Dateline NBC - The Ultimate Betrayal

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

After Tahereh Ghassemi disappears from the Louisiana home she shares with her adult son, detectives discover an astonishing plot with international implications. Andrea Canning reports.

Tonight, on Dateline. I go inside and I see the rice burning on the stove. I went through the house. She wasn't home. I called her phone. It was off. My mind goes to the worst place possible. They said, we found your mom's car burnt. And I said, what? That's a heavy, heavy phone call.

Very, very heavy. You are discovering this tense relationship. Correct, yes, based on text messages. Messages like, leave me the F alone. Yes. She called to tell me that I feel like someone is following me. Our minds are churning.

These Google coordinates led you pretty far out of town. They actually led us to a remote area. This was a game changer, what you discovered here. 100%. They're wearing masks. They grabbed her and they wrestled her. At that moment, all the world came crashing down.

This was an evil act. Heartbreaking. A buried secret, a savage attack, and a sinister saga stretching halfway across the world. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Andrea Canning with The Ultimate Betrayal. On the banks of the Mississippi River, an only-in-America story of hard work, ambition, and financial reward.

But percolating just beneath the surface, this success story had a dark side. Money, power, and greed. This is one twisted family drama. From beginning to end of it. Before the ending, with all its horror and heartbreak, there was a simple dilemma. A son trying to get out of dinner with his mom. I got a text message from her that said, you know, I'm going to be cooking kebabs tonight. What time are you coming home? I said, I'm still at work. Not sure. Hamed Ghasemi and his mother Tahira lived together in a comfortable house in one of Baton Rouge's better neighborhoods, a long way from their native Iran. Tahira was a doting mom who often cooked for her adult son.

She expected him to be home. A lot. But for a 38-year-old man, all that attention could be smothering. It was to the point that I was feeling like my mom wanted me to just work and come and stay at the house and do nothing else. So on the night of April 11, 2015, Hamed decided to blow off dinner. Instead, he met friends for drinks at a daiquiri bar, then later went out for sushi. What time did you come home? I didn't come home till later on. And when he pulled into the driveway, something didn't seem right because her car wasn't there. Hamed says he went inside and found a pot of rice cooking on the stove, but no sign of his mother. Most people do not leave hot pots on a burning stove. Under the thing

was very, very low. So I kind of thought about it and I said, okay, maybe she left without turning the pot off. He turned off the stove and looked around. What about her phone,

her wallet, her purse? I didn't look for any of those at the time. I called her phone. It was off. I went through the house. Everything was, you know, where it's supposed to be except for my bed cover, which she had told me that she was going to go be buying me a new bed cover. So it's missing.

So it's missing. He says it wouldn't have been the first time his mother spent the night at a girlfriend's house. He figured maybe that's where she went. So you're not in a huge panic. He says it wouldn't have been the first time his mother spent the night at a girlfriend's house. He figured maybe that's where she went. So you're not in a huge panic at this point that your mom's not there? No. The next morning, Hamed still hadn't heard from her. That's when he noticed her purse was in the house.

He says she never went anywhere without it. Did you try calling your mom again? Not till that afternoon. And then it didn't, no answer. So I called her work and they said, oh yeah, Ms. Sahara, she was here. Okay. So you're thinking she's fine. She's fine. She's just mad because, you know, I didn't come home last night on time.

So she's not answering me. But when she didn't come home again that night, he says he finally started to worry. He called her friends. None of them had any idea where Tahira might be. So the following morning, he drove to the Walmart where his mother worked. I went to her work at 5.45 in the morning, and, you know, I asked to check the schedule, and the manager comes in, and I say, hey, you know, I called yesterday, and you all told me my mom was at work, and I haven't heard from her. And they went through the record, and they said no. So she really hadn't been there. So she hadn't been to work. So it was a mistake. That gives me chills that this whole time you're thinking she's fine,

and you got some bad information. Yes. Right away, I contacted the police, and the police came to my house. Captain Todd Morris of the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Department would become the lead investigator. He focused on the fact that Tahira's car was missing, a 2004 blue Jaguar. Are you thinking that maybe someone stole her car? Well, it could have been. She could have been a victim of an armed robbery or carjacking. But after a quick look around, he decided that didn't make sense.

