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00:09Tonight on Dateline.
00:11I go inside and I see the rice burning on the stove.
00:14I went through the house.
00:16She wasn't home.
00:17I called her phone.
00:18It was off.
00:20My mind goes to the worst place possible.
00:24They said, we found your mom's car burned.
00:27And I said, what?
00:30That's a heavy, heavy phone call.
00:32Very, very heavy.
00:34You are discovering this tense relationship.
00:37Correct, yes.
00:38Based on text messages.
00:39Messages like, leave me the F alone.
00:42Yes.
00:43She called to tell me that I feel like someone is following me.
00:48Our minds are churning.
00:50These Google coordinates led you pretty far out of town.
00:54They actually led a superb remote area.
00:56This was a game changer, what you discovered here.
00:58100%.
00:59They're wearing masks.
01:01They grabbed her and they wrestled her.
01:04At that moment, all the world came crashing down.
01:09This was an evil act.
01:12Heartbreaking.
01:13A buried secret.
01:15A savage attack.
01:16And a sinister saga stretching halfway across the world.
01:20I'm Lester Holt.
01:22I'm Lester Holt.
01:22And this is Dateline.
01:31Here's Andrea Canning with The Ultimate Betrayal.
01:41On the banks of the Mississippi River.
01:44An only in America story of hard work, ambition, and financial reward.
01:49But percolating just beneath the surface, this success story had a dark side, money, power, and greed.
02:00This is one twisted family drama.
02:03From beginning to end of it.
02:11Before the ending, with all its horror and heartbreak, there was a simple dilemma.
02:16A son trying to get out of dinner with his mom.
02:19I got a text message from her that said, you know, I'm going to be cooking kebabs tonight.
02:25What time are you coming home?
02:27I said, I'm still at work.
02:28Not sure.
02:30Hamed Gisemi and his mother Tahereh lived together in a comfortable house in one of Baton Rouge's better neighborhoods.
02:36A long way from their native Iran.
02:39Tahereh was a doting mom who often cooked for her adult son.
02:42She expected him to be home.
02:44A lot.
02:45But for a 38-year-old man, all that attention could be smothering.
02:50It was to the point that I was feeling like my mom wanted me to just work and come and
02:58stay at the house and do nothing else.
03:01So on the night of April 11th, 2015, Hamed decided to blow off dinner.
03:07Instead, he met friends for drinks at a daiquiri bar, then later went out for sushi.
03:12What time did you come home?
03:14I didn't come home until later on.
03:17And when he pulled into the driveway...
03:20Something didn't seem right because her car wasn't there.
03:24Hamed says he went inside and found a pot of rice cooking on the stove, but no sign of his
03:29mother.
03:30Most people do not leave hot pots on a burning stove.
03:33Under the thing was very, very low.
03:36So I kind of thought about it and I said, okay, maybe she left without turning the pot off.
03:43He turned off the stove and looked around.
03:46What about her phone, her wallet, her purse?
03:49I didn't look for any of those at the time.
03:53I called her phone.
03:55It was off.
03:57I went through the house.
03:58Everything was, you know, where it's supposed to be except for my bed cover.
04:03Which she had told me that she was going to go be buying me a new bed cover.
04:07So it's missing?
04:08So it's missing.
04:10He says it wouldn't have been the first time his mother spent the night at a girlfriend's house.
04:14He figured maybe that's where she went.
04:16So you're not in a huge panic at this point that your mom's not there?
04:21No.
04:22The next morning, Hamed still hadn't heard from her.
04:25That's when he noticed her purse was in the house.
04:28He says she never went anywhere without it.
04:31Did you try calling your mom again?
04:32Not till that afternoon.
04:34And then it didn't, no answer.
04:36So I called her work and they said, oh yeah, Miss Tahira, she was here.
04:41Okay.
04:42So you're thinking she's fine.
04:44She's fine.
04:45She's just mad because, you know, I didn't come home last night on time.
04:49So she's not answering me.
04:51But when she didn't come home again that night, he says he finally started to worry.
04:56He called her friends.
04:58None of them had any idea where Tahira might be.
05:01So the following morning, he drove to the Walmart where his mother worked.
05:05I went to her work at 5.45 in the morning and, you know, I asked to check the schedule
05:09and the manager comes in and I say, hey, you know, I called yesterday and y'all told me
05:14my mom was at work and I haven't heard from her.
05:17And they went through the record and they said no.
05:20So she really hadn't been there.
05:21So she hadn't been there.
