4th arrest in sexual mutilation case
Authorities announced Tuesday that they have in custody the last of four people they believe participated in a plan to torture and sexually mutilate a Newport Beach man in an attempt rob him of a large amount of cash they thought he’d buried in the desert.
Hossein Nayeri, 35, was extradited Monday from the Czech Republic to Newport Beach, according to a news release from the Orange County district attorney’s office and Newport Beach Police Department.
He is being held without bail and is expected to be arraigned Wednesday, authorities said.
Nayeri faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole for two felony counts of kidnapping for ransom and one felony count each of aggravated mayhem, torture and first-degree residential burglary, with a sentencing enhancement for inflicting great bodily injury. His co-defendants — Kyle Shirakawa Handley, 35, Ryan Anthony Kevorkian, 35, and Naomi Josette Rhodus, 34 — face the same charges and sentence.
The FBI and the Czech Republic fugitive unit arrested Nayeri last year in Prague, where he was changing planes to visit family in Spain.
Authorities say he fled to Iran in 2012 after participating in a plot to kidnap the victim, a marijuana-dispensary owner.
In October 2012, Handley, Kevorkian and Nayeri kidnapped the Newport Beach man and his girlfriend from their Balboa Peninsula home, authorities said.
The three severed the man’s penis, burned him with a torch, beat him and doused him with bleach before dumping him and the girlfriend in the Kern County desert, authorities added.
The kidnappers allegedly took the penis with them so it couldn’t be reattached.
Police discovered the two victims after the girlfriend walked a mile to a road and flagged down an officer.
Prosecutors believe the men were trying to extract money they thought the victim had hidden.
Authorities say Handley learned the man was running a lucrative marijuana-dispensary business because of an “extravagant and expensive” trip to Las Vegas, where the victim was meeting with marijuana growers.
Prosecutors say Rhodus helped plan the crime.