Why would she leave her purse? Why would she leave her identification? Okay, if she was driving her vehicle, the personal items that you would normally take with you when you leave to go visit a friend or go to the store. Ahmed told the investigator he hadn't seen his mom since Saturday morning. And now it was Monday. Did you feel like two days was a lot to wait to call the police? Well, it's kind of unusual if you have a close relationship with your mother. Are alarm bells going off for you as an investigator with everything you're seeing and hearing? Yeah,

things were not adding up in our mind of what happened here, what could have happened to Miss Kissimmee. Morris entered the missing woman's car into the police database, and within a few hours, police had their first real break in the case. The night before, Tahira's blue Jaguar was discovered abandoned in an industrial part of town. And that wasn't all. At 2 o'clock in the morning, we have her vehicle that was burned up. The car had been torched, but was she in it? Tahira Ghasemi's missing car had been found, but in a condition that alarmed the investigators who were searching for her. We have her vehicle that was burned up, you know,

six or seven miles from her residence at two o'clock in the morning. Was her body in the vehicle? No, it was not. Something has gone wrong with this. Something bad had happened, but still no sign of Tahira. To find her, they needed to know a lot more about her. Hamed describes his mother as both traditional and adventurous. She loved mountain climbing when she was back home. She was actually the head of mountain climbing of the city of Bam for the women's division.

Good mountains in Iran? Beautiful mountains in Iran. And she climbed just about all of them. Tahira had married young. She was already pregnant when her husband left Iran to study in the U.S. She named their baby Hamed in honor of his father, Hamid. My whole childhood was always me wondering, where is my dad? Where is my dad? Was it the family's belief that your dad would eventually bring both of you over to America?

The whole time, yes. But that was complicated and time-consuming. Hamed was 18 years old by the time his father secured a visa and moved him to Baton Rouge. Another 10 years went by before Hamed became a U.S. citizen and was able to bring his mother here. She climbed the biggest mountain by coming to America. That was a mountain bring his mother here. She climbed the biggest mountain by coming to America. That was a mountain to climb. Definitely.

She was very persistent to do something. Good friend and fellow Iranian immigrant Aisha Ismail said Tahira was determined to grab a small piece of the American dream. She quickly mastered English and found a job at Walmart. Anything she put her mind to it, she was very smart. She really worked her way up at Walmart. She did, yeah. She really was a hard worker. The marriage that had been long distance for two decades didn't survive the transition. Tahira and her husband broke up. But she soldiered on, got a promotion, became a manager at Walmart, and hoped to one day start her own business. She loved cooking, but she was best at baking.

And she said, this is my dream that one day I would open my own bakery. Tahira often brought her pastries to Aisha's gatherings. Every time I had a party, she was there. She would spend the night, and then we would, me and her, we would sleep in the living room. You two were like girls, like sleepover. Exactly. Did you see Tahira as kind of a sister? Yes, I would say so.

Now, Tahira was missing, and police were talking to the person closest to her, her son. You also are discovering this tense relationship between mother and son. Correct, yes. The single mother had apparently grown dependent, even possessive of her only child. I could say they didn't get along as much, you know, because they were two different generations.

When Ahmed had a date, she had a problem with it. She told me many times, like, I don't like it. I said, well, he's grown up. He can make his choices. He's going to date someone. The tension was evident when police looked at Ahmed's phone. Just the day before Tahira disappeared, he'd sent her a text in Farsi, cursing her out. We're talking about text messages like, leave me the F alone, I'm moving out.

Yes. I mean, they were really butting heads. Yeah, there was definitely tension between he and his mother, and so we were trying to figure out what is the issue here between him and his mom. Captain Morris still wondered why Hamed had not called the police sooner. You think she may be at a friend's, and then you start checking up and calling friends, and then you steal away.

What did Hamed tell you as far as what he did that night after he came home and realized his mom was missing? Well, he said that he returned home from work, that he didn't go anywhere, he stayed at the residence. But you come to learn that's not true. Yeah, as we went back over his timeline and started questioning him more. And when they did, a crack in his story emerged.

