Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Tech CEO Gordon Abas Goodarzi Accused of Murdering Wife Aryan Papoli

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Tech CEO Gordon Abas Goodarzi Accused of Murdering Wife Aryan Papoli · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to close your eyes for a second.
• 0:02
  Imagine the absolute silence.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Of wealth, that specific, heavy kind of silence you only
• 0:08
  find in places like Rolling Hills, California.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Right behind the heavy iron gates, the manicured landscaping that
• 0:15
  looks like it was trimmed with nail scissors, the peacocks
• 0:19
  roaming the.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Streets, which is a real thing there by the.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Way, it's a real thing. And the ocean is just,
• 0:23
  you know, shimmering in the distance. It's a silence that
• 0:26
  costs millions of dollars to acquire. It feels safe, it
• 0:30
  feels untouchable. It feels like nothing bad could ever breach
• 0:33
  those walls.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: It's the pinnacle of the Southern California dream, a fortress
• 0:37
  of privacy designed to, you know, keep the chaos of
• 0:40
  the world at bay No.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I want you to snap that image in half, transport
• 0:44
  yourself about eighty miles east. You're on Highway one point
• 0:47
  thirty eight in the San Berdonino Mountains.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: A completely different universe totally.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: The air is thinner, the wind cuts through you like
• 0:53
  a knife, and you are looking down a steep, jagged
• 0:56
  embankment into a dense, unforgiving forest.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: It's wild.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It is wild, it is chaotic, and in November it
• 1:03
  is freezing.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Two worlds that physically, atmospherically and I mean culturally, could
• 1:09
  not be further apart.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Exactly. These two worlds should never intersect. They are designed
• 1:13
  not to intersect. But today, Tuesday, January twenty seventh, twenty
• 1:17
  twenty six, they have crashed together in a courtroom in
• 1:20
  San Bernino County, and the result is the kind of
• 1:23
  story that doesn't just make headlines. It completely dismantles our
• 1:28
  understanding of success, safety, and who we think we know.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: We are looking at a collision that has left the
• 1:34
  global electric vehicle industry reeling and a prominent beloved family
• 1:39
  absolutely shattered.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: We are talking about the breaking news regarding Gordon ab
• 1:42
  us Kadarzi. Now, if you know the ev space, if
• 1:46
  you follow clean tech, you know that name.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: He isn't just a participant. He is a verified legend,
• 1:52
  a pioneer in zero emission technology, a.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Man who spent decades, literal decades, engineering the future of
• 1:58
  clean transportation. He's in the text.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Book, and as of this morning, that pioneer is standing
• 2:02
  before a judge accused of first degree murder.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: It is the definition of a bombshell. We are witnessing
• 2:08
  the arraignment of a sixty six year old executive for
• 2:11
  the murder of his estranged wife and business partner of
• 2:14
  thirty years.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Arm Popoli Aran Popoli, a name that was synonymous with philanthropy,
• 2:20
  art and the you know, the hard nosed operational success
• 2:24
  of a multimillion dollar company, and now now she's the
• 2:27
  center of a tragedy that we have made it our
• 2:30
  mission to understand today.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: And understand is really the key word here, isn't it.
• 2:34
  We aren't here for the gossip or the sensationalism. No,
• 2:38
  we have a massive stack of sources. Sheriff's department reports,
• 2:41
  filings from the San Bernardino District Attorney, property records, and
• 2:45
  these just gut wrenching tributes from the victim's family. We
• 2:48
  are going to stick to the facts, but we are
• 2:50
  going to look at them deeply.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: We're going to appel this back layer by layer. Because
• 2:54
  of the surface, Sure, it's a true crime story, it
• 2:56
  fits the genre, but when you really look at the sources,
• 2:59
  it's actually a story about a thirty year partnership.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Three decades I mean, think about that, three decades of
• 3:04
  building a life, a family, and a friction together that
• 3:08
  is a lifetime.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: It's about the golden cage of high net worth divorces.