05:22So it was a mistake.
05:23That gives me chills that this whole time you're thinking she's fine and you got some
05:28bad information.
05:35Captain Todd Morris of the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Department would become the lead
05:39investigator.
05:40He focused on the fact that Tahira's car was missing, a 2004 Blue Jaguar.
05:45Are you thinking that maybe someone stole her car?
05:48Well, it could have been.
05:50She could have been a victim of an armed robbery or carjacking.
05:53But after a quick look around, he decided that didn't make sense.
05:57Why would she leave her purse?
05:58Why would she leave her identification?
05:59OK, if she was driving her vehicle with personal items that you would normally take with you
06:03and you leave to go visit a friend or go to the store.
06:06Ahmed told the investigator he hadn't seen his mom since Saturday morning.
06:09And now it was Monday.
06:11Did you feel like two days was a lot to wait to call the police?
06:16Well, it's kind of unusual if you have a close relationship with your mother.
06:19Are alarm bells going off for you as an investigator with everything you're seeing and hearing?
06:23Yeah, things were not adding up in our mind of what happened here, what could have happened
06:27to Ms. Kissimmee.
06:29Morris entered the missing woman's car into the police database.
06:32And within a few hours, police had their first real break in the case.
06:36The night before, Tejara's Blue Jaguar was discovered abandoned in an industrial part of town.
06:43And that wasn't all.
06:44At 2 o'clock in the morning, we have her vehicle that was burned up.
06:48The car had been torched.
06:50But was she in it?
07:08Tejara Kissimmee's missing car had been found, but in a condition that alarmed the investigators
07:13who were searching for her.
07:16We have her vehicle that was burned up, you know, six or seven miles from her residence
07:22at 2 o'clock in the morning.
07:24Was her body in the vehicle?
07:25No, it was not.
07:26Something has gone wrong with this.
07:29Something bad had happened, but still, no sign of Tejara.
07:33To find her, they needed to know a lot more about her.
07:38Hamed describes his mother as both traditional and adventurous.
07:42She loved mountain climbing when she was back home.
07:46She was actually the head of mountain climbing of the city of Bam for the women's division.
07:50Good mountains in Iran?
07:52Beautiful mountains in Iran.
07:53And she climbed just about all of them.
07:56Tejara had married young.
07:58She was already pregnant when her husband left Iran to study in the U.S.
08:02She named their baby Hamed in honor of his father, Hamid.
08:06My whole childhood was always me wondering, where is my dad?
08:10Where is my dad?
08:11Was it the family's belief that your dad would eventually bring both of you over to America?
08:17The whole time, yes.
08:19But that was complicated and time-consuming.
08:22Hamed was 18 years old by the time his father secured a visa and moved him to Baton Rouge.
08:27Another 10 years went by before Hamed became a U.S. citizen and was able to bring his mother here.
08:33She climbed the biggest mountain by coming to America.
08:42Good friend and fellow Iranian immigrant Aisha Ismail said Tejara was determined to grab a small piece of the American
08:49dream.
08:50She quickly mastered English and found a job at Walmart.
08:53Anything she put her mind to it, she was very smart.
08:56She really worked her way up at Walmart.
09:00She did, yeah.
09:01She really was a hard worker.
09:03The marriage that had been long distance for two decades didn't survive the transition.
09:08Tejara and her husband broke up.
09:10But she soldiered on, got a promotion, became a manager at Walmart, and hoped to one day start her own
09:17business.
09:19She loved cooking, but she was best in baking.
09:22And she said, this is my dream that one day I would open my own bakery.
09:27Tejara often brought her pastries to Aisha's gatherings.
09:30Every time I had a party, she was there.
09:33She would spend the night, and then we would, me and her, we would sleep in the living room.
09:37You two were like girls, like sleepover.
09:41Exactly.
09:41Did you see Tejara as kind of a sister?
09:44Yes, I would say so.
09:48Now, Tejara was missing, and police were talking to the person closest to her, her son.
09:53You also are discovering this tense relationship between mother and son.
09:59Correct, yes.
10:00The single mother had apparently grown dependent, even possessive, of her only child.
10:06I could say they didn't get along as much, you know, because they were two different generations.
10:11When Ahmed had a date, she had a problem with it.
10:14She told me many times, like, I don't like it.
10:18I said, well, he's grown up.
10:20He can make his choices.
10:22He's going to date someone.
10:24The tension was evident when police looked at Ahmed's phone.