Turns out, when Hamed talked to investigators, he'd left something out. He didn't tell them that once he realized his mother wasn't at home, his night of partying continued. So he went back out? He went back out, yes, he did. Captain Morris wasn't sure what to make of that, or if it had anything to do with the missing woman. Still. That's always very concerning to us when we catch him in mistruths. Detectives now considered Hamed to be a person of interest. We want to kind of really lock him in on his timeline and verify everything that he had

originally told us once we had the cooperating documents and support from the cell phone records, the interview of the friends, and just make sure there's nothing else that was missing. And there was something else, something big that investigators learned Hamed had not told them right away. Just recently, after years of living separate lives, Hamed's mother and father had finally divorced and Tahira had come into money. A lot of it. We were thinking, okay, who has the most to gain now from the recent settlement from the divorce and the money? And of course, the first person would be in line for that would be Hamed, the son. And detectives were about to uncover an important piece of video that would have them asking what the son could tell them about this.

We could see the silhouette of a driver in that vehicle. Hamed Ghasemi at first told police he'd come home and stayed home on the night his mother Tahira went missing. But investigators quickly realized that wasn't the whole story. Why lie to the police? Because I didn't want my mom to find out that I went back out and be more upset that I went out when I knew that she wasn't home. He doesn't deny there was tension in the mother-son relationship. Was she smothering you? A lot. A lot. It was just a constant fight.

So the police are seeing a possible motive here. Right. That she's controlling, you know, maybe you got tired of that and took care of it and also had a financial gain. Right. You know, you would be the one to get all of it and also had a financial gain. Right. You would be the one to get all of the money that she just got from your dad. Right. Well, you want to hear something funny? I didn't know that.

I had no idea that I was going to be getting the money. But you're her son. Where else would it go? I didn't know the laws here or how they worked. Either way, police now considered Hamed a person of interest, and he knew it. Was it tense? It was nerve-wracking, but I knew I had nothing to do with it, so I wasn't, you know, at all worried about me. I was just worried about finding my mom.

As police grilled him, he mentioned something that happened just a few weeks earlier. He said he'd been at his favorite daiquiri bar and stepped outside to get something from his car. As he left the vehicle, two men jumped him so quickly he didn't see their faces. I got attacked in a parking lot and I went to the hospital and received probably about 14 or 15 stitches in the back of my head. In fact, he said the reason his mom planned to buy him a new comforter was that his wounds had bled on the old one. Detectives had to consider the possibility that someone was targeting the family. Tahira's friend Aisha remembered something eerie she'd recently told her.

She said, I feel like somebody's following me. I thought she was imagining. You felt like she was being dramatic like somebody's following me. I thought it was, she was imagining. You felt like she was being dramatic. Yes, that's what I thought. Now she believed her friend was right, and investigators discovered something that supported that theory. We were checking some businesses on the backside of her residence. They have several offices, office complexes there, and so we began looking at video systems there. Security camera footage captured this Chevy Tahoe in a parking lot on the other side of the fence from Tahira's backyard. The timestamp was from the night she disappeared.

It pulled into the area there and turned off its lights. And so we said, okay, who is this? Can you see faces in the vehicle? Can you get a license plate? We cannot get a license plate. We could see the silhouette of a driver in that vehicle. When detectives asked Hamed about the Chevy Tahoe, he said he'd never seen it before. Police took a screenshot and posted it on the local Crimestoppers site. Almost right away, they seemed to strike gold. They're looking for this Z71 packaged Tahoe, and that's our Tahoe that we traded. I know that's the car. Baton Rouge car dealers Tommy Brignac and Zeke Avsi immediately recognized the Tahoe.

It was a 2002 model with unique features. The Z71 has fender flares, running boards, different wheels. So that's what made it distinctive. You stuck out like a unicorn. What are you thinking? Our minds are churning. We actually went to the sheriff's office together to report, look, this may be our vehicle that we actually have in our inventory.

But here was the detail that caught the attention of investigators. They knew that Tahira's ex-husband owned a luxury car dealership in town called Import One. And that's the dealership where Tommy and Zeke worked. Now we have a vehicle identified as coming from Import One owned by Hamid Ghasemi. And so we need to get some more information here. Lots of people in the sheriff's office already knew about Hamid Ghasemi. He was popular and admired in Baton Rouge, the embodiment of the immigrant success story. I find it pretty remarkable that you can move here

from Iran with no money. Yes. And then ending up opening a car dealership. Yes, yes. Hard work. When Hamid arrived in Baton Rouge in the 80s, he had little money, but a lot of ambition. He opened up a little small pizza shop. Rainbow Pizza. People really liked it. They really did. Soon, the industrious entrepreneur began offering customers more than what was on the menu.