• 3:11
  It's about the anatomy of a forensic investigation that almost
• 3:15
  missed the truth right, And we're going to get into
• 3:17
  that almost because it is terrifying. And ultimately it's about
• 3:20
  the tragic intersection of massive wealth, painful estrangement, and sudden
• 3:26
  calculated violence.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: It serves as a grim reminder that success in the
• 3:29
  boardroom offers zero, absolutely zelo protection against the darker impulses
• 3:35
  of the human condition.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: So let's start where we always should. Let's center this
• 3:38
  narrative on the person who was lost. We need to
• 3:42
  understand who Arian Popoly was, not just as a victim,
• 3:45
  but as a person.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: To really grasp the magnitude of this loss, you have
• 3:49
  to look past the Newport Beach socialite image that you
• 3:52
  know the tabloids might project. You have to go back
• 3:54
  to the source code of her character. Her story begins
• 3:57
  in Tehran nineteen sixty.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Nine, and for anyone from with geopolitical history, being born
• 4:01
  in Tehran in nineteen sixty nine means your childhood is
• 4:05
  essentially a ticking clock counting down to a massive historical explosion.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Precisely, the nineteen seventy nine Islamic revolution Arian was ten
• 4:14
  years old when the world turned upside down. The cultural shifts,
• 4:17
  the instability, the changing of the guard that forms a
• 4:21
  child's worldview. Absolutely it instills a sense that safety is fleeting.
• 4:25
  By the time she was eighteen, the decision was made
• 4:27
  to leave. She emigrated to the United States.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I want to pause on that for a second, because
• 4:31
  I think the immigrant success story often glosses over the
• 4:35
  trauma of the departure.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: We skip straight to this success. But she's eighteen. That's
• 4:40
  a pivotal age. You're legally an adult, but you're still
• 4:43
  a kid. You're leaving your friends, your language, your home.
• 4:46
  You're arriving in the San Francisco Bay Area, likely with
• 4:49
  limited resources, starting from absolute zero.
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  Speaker 2: It speaks to a profound level of resilience. Think about
• 4:55
  the grit required to rebuild an identity in a new
• 4:58
  language and new culture while your homeland is undergoing radical upheaval.
• 5:03
  She didn't just survive that transition, she thrived in it.
• 5:07
  The sources say she arrived with her mother and sister,
• 5:09
  and she immediately went into.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Builder mode builder mode. I like that.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: She wasn't waiting for a handout. She was building a
• 5:16
  foundation from day one, and she.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Built a serious foundation. The sources are crystal clear on this.
• 5:23
  She wasn't just a passenger in her later success. She
• 5:26
  wasn't just the wife of the genius. She was the engine.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's a great way to put it. She pursued
• 5:32
  higher education in business and coaching. She climbed the corporate
• 5:36
  ladder with intention. We aren't talking about someone who married
• 5:39
  into a role. She became the chief financial officer and
• 5:42
  vice president of operations at US Hybrid.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: US Hybrid. Okay, so that is the company she built
• 5:47
  alongside her husband.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Right, Yes, And while we will definitely get to him,
• 5:51
  it is crucial to clarify the power dynamic here in
• 5:54
  a hardware startup, specifically in the zero mission powertrain sector,
• 5:59
  the technology is only half the battle.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: You can have the best engineer in the world, but
• 6:03
  if you can't manage the cash flow, you're dead in
• 6:05
  the water.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Right, Because that industry is notoriously capital intensive. You're not
• 6:10
  writing code on a laptop and.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: A coffee shop exactly, not at all.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: You're building heavy machinery. You need factories, steel copper, magnets.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: It burns cash, It requires complex supply chains, inventory management,
• 6:23
  government grants compliance. As CFO and VP of Operations, Arian
• 6:29
  Popoli was the one keeping the lights.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: On, the one managing the chaos.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: She was managing the chaos. You do not get to
• 6:35
  a fifty million dollar exit without a CFO who is
• 6:37
  rock solid. She was the one ensuring that the brilliant
• 6:40
  ideas actually made it to the market.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: And that's the exit we saw in twenty twenty one,
• 6:44