10:27Just the day before Tejara disappeared, he'd sent her a text in Farsi, cursing her out.
10:33We're talking about text messages like, leave me the F alone, I'm moving out.
10:38Yes.
10:39I mean, they were really butting heads.
10:42Yeah, there was definitely tension between he and his mother, and so we were trying to figure out what is
10:46the issue here between him and his mom.
10:48Captain Morris still wondered why Ahmed had not called the police sooner.
10:53You think she may be at her friends, and then you start checking up and calling friends, and then you
10:58still wait.
10:58What did Ahmed tell you as far as what he did that night after he came home and realized his
11:03mom was missing?
11:04Well, he said that he returned home from work, that he didn't go anywhere.
11:07He stayed at the restaurant.
11:07But you come to learn that's not true.
11:10Yeah, as we went back over his timeline and started questioning him more.
11:16And when they did, a crack in his story emerged.
11:20Turns out, when Ahmed talked to investigators, he'd left something out.
11:24He didn't tell them that once he realized his mother wasn't at home, his night of partying continued.
11:30So he went back out?
11:32He went back out, yes, he did.
11:34Captain Morris wasn't sure what to make of that, or if it had anything to do with the missing woman,
11:40still.
11:41That's always very concerning to us when we catch him in myths, truths.
11:46Detectives now considered Ahmed to be a person of interest.
11:49We wanted to kind of really lock him in on his timeline and verify everything that he had originally told
11:54us
11:55once we had the cooperating documents and support from the cell phone records, the interview of the friends,
12:00and just make sure there was nothing else that was missing.
12:01And there was something else, something big, that investigators learned Ahmed had not told them right away.
12:09Just recently, after years of living separate lives,
12:12Ahmed's mother and father had finally divorced, and Tehera had come into money.
12:17A lot of it.
12:19We were thinking, okay, who has the most to gain now from the recent settlement from the divorce and the
12:25money,
12:25and, of course, the first person would be in line for that would be Ahmed, the son.
12:31And detectives were about to uncover an important piece of video that would have them asking
12:36what the son could tell them about this.
12:39We could see the silhouette of a driver in that vehicle.
12:57Ahmed Gusemi at first told police he'd come home and stayed home on the night his mother, Tehera, went missing.
13:03But investigators quickly realized that wasn't the whole story.
13:09Why lie to the police?
13:10Because I didn't want my mom to find out that I went back out and be more upset that that
13:15went out
13:16when I knew that she wasn't home.
13:18He doesn't deny there was tension in the mother-son relationship.
13:22Was she smothering you?
13:24A lot. A lot.
13:26It was just a constant fight.
13:29So the police are seeing a possible motive here.
13:31Right.
13:31That she's controlling, you know, maybe you got tired of that and took care of it
13:36and also had a financial gain.
13:38Right.
13:39You know, you would be the one to get all of the money that she just got from your dad.
13:43Right.
13:43Well, you want to hear something funny?
13:45I didn't know that.
13:46I had no idea that, you know, I was going to be getting the money.
13:49But you're her son.
13:51Where else would it go?
13:52I didn't know the rules, the laws here, how they worked.
13:55Either way, police now considered Ahmed a person of interest, and he knew it.
14:01Was it tense?
14:03It was nerve-wracking, but I knew I had nothing to do with it,
14:09so I wasn't, you know, at all worried about me.
14:12I was just worried about finding my mom.
14:15As police grilled him, he mentioned something that happened just a few weeks earlier.
14:20He said he'd been at his favorite daiquiri bar and stepped outside to get something from his car.
14:25As he left the vehicle, two men jumped him so quickly he didn't see their faces.
14:30I got attacked in a parking lot, and I went to the hospital and received probably about 14 or 15
14:37stitches in the back of my head.
14:39In fact, he said the reason his mom planned to buy him a new comforter was that his wounds had
14:43bled on the old one.
14:45Detectives had to consider the possibility that someone was targeting the family.
14:50Tahereh's friend Aisha remembered something eerie she'd recently told her.
14:54She said, I feel like somebody's following me. I thought it was, she was imagining.
14:59You felt like she was being dramatic.
15:00Yes, that's what I thought.
15:02Now she believed her friend was right, and investigators discovered something that supported that theory.
15:09We were checking some businesses on the backside of her residence.
15:13They have several offices, office complexes there, and so we began looking at video systems there.
15:19Security camera footage captured this Chevy Tahoe in a parking lot on the other side of the fence from Tahereh's
15:25backyard.