He took that money from the pizza store, started buying cars. And selling them right outside of the store. It wasn't long before he left the pizza business altogether and opened a dealership. What kind of cars are we talking about? Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi. If you sell good cars in a very small town like Baton Rouge, everybody talked. We had like 15 employees and we went from selling 30 to about 65, 75 cars a month. He was very personable with all his clients. They would oftentimes let me take cars home, and I'd keep them for a day, just figure out what I really wanted. Louisiana State Representative Denise Marcel not only bought several cars from Hamid, they became friends.

Hamid knew she was an enthusiastic churchgoer. Hamid used to send you scripture every day? Yes. I thought it was very nice. And it would help me during the day a lot of times. Detectives headed over to Import 1 to see if they could find that Tahoe from the security video. Hamid told his staff to help them look through the inventory, but the vehicle was gone. The Tahoe that employees Tommy and Zeke remembered had recently been sold at auction. Tahira's ex told Captain Morris he was praying for her safe return and added the investigator

to his prayer circle. He started sending me his morning prayers after our initial contact. It would not be their last contact. A mysterious phone call was about to bring the detective closer to finding Tahira. That phone call stuck out because that number was not on any of the family members' phones. It's inevitable that detectives looking for a missing woman would get around to looking at her ex-husband. And after investigators learned about a possible connection between that suspicious SUV behind Tahira's house

and her ex's car lot, they dug in. It didn't take long to find out that Tahira and Hamid's relationship had a complicated history. Remember he'd left her behind in Iran years earlier to study in the U.S. with the promise of bringing her over once he was settled? She had dreamed for herself

that she would come in here with her husband and a child in one house. But once here, he married an American woman and became a U.S. citizen, a secret he kept from his family in Iran. Then he divorced that wife and started dating a woman at work

named Heather Rangeley. He kept that relationship a secret, too. We were living together. You know, I would answer the phone. They would call at least once a month for sure. This time, he'd been telling them that I was the maid. For years, Hamid made excuses for not arranging Tahira's move to the U.S.

That responsibility fell on her son. The only reason that I stayed in the United States was to be able to bring her to America because I knew that was her only dream at that point. By then it was 2005 and her husband was married to yet another woman. Aisha says it was a shock when Tahira finally realized he never really wanted her here. When she came, she found out that he was married.

Oh, that must have been so hard for her. It was. She was so heartbroken. That wasn't the auto dealer's only strained relationship. His son worked for him at the dealership when he was younger, and the two fought bitterly. He had no problem whacking him across his face in front of everybody. I remember talking to my mom on the phone and the phone bill being expensive one month, and he took it out of my paycheck. By the time his parents were divorcing, Hamed says he was firmly in his mother's camp.

I just wanted my mom to get what she was deserving and nothing else. My mom asked him from day one for $1,500 a month alimony, a car and a place to stay. That wasn't a lot to ask for. Attorney Tommy Gibbs represented Tahira in the divorce. He just didn't want to give her a nickel. The divorce dragged on for close to eight years. Hamid objected to the proceedings on novel grounds.

He claimed they shouldn't be considered married at all. His initial defense was they could not be legally married because they were first cousins and under Louisiana law, first cousins cannot and under Louisiana law, first cousins cannot marry. In Iran, there's no such law, and it's not unusual for relatives to marry each other. That particular issue had to go all the way up to the Louisiana Supreme Court before it was

finally decided. They recognized that a marriage that took place legally in another country or state or whatever it might be is recognized under Louisiana law. So in early 2015, three months before Tahira went missing, Hamid was ordered to give her more than a million dollars as well as two properties. He told detectives looking into his ex-wife's disappearance that he'd had nothing to do with her since. But Captain Todd Morris wasn't so sure. You subpoenaed Hamid's cell records? Yes, ma'am. Yeah, we subpoenaed his cell phone. We kind of wanted to see who he was communicating with. One call jumped out.