  right the sale to Ideonomics.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Correct Us Hybrid was acquired for approximately fifty million dollars
• 6:50
  in a cash and stock deal. That was the culmination
• 6:54
  of her professional life's work. That was the we made
• 6:56
  it moment. That is the moment where you are supposed
• 6:58
  to take a deep breath and say, okay, we did it.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: But looking at the tributes, especially from her son Novid,
• 7:05
  it seems like the resume, the CFO title, the millions
• 7:08
  was the least interesting thing about her. There's this whole
• 7:10
  other side.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: That is the duality that makes the so heartbreaking. Navid Gudharzi,
• 7:14
  her son, who is currently a grad student at Harvard,
• 7:17
  gave these incredibly moving interviews He didn't talk about her spreadsheets,
• 7:21
  He didn't talk about the acquisition deal. He called her
• 7:25
  sunshine manifested.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Sunshine manifested. That is a beautiful specific description. It implies warmth, energy, presence.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: It really does. He called her a supermom and a
• 7:38
  ray of light. Now, when you look at her philanthropic footprint,
• 7:41
  you see someone who had a huge capacity for care.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about that.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: She served on executive boards for the South Coast Botanic Garden,
• 7:48
  the Palas faerdis Art Center, the UCLA Fowler Museum. She
• 7:52
  wasn't just writing checks for tax breaks.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: No, she was showing up.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: She was showing up, she was serving, She was hands on.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: It seemed she had this ability to pivot. On one hand,
• 8:02
  she's this hard nosed CFO negotiating multimillion dollar acquisition deals,
• 8:07
  staring down auditors she called a powerhouse, and on the
• 8:09
  other she's into ceramics, photography, dance.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: And that pivot is the key to understanding the timeline
• 8:15
  leading up to the tragedy. The sourses tell us that
• 8:18
  after the sale of the company, and especially in the
• 8:20
  last year, she was actively moving away from the grind.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: She was leaning into that creative side exactly.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: She was done with the war room of business she'd
• 8:28
  put in her time, which brings us to.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: The shift in her living situation. In May twenty twenty five.
• 8:34
  This is just a few months before everything.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Happened, right, she moves to Newport Beach. The goal was
• 8:40
  explicitly stated in the reports. She wanted a serene place
• 8:44
  to thrive creatively.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: She was looking for peace.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: She was looking for peace. She was looking to retire
• 8:49
  into her art.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: There is a tragic irony there that is just gut wrenching.
• 8:54
  She spends thirty years grinding, building, stress testing, surviving revolution
• 9:00
  and immigration and startup culture full of it. She finally
• 9:03
  cashes out. She moves to the beach to paint and
• 9:06
  do ceramics. She is actively designing a peaceful second act
• 9:10
  right before her life is violently ended.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: It creates a heartbreaking contrast. She was stepping into the light,
• 9:16
  so to speak, just as the darkness of her past
• 9:18
  partnership caught up with her. She was trying to build
• 9:21
  a sanctuary, but the conflict she was leaving behind wouldn't
• 9:24
  let her go.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: So that is Arian Papley, a builder, a mother, an artist.
• 9:30
  Now we have to look at the other half of
• 9:31
  this equation the man who is now sitting in a
• 9:34
  cell at the West Valley Detention Center, Gordon Ebbis Gadarzi.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: If you looked at Gordon Gadarzi on paper prior to
• 9:42
  this week, you would see the archetype of the American
• 9:45
  success story.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: The ultimate success story.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: He is the guy you put on the cover of
• 9:49
  the Alumni magazine.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Give us the profile. Who is this guy?
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Professionally highly educated, he holds a PhD. He is a
• 9:56
  licensed professional engineer in the world of electric vehicle. He
• 10:00
  is a heavyweight.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: He's not just some guy.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: No, he isn't some guy tinkering in a garage. He
• 10:05
  is an institutional figure.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: What specifically was his expertise, because eves is a broad term.
• 10:11
  Are we talking about batteries software?
