The personal assistant of a tech company’s CEO claimed that he beheaded his boss to cover his tracks after stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his employer and also to prevent the news of his act from reaching his girlfriend.
Tyrese Haspil, 25, the personal assistant of Fahim Saleh, 33, a venture capitalist and the CEO of Nigeria-based motorbike startup Gokada, claimed to the police that he did not want his French girlfriend, Marine Chaveuz, to find out and leave him and was desperate to cover his tracks.
Haspil forced his way to Saleh’s $2.4 million Lower East Side apartment, tasered him and then stabbed him to death, his attorney Sam Roberts told jurors at Manhattan Supreme Court.
His attorney is trying to convince a 12-person jury that his client suffered from “extreme emotional disturbance” that led him to kill. He was worried that his girlfriend would leave him if she found out that he stole $400,000.
“He decided that his only two options were suicide or homicide, he chose the latter,” Roberts said, according to the New York Post.
Saleh first confronted Haspil about missing money in January 2020 after finding out that $90,000 had disappeared from a corporate spending account.
Saleh found out but declined to press charges because he saw Haspil as his protégé and chalked out a payment plan to allow him to pay back the money he stole. However, Haspil continued to steal from Saleh’s company through a Paypal account, only to be caught again.
“Over this period of time, he was planning not only to commit the homicide but to get away with it …To cover it up and how to erase his debt and prevent Fahim Saleh from testifying in criminal proceedings,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Linda Ford told the court.
The people familiar with the developments told the newspaper how Haspil may have committed the murder. They said that Haspil allegedly used Saleh’s credit cards to pay for rides to and from the Home Depot on West 23rd Street to buy supplies for cleaning up after the murder.
He then entered Saleh’s home wearing a mask and used a Taser to stun Saleh, then stabbed him and dismembered his body the next day and severed his boss’ head.
After the killing, Haspil attempted to clean up by vacuuming but found out that his efforts were not thorough.
He missed an “anti-felon disk” identification tag that was later recovered at the scene.
The disk had a unique number linked to the Taser that Haspil had ordered to his Brooklyn address a month before the murder, prosecutors claimed.
Saleh’s body was discovered by his cousin when she went to check on him and found his torso exposed in the living room along with construction bags.
Haspil, who had claimed that he committed the murder to stop his French girlfriend Chaveuz from knowing, was also seen with another woman strolling through NoHo and buying a bouquet of birthday balloons. NoHo is short for North of Houston Street and is a residential neighbourhood in Lower Manhattan in the New York City borough.
He was planning a birthday party for this unidentified woman at an Airbnb and bought cakes and luxury items for her.
Police recovered several expensive items allegedly bought with the Saleh’s credit cards, including a pricey leather APC tote bag, a beige Christian Louboutin shopping bag and a box of shoes.
Haspil pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges, which if convicted could result in a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years to life.
His attorneys hope the jury will consider a manslaughter conviction instead as they will claim he was “emotionally disturbed” which may see him receive a lighter sentence of five to 25 years.
Attorney Roberts explained that Haspil’s life has been “marked by trauma,” starting with a difficult childhood where he suffered years of abuse from his schizophrenic mother, who allegedly kept him locked in a bedroom and beat him. Roberts argued that while Haspil’s actions might not seem rational to others, they made sense to him at that time and in his circumstances.
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