It came into Hamid's phone just after midnight on the night Tahira disappeared and lasted only 17 seconds. When detectives traced it, they learned it was from a man named Tyler Ashbaugh. That phone call stuck out because that number was not on any of the family members' phones. You needed to find out who this Tyler was. We needed to see what Tyler's connection was to Hamid. Tyler was 20 years old and raised in Wisconsin,

but after being kicked out of school, he'd come to Baton Rouge to live with relatives. Captain Morris couldn't find any connection between the two men. Still, something was bothering him. He wanted to know more. We wanted, you know, a more detailed look of where his phone may have been located at on the night of the disappearance. Because is it a fluke call? Is it a missed call? Because it's only one time.

And so we needed to look at that more because that was very interesting. Investigators probed Tyler's electronic footprint, his calls and internet searches. It would be his Google Maps history on the night of Tahira's disappearance that caught their attention. These Google coordinates led you pretty far out of town. Yes, ma'am, they did. This is Highway Louisiana 16 that comes out of Livingston Parish into St. Helena Parish.

So you can tell this is a very remote area. We're in the middle of nowhere. It was a popular area for deer hunters. As investigators explored the trails, they noticed something scattered on the ground. There was some small pieces of, like, cotton, polyester stuffing. Because we know often bodies are wrapped in blankets, carpets, comforters. Correct.

Captain Morris remembered that comforter missing from Hamed's bed. They thought that, hey, this could be the insides of the material of the comforter. And so they followed it and they come to an area. The trail of cotton led to a patch of ground that looked recently disturbed. And it was rectangular in shape and it had sunken some like it had been, you know, fairly freshly dug. Then they said, man, is this a grave? Morris stuck his fingers in the dirt and started digging. I just put the shovel down and really just started removing the soil with my hands. This was a game changer, what you discovered here. 100 percent. 100%.

Tahira Ghasemi had been missing for close to six weeks, and now police had come upon a shallow grave on the outskirts of town. As Captain Todd Morris dug through the soil on his hands and knees, he felt something soft. We see a comforter, and it's the description of the comforter which is missing from the residence. And then we realized that there is a human body in this that ended up being a Miss Kissimmee.

The detective's missing persons case was now officially a homicide investigation. How was it determined that she died? Two gunshot wounds to her head. Captain Morris needed to talk to Tyler Ashbaugh immediately. It was his phone that led them to Tahereh. Morris tracked him down and brought him into the sheriff's office. He denied his involvement. I don't want you talking about I wasn't there.

I don't know Miss Kissimmee. And I tried to develop a rapport with him. Then eventually, you know, he admitted to his involvement in the abduction and kidnapping and killing of Ms. Kissimmee. He confessed? He confessed. He admitted to kidnapping and shooting Tahira, and he had not acted alone.

We knew he was not by himself, and we need to find out what other suspects are with him. So Morris took him back to the beginning, to the morning of the murder. Tyler said a teenage friend of his named Skyler Williams reached out about making some quick cash. I think, wow, $10,000, you know, that's a lot of money. The job was a murder for hire. He and his friend went to a nearby Home Depot to pick up supplies. We recovered video of him and Skyler walking into the Home Depot where they purchased some rope and a box utility cutting knife. Then, later that day, the two met up with the man who'd recruited Skyler for the job.

His name was Daniel Richter. Did you look into his history? Yes, he had done some time for a rape. Tyler knew nothing about that. He told investigators he was just thinking about the payday. He said Daniel Richter drove them over to Tahara's house that night. They brought a.22 caliber pistol and a syringe full of insulin. East Baton Rouge Assistant District Attorney Dana Cummings had joined the case. She says Richter dropped off Tyler and Skyler and they hid in the driveway. They're wearing masks. Apparently, Tejera went to her car to get something out and at that point in time, they grabbed her. They'd muffle her mouth and bring her back into the kitchen area.

Richter joined them inside. Tahira tried to escape, but she was no match for the three men. They'd injected her with whatever it was that they had to inject her with, and she was unconscious on the floor. At that point, they wrapped her up in hamed's comforter and loaded her in the back of her own car which was a jaguar the men headed down the rural highway toward the site where tahara was found they opened the trunk of the car and she is moaning so no she's still alive. And that's when Tyler takes the.22 and shoots Miss Kissimmee in the head. Investigators say the killers then headed to a bowling alley to get paid.