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: His specialty was powertrains, specifically for commercial fleets and military systems.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, for the listener who isn't a mechanic and maybe
• 10:20
  drives a gas car, let's unpack powertrain? Why is that?
• 10:23
  The Cetra Sauce.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Put simply, the powertrain is the mechanism that transmits the
• 10:27
  drive from the engine of a vehicle to its axle.
• 10:30
  It's the muscle. It's the thing that makes the cargo.
• 10:33
  Without it, you just have a fancy box with wheels.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: And doing that for electric vehicles heavy duty ones like
• 10:39
  trucks or military equipment is significantly harder than doing it
• 10:43
  for say a sedan.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Right exponentially harder. You're dealing with massive torque requirements, heat management,
• 10:49
  durability issues. I mean, if a city bus breaks down, it's.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: A disaster, a huge disaster.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: If the military vehicle fails, people die. He was leading
• 10:57
  the charge on this engineering frontier. After you, as Hybrid
• 11:00
  sold he didn't retire. He became the CEO of Magmotor Technologies.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: What is Magmotor involved in?
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Robotics, medical devices, and interestingly enough parts for BattleBots.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: BattleBots you mean the televised fighting robots, the ones that
• 11:13
  rip each other apart in an arena, the very same.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: So you have a man who is deeply embedded in
• 11:18
  high tech precision engineering, but also engineering that is applied
• 11:22
  to combat and competition. So force in destruction it is
• 11:25
  about force, durability and destruction within a controlled environment. His
• 11:29
  public image was that of an innovator in sustainable transportation,
• 11:33
  a green tech savior.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: He's supposed to be the guy saving the planet.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: That is the narrative, a leader in the transition to
• 11:40
  clean energy, a research affiliate at UCLA, a pillar of
• 11:44
  the scientific community, and he and Aaron.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Were partners in literally everything.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Everything They met about thirty years ago. They built the family,
• 11:54
  two sons, Navid and Milad. They built the business, They
• 11:58
  built the fortune in extric linked. Their lives were inextricably linked,
• 12:02
  their bank accounts, their reputations, their daily routines. It was
• 12:05
  all one singular organism.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: And I think that is where we have to pivot
• 12:10
  to the fracture, because you don't just undo thirty years
• 12:13
  of entanglement easily. It's not just an emotional breakup, it's
• 12:16
  a corporate dissolution precisely.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: That is where the legal and financial reality sets in.
• 12:21
  In June twenty twenty five, just a month after Aaron
• 12:24
  moves to Newport Beach to find her peace, she files.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: For divorce, citing irreconcilable differences standard legal language, but the
• 12:32
  stakes were anything but standard.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: We're talking about significant assets, and this is where things
• 12:37
  usually get ugly.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Let's look at the property portfolio, because in these cases,
• 12:41
  the real estate often tells the story of the tension.
• 12:44
  It's not just about who gets the couch.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: It definitely is not. First, you have the marital home
• 12:49
  in Rolling Hills that is valued at roughly three million dollars.
• 12:52
  That is the fortress we talked about earlier. Then you
• 12:55
  have a home in Streno Hills valued out about a million.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, so four million dollars in residential real estate that's
• 13:02
  manageable to split. Usually you sell them, split the cash,
• 13:05
  move on.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: But then you have the complication a massive forty three
• 13:10
  thousand square foot industrial property in Worcester, Massachusetts.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Forty three thousand square feet. That is an enormous facility.
• 13:17
  That's the size of a large grocery store or a warehouse.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: It is and when you are divorcing, liquidating or splitting
• 13:25
  an industrial asset like that is a nightmare.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: I couldn't even imagine.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: It is not like selling a stock or splitting a
• 13:30
  savings account. It is illiquid. Its value depends on the market,
• 13:34
  the tenants, the equipment inside.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Is it operational, is it vacant?
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: All of those questions. It's a massive headache.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: And Arian was seeking spousal support as well.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: She was, So you have a situation where the financial
• 13:46
  pressure is immense. The prosecution has already hinted at this.