15:26The time stamp was from the night she disappeared.
15:30It pulled into the area there and turned off its lights, and so we said, okay, who is this?
15:36Can you see faces in the vehicle? Can you get a license plate?
15:39We cannot get a license plate. We can see the silhouette of a driver in that vehicle.
15:43When detectives asked Hamed about the Chevy Tahoe, he said he'd never seen it before.
15:49Police took a screenshot and posted it on the local Crimestopper site.
15:53Almost right away, they seemed to strike gold.
15:56They're looking for this Z71 package Tahoe, and that's our Tahoe that we traded.
16:01I know that's the car.
16:03Baton Rouge car dealers Tommy Brignac and Zeke Avsi immediately recognized the Tahoe.
16:09It was a 2002 model with unique features.
16:12The Z71 has fender flares, running boards, different wheels, so that's what made it distinctive.
16:19It stuck out like a unicorn.
16:21What are you thinking?
16:23Our minds are churning.
16:24We actually went to the sheriff's office together to report,
16:27look, this may be our vehicle that we actually have in our inventory.
16:32But here was the detail that caught the attention of investigators.
16:35They knew that Tahereh's ex-husband owned a luxury car dealership in town called Import One.
16:41And that's the dealership where Tommy and Zeke worked.
16:44Now we have a vehicle identified as coming from Import One, owned by Hamid Gusemi.
16:51And so we're saying, okay, we need to get some more information here.
16:55Lots of people in the sheriff's office already knew about Hamid Gusemi.
16:59He was popular and admired in Baton Rouge, the embodiment of the immigrant success story.
17:04I find it pretty remarkable that you can move here from Iran with no money.
17:09Yes.
17:10And then ending up opening a car dealership.
17:12Yes, yes.
17:14Hard work.
17:16When Hamid arrived in Baton Rouge in the 80s, he had little money, but a lot of ambition.
17:21He opened up a little small pizza shop.
17:23Rainbow pizza?
17:24Mm-hmm.
17:25People really liked it.
17:26They really did.
17:26Soon, the industrious entrepreneur began offering customers more than what was on the menu.
17:32He took that money from the pizza store, started buying cars.
17:35And selling them right outside of the store.
17:38It wasn't long before he left the pizza business altogether and opened a dealership.
17:42What kind of cars are we talking about?
17:44Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi.
17:48If you sell good cars in a very small town like Baton Rouge, everybody talked.
17:53We had like 15 employees, and we went from selling 30 to about 65, 75 cars a month.
17:58He was very personable with all his clients.
18:02They would oftentimes let me take cars home, and I'd keep them for a day to figure out what I
18:08really wanted.
18:09Louisiana State Representative Denise Marcel not only bought several cars from Hamid,
18:14but they became friends.
18:16Hamid knew she was an enthusiastic churchgoer.
18:19Hamid used to send you scripture every day?
18:22Yes.
18:23I thought it was very nice, and it would help me during the day a lot of times.
18:29Detectives headed over to Import One to see if they could find that Tahoe from the security video.
18:34Hamid told his staff to help them look through the inventory, but the vehicle was gone.
18:39The Tahoe that employees Tommy and Zeke remembered had recently been sold at auction.
18:44Tahoe's ex told Captain Morris he was praying for her safe return, and added the investigator to his prayer circle.
18:51He started sending me his morning prayers after our initial contact.
18:55It would not be their last contact.
18:58A mysterious phone call was about to bring the detective closer to finding Tahoe.
19:03That phone call stuck out because that number was not on any of the family members' phones.
19:23It's inevitable that detectives looking for a missing woman would get around to looking at her ex-husband.
19:29And after investigators learned about a possible connection between that suspicious SUV behind Tahoe's house and her ex's car lot,
19:37they dug in.
19:39It didn't take long to find out that Tahoe and Hamid's relationship had a complicated history.
19:44Remember he'd left her behind in Iran years earlier to study in the U.S. with the promise of bringing
19:49her over once he was settled?
19:50She had dreamed for herself that she would come in here with her husband and a child in one house.
19:57But once here, he married an American woman and became a U.S. citizen, a secret he kept from his
20:03family in Iran.
20:04Then he divorced that wife and started dating a woman at work named Heather Rangeley.
20:09He kept that relationship a secret, too.
20:11When we were living together, you know, I would answer the phone.
20:15They would call at least once a month for sure.
20:17This time he'd been telling them that I was the maid.
20:21For years, Hamid made excuses for not arranging Tahoe's move to the U.S.