The money was coming from a person Daniel Richter referred to as the old man. But he wasn't there, so Daniel borrowed Tyler's phone and made that 17-second call. The old man said he wanted the three to come to him. And they went to his residence where he paid them the $10,000. The old man, no surprise, was Hamid Ghasemi. If he and the hired guns had been trying to communicate on the down-low, that one call from Tyler's phone had been a major screw-up. That phone call unraveled a diabolical murder plot.

That phone call, one phone call, unraveled his whole plot to get away with killing his ex-wife. Tyler said that after they got paid, Hamid had one more request. He also gave them a gas can and told them to go burn the car. And we had also located some

video from that area. You can see the vehicle engulfed in flames. As for Daniel Richter. Daniel Richter ended up being one of the mechanics at Import One. Import One, Hamid Ghasemi's dealership. Prosecutors learned that Daniel had been spending a lot of time with Hamid and trying hard to impress him. Here he is, you know, he's got a felony conviction. He's got this job there, but this is his opportunity to be, in his eyes, taken care of by this man who has all these resources in this great business. It was Richter who'd taken the Tahoe from the dealership and parked it in the lot just behind Tahira's house. Now, in a span of just nine hours, Captain Morris had a body and a confession.

And with that, Hamid, along with his three alleged accomplices, were arrested for Tahira Ghasemi's murder. A detective called Tahira's son. It had unraveled so fast that Hamid learned both pieces of news at once. His mother was dead and father under arrest. Oh my goodness. So that's a heavy, heavy phone call. Very, very heavy. So many emotions all at once between your mom and your dad. I mean, that's, how do you process?

Everything was gone. Yeah. At that moment, just everything was gone. All the world came crashing down. And, you know, I just realized that I was left alone. Zeke from the car dealership had worked for Hamid for years and admired him so much, he could hardly believe that the tip he'd given police

led to his boss's arrest. I guess that just tells you all that anybody can get in a very dark place in their lives and they can have these type of thoughts. Why only $10,000? It seems like if you're going to carry out a big murder plot, that's not a whole lot of money. Well, that's what Hameed negotiated.

You know, that's what, yeah. Is this his car salesman coming out? You always get what you pay for in our business. So case closed? Not exactly. One more person in the family was about to find himself in trouble halfway around the world and in a way he never saw coming. I was arrested and I was Hamid Ghassami was behind bars, accused of killing his ex-wife Tahira. Their son Hamid could barely process what was happening.

He'd worked so hard to bring his mother to America, only for it to end like this. I always thought she would grow old and hold my kids, you know, her grandkids. With that dream now shattered, Hamed focused on honoring his mother's life. Her wish was to be buried in Iran. Yes, her wish was to be buried in her hometown. Family friend Denise Marcel thought it was a bad idea. And I don't know why I was

having like an eerie feeling about it. Hamed's mother was laid to rest in the family burial ground. But instead of finding closure, what happened next was the start of a whole new nightmare. So I buried my mom and the next day I was arrested and I was thrown in jail for charges of conspiracy Hamed was accused of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity, a capital offense in the Islamic Republic. Were you trying to convert people? No. So where does this arrest come from? My father.

You think your father? Yes. Pulled some strings? Yes. He says his father had connections with powerful people in their home country. To him, it was the only explanation that made sense. I was shoved into a small room that was dark and just nasty. A lawyer for Hamid Ghasemi told Dateline Hamid had nothing to do with his son's arrest.

I spent close to, I think, 30 to 40 days in solitary. He managed to reach friends back in the U.S. Denise, the Louisiana state representative, worked her connections. I started calling congressmen and saying, can y'all please help get him out? What kind of response did you get? They said that, you know, they were going to reach out and do what they could to help. They finally brought me in front of a judge again, and that's when I was allowed to have an attorney.

And he was able to talk the judges into letting me out on bail. Hamed didn't wait around for his next court date. Three days later, I was on a flight on my way out of bail. Hamed didn't wait around for his next court date. Three days later, I was on a flight on my way out of Iran. After more than a year in Iran, he returned to Baton Rouge, where prosecutors had been building a case against his father and the alleged hit team. Assistant District Attorney Dana Cummings struck a deal with Tyler Ashbaugh. And Tyler's your witness at this point. At that point, they got the ball rolling.