• 13:50
  They have referenced great monetary value as a potential motive.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: It's the golden cage concept again. When you try to
• 13:57
  dismantle an empire, the debris can be dangerous.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly when you are splitting a fifty million dollar fortune
• 14:04
  and complex real estate, the friction is incredible. We see
• 14:08
  this pattern, unfortunately often in high net worth dissolutions, where
• 14:11
  the liquidation of assets becomes a flashpoint for violence. It
• 14:15
  stops being about love or hate and starts being about
• 14:18
  winning and.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Losing resources a zero sum game.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: It becomes a zero sum game.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: And for a man like Goadarzi, an engineer, a man
• 14:26
  used to controlling systems, used to optimizing efficiency, losing control
• 14:29
  of half his assets might have felt like a catastrophic
• 14:32
  system failure.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: That is a very valid psychological angle. To an engineer,
• 14:37
  a loss of fifty percent of your resources is an
• 14:39
  unacceptable inefficiency. It's a bug in the code.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: So we have the setup, the successful couple, the messy divorce,
• 14:46
  the millions of dollars on the line. Now let's walk
• 14:49
  through the timeline of the tragedy itself, because the dates
• 14:52
  here are confusing.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: They are.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: There is a gap.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: It is murky, and that gap is likely central to
• 14:58
  the prosecution's case.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Let's start with November twenty twenty five.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: On November eighteenth, twenty twenty five, a body is discovered
• 15:06
  where exactly near Highway one thirty eight and Crestline Road.
• 15:09
  This is in the San Bernardino Mountains.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I've driven that road. It is not a casual Sunday drive.
• 15:13
  It's winding, its high elevation, and the drop offs are severe.
• 15:17
  They are It's the kind of road where you grip
• 15:19
  the steering wheel a little tighter exactly.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: The body was found seventy five feet down a steep embankton.
• 15:25
  We are talking about rugged, remote mountainous forests.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: This is not a place you stumble upon.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: No, you have to be looking for something or you
• 15:33
  have to be very unlucky to find someone down there.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: So the body is found November eighteenth, when was she
• 15:39
  reported missing?
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: That is the critical discrepancy. The missing person report wasn't
• 15:43
  filed with the Newport Beach Police Department until November twenty two,
• 15:46
  four days later.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: So for four days there is a Jane Do in
• 15:50
  the morgue and no one has officially told the police she's.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Missing, correct, and that gap is haunting. For four days,
• 15:57
  the system didn't know who she was. Wow, because because
• 16:00
  of the condition of the body, likely due to the
• 16:02
  fall and exposure to the element's identification was a massive
• 16:06
  forensic challenge.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Why was it so hard?
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Well, without getting too graphic, nature is quick, animal activity, decomposition,
• 16:14
  the trauma of the fall itself. It obscures facial features.
• 16:18
  The Sheriff's department actually had to release a composite sketch
• 16:21
  to the public to try and get a lead.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: That is chilling. Okay, on I'm one of her stature,
• 16:25
  a philanthropist, a CEO reduced to a generic sketch on
• 16:29
  the evening.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: News, someone who was Sunshine manifested reduced to a police drawing.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until December first that they got a positive ID.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: It wasn't until December first that dental records confirmed it
• 16:40
  was Arian Populi.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Now this is where the story takes a massive turn,
• 16:44
  the forensic pivot as we're calling it, because initially this
• 16:47
  wasn't called a murder.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: No, the initial autopsy suggested injuries consistent.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: With a fall, which given where she was found makes sense.