20:25That responsibility fell on her son.
20:28The only reason that I stayed in the United States was to be able to bring her to America
20:33because I knew that was her only dream at that point.
20:38By then, it was 2005, and her husband was married to yet another woman.
20:44Aisha says it was a shock when Tahereh finally realized he never really wanted her here.
20:49When she came, she found out that he was married.
20:52Oh, that must have been so hard for her.
20:54It was.
20:55She was so heartbroken.
20:57That wasn't the auto dealer's only strange relationship.
21:00His son worked for him at the dealership when he was younger, and the two fought bitterly.
21:05He had no problem whacking him across his face in front of everybody.
21:10I remember talking to my mom on the phone, and the phone bill being expensive one month,
21:14and he took it out of my paycheck.
21:16By the time his parents were divorcing, Hamid says he was firmly in his mother's camp.
21:21I just wanted my mom to get what she was deserving and nothing else.
21:26My mom asked him from day one for a $1,500 a month alimony, a car and a place to
21:34stay.
21:35That wasn't a lot to ask for.
21:37Attorney Tommy Gibbs represented Tahereh in the divorce.
21:40He just didn't want to give her a nickel.
21:43The divorce dragged on for close to eight years.
21:46Hamid objected to the proceedings on novel grounds.
21:49He claimed they shouldn't be considered married at all.
21:52His initial defense was they could not be legally married because they were first cousins,
21:58and under Louisiana law, first cousins cannot marry.
22:03In Iran, there's no such law, and it's not unusual for relatives to marry each other.
22:08That particular issue had to go all the way up to the Louisiana Supreme Court before it was finally decided.
22:13They recognized that a marriage that took place legally in another country or state or whatever it might be is
22:21recognized under Louisiana law.
22:24So in early 2015, three months before Tahereh went missing,
22:29Hamid was ordered to give her more than a million dollars, as well as two properties.
22:34He told detectives looking into his ex-wife's disappearance that he'd had nothing to do with her since.
22:39But Captain Todd Morris wasn't so sure.
22:42You subpoenaed Hamid's cell records?
22:45Yes, ma'am. Yeah, we subpoenaed his cell phone.
22:47We kind of wanted to see who he was communicating with.
22:50One call jumped out.
22:51It came into Hamid's phone just after midnight on the night Tahereh disappeared and lasted only 17 seconds.
22:58When detectives traced it, they learned it was from a man named Tyler Ashbaugh.
23:03That phone call stuck out because that number was not on any of the family members' phones.
23:08You needed to find out who this Tyler was.
23:10We needed to see what Tyler's connection was to Hamid.
23:13Tyler was 20 years old and raised in Wisconsin.
23:16But after being kicked out of school, he'd come to Baton Rouge to live with relatives.
23:21Captain Morris couldn't find any connection between the two men.
23:25Still, something was bothering him.
23:27He wanted to know more.
23:29We wanted, you know, a more detailed look of where his phone may have been located at on the night
23:35of the disappearance.
23:36Because is it a fluke call?
23:38Is it a missed call?
23:39Because it's only one time.
23:40And so we needed to look at that more because that was very interesting.
23:46Investigators probed Tyler's electronic footprint, his calls and Internet searches.
23:52It would be his Google Maps history on the night of Tahereh's disappearance that caught their attention.
23:57These Google coordinates led you pretty far out of town.
24:02Yes, ma'am, they did.
24:03This is Highway Louisiana 16 that comes out of Livingston Parish into St. Helena Parish.
24:16So you can tell this is a very remote area.
24:18We're in the middle of nowhere.
24:19It was a popular area for deer hunters.
24:22As investigators explored the trails, they noticed something scattered on the ground.
24:27There were some small pieces of, you know, like, cotton polyester stuffing.
24:32Because we know often bodies are wrapped in blankets, carpets, comforters.
24:38Correct.
24:39Captain Morris remembered that comforter missing from Hamed's bed.
24:43And they thought that, hey, this could be the insides of the material of the comforter.
24:48And so they followed it and they come to an area.
24:51The trail of cotton led to a patch of ground that looked recently disturbed.
24:56And it was rectangular in shape and it had sunken some like it had been, you know, fairly freshly dug.
25:03Then they said, man, is this a grave?
25:05Morris stuck his fingers in the dirt and started digging.
25:09I just put the shovel down and really just started removing the soil with my hands.
25:12This was a game changer, what you discovered here.
25:15100%.
25:32Tehera Gusemi had been missing for close to six weeks.