Got the ball rolling. Tyler was set to turn on the other defendants, but then he was found dead in his cell at Angola Prison. The coroner told Dateline he died from a fentanyl overdose. This is a problem. Your witness has died in jail. Exactly. So prosecutors turned their attention to Daniel

Richter, the mechanic from Import One. They offered him a deal, testify against his former boss, Hamid, in exchange for a lesser manslaughter charge with 30 years behind bars. He took it. So you're back on track? Yeah, thank goodness. Hamid's trial began in August of 2023, eight years after Tahira's abduction and murder. He was now 72 years old and used a wheelchair. Were any words exchanged? Any looks? When I looked at him, he put his head down.

That was a show of guilt to me. Prosecutors set out to prove that guilt. They called on Zeke Avsi to connect Tahira's murder to Hamid's dealership. Zeke testified about how the Tahoe used in the crime came from Hamid's lot. And he remembered that shortly before the murder, a big chunk of cash from the sale of a car mysteriously disappeared. I would think a boss would be upset if $13,000 went missing, but he wasn't. But he wasn't that upset about just, we'll find it or whatever, that type of thing.

But that was the last I had heard of it. Prosecutors argued Hamid wasn't upset because he'd taken the money himself and used it to pay the hit team. The prosecution's new key witness, Daniel Richter, also took the stand. He told the jury that hours before the murder, Hamid gave him a gun and that syringe with insulin. And Hamid had told him, just stick it in her neck and she's going to have a heart attack and die. And Richter dropped this bombshell in the courtroom, Tehera wasn't the only target. He said Hamid wanted his son killed too.

He thought if he killed Tehera, the money would go to Hamid, and if he killed Hamid, the money would go to him. So he would get his money back. And I believe that's why he wanted to kill both of them. But the son wasn't home. Blowing off dinner with his mother had apparently saved his life. Hamed wasn't there. They didn't want to wait. They were afraid they would get caught as well. And remember how Hamed had been attacked outside the bar a few weeks before the murder?

Prosecutors uncovered evidence that his dad might have been behind that too. Skylar Williams told them he'd been hired by Hamid to beat up his son. No one was ever charged in the attack and prosecutors didn't make it part of the case. But Hamid was convinced his father was out to get him. You really struggled in court. It was hard for you to see him.

A lot of tears. A lot of tears, a lot of emotions. Despite the evidence, Hamid's defense attorney, Bob Noel, denied his client had anything to do with the murder plot or the parking lot attack on Hamid. He still maintains that he didn't do it. He told the jury to look at the man who police initially suspected. Basically, the person who had the most to gain by her death was Hamid.

The defense alluded that there was tension between Hamid Basically, the person who had the most to gain by her death was Hamed. The defense alluded that there was tension between Hamed and his mom, and that Hamed himself might have had a motive to want to kill his mother and get her money. Yeah, can you imagine after Hamed is unsuccessful in killing Hamed, he decides he's going to blame the murderer on him, which is amazing to me. After all he'd been through, the loss of his mother, imprisonment in Iran, this felt like the ultimate betrayal. I'd only heard, you know, in stories where parents did such horrible things to their kids. I never could think that my own father would do this to me.

After seven days of testimony, it took jurors just two hours to reach a verdict. Hamid Ghasemi was found guilty of first-degree murder. Yeah, I just prayed for his soul. I don't know how you can just live with yourself. He was sentenced to life behind bars. Money, greed, power, control. That's what this case was about. Yes, that's what this case was about, yes. In his victim impact statement, Hamed let his father know just how evil he believed him to be.

I said, if you could get out of that wheelchair, you would get up and strangle me. Daniel Richter and Skylar Williams pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to 30 years. Like Tahira, Hamed has had to climb his own mountains. But now he's reached the summit, running his own successful car dealership. I wanted to do something that I was good at. And, you know, why not go in the car business that I'd already known so much about? The one thing your dad gave you was he taught you about the car business. But my way of doing business and his way are completely different.

Today, he's living the way his mother always wanted. One of your mom's dreams was that you would marry a woman from Iran. Yeah. And you did. I sure did. I now pronounce you husband and wife. I'm married to a beautiful lady that loves me just as much as I love her.

She makes you a better person. Every day. Understands your culture, your world. Understands my culture. She knows everything about my mother. Every day. Understands your culture, your world. Understands my culture. She knows everything about my mother. It's like your mom handpicked her almost from above. Right. And put her in my life.

That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News. Good night.