• 16:55
  On the surface. If you fall seventy five feet down
• 16:58
  a rocky embankment, the trauma to the body is going
• 17:01
  to be catastrophic, broken bones, blunt force trauma.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: It mimics the damage of an assault exactly.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: And in a rugged terrain like that, accidental falls happen,
• 17:11
  hiker's slip, people pull over it to take a picture
• 17:14
  and lose their footing.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: Or tragically, suicides happen in these remote spots. So the
• 17:18
  initial working theory was likely accidental death case closed.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: But they didn't close the case.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: They didn't and this is a testament to the forensic
• 17:26
  pathologists involved. They conducted a more thorough review. They didn't
• 17:29
  just look at the injuries. They likely looked at the
• 17:32
  pattern of the injuries, okay, and they reclassified the manner
• 17:35
  of death as homicide.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: That is a huge lead. What usually triggers that kind
• 17:40
  of reclassification It made a broken bone is a broken bone,
• 17:42
  isn't it not.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: For forensic pathologists they look at biomechanics without seeing the
• 17:47
  sealed report, we can speculate based on forensic principles. For example,
• 17:51
  they might look for the absence of hesitation marks if
• 17:54
  they were considering suicide or crucially defensive wounds.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Like scratches on the hands or under the.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Fingernails exactly, or bruising on the forearms. If you fall,
• 18:04
  you might scrape your hands trying to grab a branch.
• 18:07
  But if you have bruising consistent with being grabbed or
• 18:10
  blunt force trauma that doesn't match the rocks you fell on,
• 18:13
  that changes the story.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: It tells a different story.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Or it could be that the trajectory of the fall
• 18:18
  was physically impossible without a forceful push. Physics doesn't lie right.
• 18:23
  If the body landed too far from the edge to
• 18:25
  be a slip, that indicates propulsion.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: So it changes from a tragedy to a crime scene.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Precisely, it implies she didn't just slip, she was put
• 18:33
  there or she was thrown.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: So now we entered the investigation period from December twenty
• 18:38
  twenty five to January twenty twenty six, this two.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Month gap, this is the quiet period. Once it was
• 18:44
  ruled a homicide, the sheriff Special Investigations Division took over
• 18:48
  and they went to work, likely subpoening digital records, phone pings,
• 18:52
  and vehicle telemetry.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Vehicle telemetry. That's a good point. Goodarcy's an evy guy.
• 18:57
  Those cars are basically rolling computers. They track everywhere you go.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: They do. And if his vehicle was near that embankment
• 19:05
  at a time that aligns with the time of death,
• 19:08
  that is damning evidence.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: But here is the detail that really sticks out to
• 19:11
  me in the sources. Yeah, while this investigation is quietly
• 19:14
  churning in the background, Goodarzi is still out there. He's free.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Not only is he out there, reports indicate he attended
• 19:21
  Arian Popoli's memorial service in December.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Wait, he went to the funeral.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: He was there.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: That is disturbingly bold.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: It is visceral, but psychologically it is not unprecedented. In criminology,
• 19:35
  we often see suspects remaining in the family orbit.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Why is it just to keep up appearances, like if
• 19:39
  I don't go, everyone will think I did it.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: That's partly it to look like the grieving husband. If
• 19:44
  you don't show up, you look guilty immediately, okay, But
• 19:47
  also potentially to monitor the investigation. If you are close
• 19:51
  to the family, you hear what the police are telling them,
• 19:53
  you hear the rumors. It is a way of gathering intelligence.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: So you're spying.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: You are spying on the people who are mourning the
• 20:01
  person you allegedly killed.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: That adds a layer of coldness to the allegations that
• 20:04
  is hard to shake. Standing there, shaking hands, accepting condolences
• 20:09
  for the woman you were accused of killing.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: It suggests a compartmentalization that is frankly terrifying. It suggests
• 20:14
  he could separate the husband roll from the killer role completely.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: So the investigation grinds on. The police are building their case,
• 20:21
  probably mapping those phone pays in car data, and then Friday,
• 20:26
  January twenty three, twenty twenty.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Six, the raid deputies swarm that multimillion dollar estate in
• 20:32
  Rolling Hills.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: I can visualize that contrast, the tactical gear, the police cruisers,
• 20:37
  the weapons against the backdrop of manicured lawns and ocean views.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: The neighbors must have been in shock.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: It's the moment the two worlds collided. Gangarzi is arrested,
• 20:46
  the facade.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Crumbles, and the charges are not light.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: No first agree murder penal code one eighty seven A.
