Ex-wife testifies against man accused of kidnapping, torturing and sexually mutilating marijuana dispensary owner from Newport Beach

NEWPORT BEACH – She helped cook poisoned hamburger meat and to set up surveillance cameras. Later, she funneled cash to her fugitive husband.

On Tuesday, the ex-wife of a man accused of teaming up with two high school friends to kidnap, brutally torture and sexually mutilate a marijuana dispensary owner testified to the events leading up to the abduction.

Cortney Shegerian during testimony in the trial of her ex-husband, Hossein Nayeri, described assisting Nayeri in surveilling the marijuana dispensary owner prior to his abduction, seeing Nayeri with a blowtorch used in the torture, and getting money to him once he fled to Iran in the midst of the subsequent police investigation.

Prosecutors allege Nayeri and his friends kidnapped and tortured the marijuana dispensary owner  – who the Register is not naming due to the nature of the crimes – in an attempt to find a non-existent $1 million they falsely believed the man had buried in the desert.

Nayeri’s attorney has denied that Nayeri had anything to do with the abduction, raising the prospect that it was carried out by three other men. The defense attorney has also accused Shegerian of lying to police about Nayeri’s alleged role in the high-profile case.

Shegerian, a key witness against Nayeri, described their relationship as deeply dysfunctional. Prior to the abduction, Shegerian testified, Nayeri borrowed her pink Taser, and asked her help making poisoned hamburgers to feed to a dog owned by the marijuana dispensary owner’s parents.

“You obviously know there is some sort of rip-off that is going to occur (against the marijuana dispensary owner)?” Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy asked Shegerian of the days leading up to the abduction.

“Yes,” she replied.

At one point, Shegerian said, Nayeri showed her a map of a vehicle with a GPS unit on it circling part of the Mojave Desert.

“He said ‘why would someone be out in the desert circling a certain area,’” Shegerian testified. ‘“I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘Seems like a perfect place to bury some cash.’ I said, ‘Probably.’ ”

The marijuana dispensary owner has testified that he traveled to that part of the desert prior to this abduction because a man he knew wanted him to invest in a gold mine in the area, a suggestion he ignored since he figured it was a scam.

In the early morning hours of Oct. 2, 2012, three men wearing ski masks broke into a home on the peninsula in Newport Beach. The armed intruders abducted the marijuana dispensary owner, who was renting a room at the home, as well as the girlfriend of the man who owned the house. After blindfolding the man and woman and binding them with zip-ties, the intruders forced them into a van.

For the entirety of the more than two and a half hour drive to the Mojave Desert, the masked men cycled between torturing the marijuana dispensary owner – including beating him, shocking him with a Taser, whipping him with rubber piping and burning him with a blow torch – and demanding from him a million dollars he repeatedly told them he didn’t have.

Once they arrived in the desert, the two abductees were forced, still bound, out of the van.

“They said they needed to bring their boss back something, and if it wasn’t money it was my (penis),” the marijuana dispensary owner testified this week. “They held me down and proceeded to cut off my penis. I think I was in a lot of shock then.”

The marijuana dispensary owner said his torturers rebuffed his offers to get them a lesser amount of money, leading him to believe they were specifically out to hurt him. His missing body part was never found.

“What would cutting off my penis do to get them money if they are just going to leave me in the desert?” he asked. “It makes logical sense to beat someone up until they give you money. But why the other part? It doesn’t seem sane, it doesn’t seem logical.”

The woman was able to free herself and walk to a highway, where she was spotted by a sheriff’s sergeant. She helped the officer locate the torture victim, who was treated for his injuries.

A license plate number provided by a neighbor who recalled seeing a suspicious vehicle outside the Newport Beach home led police to Kyle Handley, who ran a marijuana grow operation with Nayeri. A search of Handley’s home turned up a blue latex glove that investigators tied through DNA to Nayeri, while a discarded zip-tie was tied to Ryan Kevorkian. All three went to the same high school and are suspected to have carried out the abduction.

Investigators later found the hundreds of hours of surveillance footage Nayeri had taken of the home where the marijuana dispensary owner was living, along with surveillance cameras and GPS trackers. Nayeri’s attorney has said that the marijuana dispensary owner owed Handley money, and Handley, worried the owner would disappear, had asked Nayeri to keep an eye on him.

Shegerian said the normally cool and collected Nayeri was “totally frantic” after Handley’s arrest.

“He is pretty confident most of the time, so it was a pretty big change to see him flip,” Shegerian said.

Once Nayeri fled to Iran, Shegerian admitted to meeting him overseas to give him around $60,000, before deciding to work with police and helping convince Nayeri to fly to another country where he could be arrested and extradited.

Handley was convicted last year for his role in the abduction and torture, and was sentenced to four life terms behind bars. Nayeri gained further notoriety while awaiting trial for allegedly masterminding a brazen escape, along with two other inmates, from Orange County jail.

Shegerian’s testimony is scheduled to continue Wednesday.