he was stabbed, he’d traveled to San Francisco to see her perform in a play.
“That was one of the biggest roles that I ever had,” she said. “And he was just hugging me and congratulating me on doing a good job.”
“That was the last time I ever saw him,” she said.