25:35And now police had come upon a shallow grave on the outskirts of town.
25:39As Captain Todd Morris dug through the soil on his hands and knees, he felt something soft.
25:45We see a comforter and it's the description of the comforter which is missing from the residence.
25:51And then we realized that there is a human body in this that ended up being a Ms. Gusemi.
25:57The detective's missing persons case was now officially a homicide investigation.
26:03How was it determined that she died?
26:05Two gunshot wounds to her head.
26:07Captain Morris needed to talk to Tyler Ashbaugh immediately.
26:11It was his phone that led them to Tehera.
26:14Morris tracked him down and brought him into the sheriff's office.
26:18He denied his involvement.
26:19I don't want you to talk about it.
26:20I wasn't there.
26:20I don't know Ms. Gusemi.
26:22And I tried to develop a rapport with him.
26:24Then eventually, you know, he admitted to his involvement in the abduction and kidnapping and killing of Ms. Gusemi.
26:31He confessed?
26:32He confessed.
26:34He admitted to kidnapping and shooting Tehera, and he had not acted alone.
26:39We knew he was not by himself, and we need to find out what other suspects are, you know, with
26:44him.
26:45So Morris took him back to the beginning, to the morning of the murder.
26:49Tyler said a teenage friend of his name, Skyler Williams, reached out about making some quick cash.
26:55You're thinking, wow, $10,000, you know, that's a lot of money.
26:59The job was a murder for hire.
27:02He and his friend went to a nearby Home Depot to pick up supplies.
27:05We recovered video of him and Skyler walking into the Home Depot where they purchased some rope and a box
27:13utility cutting knife.
27:15Then, later that day, the two met up with the man who'd recruited Skyler for the job.
27:20His name was Daniel Richter.
27:22Did you look into his history?
27:25Yes, he had done some time for a rape.
27:29Tyler knew nothing about that.
27:31He told investigators he was just thinking about the payday.
27:34He said Daniel Richter drove them over to Tehera's house that night.
27:38They brought a .22 caliber pistol and a syringe full of insulin.
27:42East Baton Rouge Assistant District Attorney Dana Cummings had joined the case.
27:47She says Richter dropped off Tyler and Skyler and they hid in the driveway.
27:51They're wearing masks.
27:54Apparently, Tehera went to her car to get something out, and at that point in time, they grabbed her.
28:00They'd muffle her mouth and bring her back into the kitchen area.
28:05Richter joined them inside.
28:07Tehera tried to escape, but she was no match for the three men.
28:11They injected her with whatever it was that they had to inject her with, and she was unconscious on the
28:18floor.
28:19At that point, they wrapped her up in Hamed's comforter and loaded her in the back of her own car,
28:27which was a Jaguar.
28:29The men headed down the rural highway toward the site where Tehera was found.
28:34They opened the trunk of the car, and she is moaning, so she's still alive.
28:40And that's when Tyler takes the .22 and shoots Ms. Kissimmee in the head.
28:47Investigators say the killers then headed to a bowling alley to get paid.
28:50The money was coming from a person Daniel Richter referred to as the old man.
28:55But he wasn't there, so Daniel borrowed Tyler's phone and made that 17-second call.
29:02The old man said he wanted the three to come to him.
29:05And they went to his residence where he paid them the $10,000.
29:11The old man, no surprise, was Hamed Kissimmee.
29:16If he and the hired guns had been trying to communicate on the down-low,
29:20that one call from Tyler's phone had been a major screw-up.
29:24That phone call unraveled a diabolical murder plot.
29:27That phone call, one phone call, unraveled his whole plot to get away with killing his ex-wife.
29:34Tyler said that after they got paid, Hamed had one more request.
29:38He also gave them a gas can and told them to go burn the car.
29:42And we had also located some video from that area.
29:47You can see the vehicle engulfed in flames.
29:52As for Daniel Richter...
29:54Daniel Richter ended up being one of the mechanics at Import One.
29:59Import One, Hamed Kissimmee's dealership.
30:03Prosecutors learned that Daniel had been spending a lot of time with Hamed
30:07and trying hard to impress him.
30:09Here he is, you know, he's got a felony conviction.
30:12He's got this job there, but this is his opportunity to be, in his eyes,
30:18taken care of by this man who has all these resources in this great business.
30:24It was Richter who'd taken the Tahoe from the dealership
30:27and parked it in the lot just behind Tehera's house.
30:30Now, in a span of just nine hours, Captain Morris had a body and a confession.