• 20:53
  But it is the aggravating circumstances that we need to dissect. Yes,
• 20:56
  the DA added some specific language, right.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah they did. They ledged the victim was particularly vulnerable
• 21:03
  and crucially, that the killing involved planning, sophistication or professionalism.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Sophistication that is a very specific, very loaded word to
• 21:13
  use in a murder charge. It is what does that
• 21:16
  mean in a llegal context. Yeah, because we usually use
• 21:18
  sophisticated to describe a nice wine or piece of tech,
• 21:23
  or we say that's a sophisticated algorithm.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: In a legal sense, it is an aggravating factor that
• 21:28
  can lead to harsher sentencing. It implies that this wasn't
• 21:31
  a crime of passion.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: It wasn't a moment of rage.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: It wasn't a snapped moment of rage in the kitchen
• 21:36
  where someone grabbed the nearest object. It suggests calculation. It
• 21:39
  suggests a high level of mental exertion was applied to
• 21:42
  the act of killing.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: So premeditation on steroids.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Essentially, think about the disposal of the body. Think about
• 21:48
  the location remote, hard to access, confusing for forensics, Think
• 21:52
  about the potential cleanup. If the prosecution can prove that
• 21:55
  he used his intelligence, his resources, or his engineering mind
• 21:59
  to cover his tracks or execute the crime, that is sophistication.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: It effectively argues that he treated the murder like a project,
• 22:07
  like an engineering problem to be solved exactly problem wife
• 22:11
  and assets solution eliminate method, Yes, sophisticated disposal, that.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Is the implication, and for a jury, that is a
• 22:19
  very powerful narrative. It paints the defendant not as a
• 22:23
  tragic figure who lost control, but as a cold, calculating
• 22:27
  predator who thought he was smarter than the system.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: So what does this leave us right now?
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Well, as of today, Gadarzi is held without bail at
• 22:35
  the West Valley Detention Center. He has been arraigned, and
• 22:38
  we must reiterate, as always, he is presumed innocent until
• 22:42
  proven guilty in a court of law. This is the
• 22:44
  prosecution's narrative, and the defense will have their turn. They
• 22:47
  might argue accidental death, they might argue alibi. We don't
• 22:50
  know yet.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: And the family, the sons Navid and me Lad.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Silence mostly and understandably so they have requested privacy. I
• 22:58
  can't even imagine the position there.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: It's impossible.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: They lost her mother and their father is accused of
• 23:02
  the crime. They are effectively orphans now in a social sense.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Navi did make that one statement though this is like
• 23:09
  a nightmare scenario.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: It captures the disbelief. He acknowledged the contrast we talked
• 23:13
  about earlier. His mother wanted a peaceful passing, a quiet
• 23:17
  second act, and instead she got this violent, chaotic reality.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Navid has launched a website though, Rian Papallydt neet yes.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: And I think that is a tactically brilliant and emotionally
• 23:29
  beautiful move. He is trying to steer the narrative away
• 23:33
  from the crime and back to the person.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: He's reclaiming her story.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: He wants he remembered for the light she brought, not
• 23:39
  the darkness of her death. He wants the world to
• 23:42
  google her name and see her art, not her crime
• 23:45
  scene photos.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: It's legacy preservation. He's fighting to keep her humanity intact
• 23:50
  when the media just wants to talk about the murder.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: Trial exactly, and that is a fight worth fighting.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I want to zoom out. Now. We've gone through the facts,
• 23:58
  the timeline, the forensics, But what does this story actually
• 24:01
  tell us? What are the broader themes we should take away.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: One of the biggest themes I think is the myth
• 24:06
  of safety in high society.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: We tend to think domestic violence is a socioeconomic issue.