30:38And with that, Hamed, along with his three alleged accomplices,
30:42were arrested for Tehera Kissimmee's murder.
30:44A detective called Tehera's son.
30:47It had unraveled so fast that Hamed learned both pieces of news at once.
30:51His mother was dead and father under arrest.
30:55Oh, my goodness.
30:56So that's a heavy, heavy phone call.
31:00Very, very heavy.
31:02So many emotions all at once between your mom and your dad.
31:07I mean, that's...
31:08How do you process...
31:08Everything was gone.
31:10Yeah.
31:10At that moment, just everything was gone.
31:14All the world came crashing down.
31:16And, you know, I just realized that I was left alone.
31:22Zeke from the car dealership had worked for Hamed for years
31:25and admired him so much he could hardly believe that the tip he'd given police
31:29led to his boss's arrest.
31:32I guess that just tells you all that anybody can be in a...
31:35get in a very dark place in their lives
31:37and they can have these type of thoughts.
31:41Why only $10,000?
31:43It seems like if you're going to carry out a big murder plot,
31:47that's not a whole lot of money.
31:48Well, that's what Hamed negotiated.
31:51You know, that's what...
31:52Yeah.
31:53Is this his car salesman coming out?
31:56You always get what you pay for in our business.
31:58So case closed?
32:00Not exactly.
32:01One more person in the family was about to find himself in trouble
32:05halfway around the world and in a way he never saw coming.
32:10I was arrested and I was thrown in jail.
32:42I always thought she would grow old and hold my kids.
32:47You know, her grandkids.
32:50With that dream now shattered,
32:53Hamed focused on honoring his mother's life.
32:55Her wish was to be buried in Iran.
32:57Yes, her wish was to be buried in her hometown.
33:02Family friend Denise Marcel thought it was a bad idea.
33:05And I don't know why I was having like an eerie feeling about it.
33:09Hamed's mother was laid to rest in the family burial ground.
33:12But instead of finding closure,
33:14what happened next was the start of a whole new nightmare.
33:18So I buried my mom and the next day I was arrested
33:22and I was thrown in jail for charges of conspiracy against the Iranian government.
33:29Hamed was accused of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity,
33:33a capital offense in the Islamic Republic.
33:36Were you trying to convert people?
33:39No.
33:39So where does this arrest come from?
33:41Um, my father.
33:43You think your father?
33:44Yes.
33:45Pulled some strings?
33:46Yes.
33:47He says his father had connections with powerful people in their home country.
33:51To him, it was the only explanation that made sense.
33:54I was shoved into a small room that was dark and just nasty.
34:00A lawyer for Hamed Gassemi told Dateline
34:02Hamed had nothing to do with his son's arrest.
34:05I spent close to, I think, 30 to 40 days in solitary.
34:10He managed to reach friends back in the U.S.
34:13Denise, the Louisiana state representative, worked her connections.
34:18I started calling congressmen and saying,
34:21can y'all please help get him out.
34:23What kind of response did you get?
34:24They said that, you know, they were going to reach out and do what they could to help.
34:28They finally brought me in front of a judge again, and that's when I was allowed to have an attorney.
34:34And he was able to talk the judges into letting me out on bail.
34:41Hamed didn't wait around for his next court date.
34:44Three days later, I was on a flight on my way out of Iran.
34:49After more than a year in Iran, he returned to Baton Rouge,
34:52where prosecutors had been building a case against his father and the alleged hit team.
34:57Assistant District Attorney Dana Cummings struck a deal with Tyler Ashbaugh.
35:01And Tyler's your witness at that point.
35:05They got the ball rolling.
35:07Got the ball rolling.
35:08Tyler was set to turn on the other defendants,
35:11but then he was found dead in his cell at Angola Prison.
35:15The coroner told Dateline he died from a fentanyl overdose.
35:19This is a problem.
35:20Your witness has died in jail.
35:23Exactly.
35:24So prosecutors turned their attention to Daniel Richter, the mechanic from Import One.
35:30They offered him a deal, testify against his former boss, Hamid,
35:34in exchange for a lesser manslaughter charge with 30 years behind bars.
35:38He took it.
35:40So you're back on track?
35:41Yeah.
35:41Thank goodness.
35:43Hamid's trial began in August of 2023,
35:47eight years after Tehera's abduction and murder.
35:49He was now 72 years old and used a wheelchair.
35:53Were any words exchanged?
35:55Any looks?
35:56When I looked at him, he put his head down.
36:00That was a show of guilt to me.
36:04Prosecutors set out to prove that guilt.
36:06They called on Zeke Avsi to connect Tehera's murder to Hamid's dealership.
36:11Zeke testified about how the Tahoe used in the crime came from Hamid's lot.
36:16And he remembered that shortly before the murder,
36:18a big chunk of cash from the sale of a car mysteriously disappeared.
36:22I would think a boss would be upset if $13,000 went missing, but he wasn't.
36:29But he wasn't that upset about just, oh, we'll find it or whatever, that type of thing.
36:33But that was the last I had heard of it.
36:36Prosecutors argued Hamid wasn't upset because he'd taken the money himself and used it to pay the HIT team.
36:42The prosecution's new key witness, Daniel Richter, also took the stand.
36:48He told the jury that hours before the murder, Hamid gave him a gun and that syringe with insulin.
36:53And Hamid had told him, just stick it in her neck and she's going to have a heart attack and
36:58die.
36:59And Richter dropped this bombshell in the courtroom.
37:03Tehera wasn't the only target.
37:04He said Hamid wanted his son killed, too.
37:09He thought if he killed Tehera, the money would go to Hamid.
37:13And if he killed Hamid, the money would go to him.
37:16So he would get his money back.
37:18And I believe that's why he wanted to kill both of them.
37:21But the son wasn't home.
37:23Blowing off dinner with his mother had apparently saved his life.
37:27Hamid wasn't there.
37:29They didn't want to wait.
37:30They were afraid they would get caught as well.
37:32And remember how Hamid had been attacked outside the bar a few weeks before the murder?
37:37Prosecutors uncovered evidence that his dad might have been behind that, too.
37:43Skyler Williams told them he'd been hired by Hamid to beat up his son.
37:47No one was ever charged in the attack and prosecutors didn't make it part of the case.
37:52But Hamid was convinced his father was out to get him.
37:55You really struggled in court.
37:57It was hard for you to see him.
37:59A lot of tears.
38:00A lot of tears, a lot of emotions.
38:04Despite the evidence, Hamid's defense attorney, Bob Noel, denied his client had anything to do with the murder plot or
38:11the parking lot attack on Hamid.
38:13He still maintains that he didn't do it.
38:16He told the jury to look at the man who police initially suspected.
38:20Basically, the person who had the most gained by her death was Hamid.
38:24The defense alluded that there was tension between Hamid and his mom and that Hamid himself might have had a
38:33motive to want to kill his mother and get her money.
38:37Can you imagine after Hamid is unsuccessful in killing Hamid, he decides he's going to blame the murder on him,
38:44which is amazing to me.
38:46After all he'd been through, the loss of his mother, imprisonment in Iran, this felt like the ultimate betrayal.
38:54I'd only heard, you know, in stories where parents did such horrible things to their kids.
39:01I never could think that my own father would do this to me.
39:07After seven days of testimony, it took jurors just two hours to reach a verdict.
39:12Hamid Ghasemi was found guilty of first-degree murder.
39:24He was sentenced to life behind bars.
39:27Money, greed, power, control, that's what this case was about.
39:31Yes, that's what this case was about, yes.
39:33In his victim impact statement, Hamid let his father know just how evil he believed him to be.
39:38I said, if you could get out of that wheelchair, you would get up and strangle me.
39:44Daniel Richter and Skylar Williams pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to 30 years.
39:51Like Tehera, Hamid has had to climb his own mountains.
39:54But now he's reached the summit, running his own successful car dealership.
39:59I wanted to do something that I was good at.
40:03And, you know, why not go in a car business that I'd already known so much about?
40:08The one thing your dad gave you was he taught you about the car business.
40:13But my way of doing business and his way are completely different.
40:19Today, he's living the way his mother always wanted.
40:22One of your mom's dreams was that you would marry a woman from Iran.
40:27Yeah.
40:27And you did.
40:29I sure did.
40:30I now pronounce your husband and wife.
40:33I'm married to a beautiful lady that loves me just as much as I love her.
40:39She makes you a better person every day.
40:42Understands your culture, your world.
40:44There stands my culture.
40:46She knows everything about my mother.
40:48It's like your mom handpicked her almost from above.
40:52Right.
40:52And put her in my life.
40:58That's all for this edition of Dateline.
41:00We'll see you again Friday at 9, 8 central.
41:03And, of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.
41:07I'm Lester Holt.
41:08For all of us at NBC News, good night.
41:11All right.
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