• 24:11
  We think it happens in bad.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Neighborhoods, right we have this bias that wealth protects against
• 24:17
  domestic homicide, but the statistics tell us that money and
• 24:20
  asset division can be fatal flash points. When you have
• 24:25
  that much to lose status power, millions of dollars, the
• 24:29
  desperation can be just as high, if not higher, than
• 24:32
  in any other demographic.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: It's the golden handcuffs turning.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Into a weapon, and when one person tries to unlock
• 24:37
  those handcuffs and take half the gold with them, the
• 24:40
  reaction can be extreme. In lower income situations, the stress
• 24:44
  might be about survival paying rent. In high net worth situations,
• 24:48
  the stress is about identity. Who am I without my empire,
• 24:52
  and that threat to identity can trigger lethal violence.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: There is also the contrast of the clean tech angle.
• 24:58
  I can't get past that.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: It is hard to Here is a man who dedicated
• 25:02
  his entire professional life to clean energy, to sustainable futures,
• 25:07
  to making the world a better place through advanced technology.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: He was literally working on saving the environment, and he.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Is accused of a crime that is messy, brutal, and prehistoric.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Murder is the oldest crime.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: It is primal. It stands in direct opposition to the futuristic,
• 25:23
  polished image of the ev industry. It reminds us that
• 25:27
  no matter how advanced our technology gets, human nature remains
• 25:31
  capable of the same old violence.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: You can drive a zero mission car to a crime scene.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: The text doesn't change the heart.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: It's like we expect people who work in good industries
• 25:40
  to be good people.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: That is the halo effect. We assume because he is
• 25:44
  smart and works on green energy, he must be moral,
• 25:47
  But competence and morality are two completely different things.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: I also want to give a nod to the investigators
• 25:53
  here because of the forensic resilience you mentioned.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: It is the unsung hero of this story. If they
• 25:59
  had accept what did the initial fall from height theory,
• 26:01
  which would have been the easy thing to do.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Case close accident, tragic hiking accident.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: And Gadarzi walked away with everything, the assets, the freedom,
• 26:09
  the reputation, he would be the grieving widower exactly. The
• 26:13
  fact that they took a second look, that they question
• 26:15
  the easy answer, is the only reason we are having
• 26:18
  this conversation today. It highlights the vital importance of thorough
• 26:22
  forensic pathology.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: You can't just look at the surface, you.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Have to look deeper. Justice in this case lived in
• 26:28
  the microscopic details.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: So as we wrap up this deep dive, where does
• 26:32
  your mind go?
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: My mind goes to the tragedy of potential lost. Aaron
• 26:37
  Poppoley was fifty eight in today's world. That is young,
• 26:40
  so young. She had a whole second life ahead of her.
• 26:43
  She had the means, the talent, and the desire to
• 26:46
  create art and help people. She was ready to bloom
• 26:50
  in a new way. And that was stolen.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: And it was stolen allegedly by the person who was
• 26:54
  supposed to be her partner.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: The person who knew her best, the person who stood
• 26:58
  by her side for thirty years.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I've covered the rise of a fifty million dollar empire,
• 27:02
  the fall of a tech pioneer, and the heartbreaking loss
• 27:05
  of a beloved mother. It's a story of a woman
• 27:08
  on the verge of a peaceful new chapter and a
• 27:11
  husband who, it seems, was unable to let go either
• 27:14
  of her or of the money.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: It is a cautionary tale about the volatility of severance.
• 27:19
  When a long partnership ends, the energy released can be destructive,
• 27:23
  like splitting an atom.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with a final thought to
• 27:26
  mull Over. We talked about the charge, including the term.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Sophistication aggravating factor.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Right. We usually associate sophistication with the things Gadharzi and
• 27:35
  papally built, sophisticated technology, sophisticated business deals, sophisticated social.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Circles, markers of success exactly.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: But in the eyes of the law, sophistication is now
• 27:46
  the very thing that might ensure Gordon Gadarzi spends the
• 27:50
  rest of his life in prison. It forces us to
• 27:52
  ask a terrifying question, at what point does the intelligence
• 27:56
  use to build an empire turn into the calculation used
• 28:00
  to destroy a life? Is the drive that makes you
• 28:02
  a CEO the same drive that allows you to plan
• 28:05
  a murder?
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: That is a question that I think will haunt this
• 28:08
  trial as it unfolds. It challenges our admiration for intelligence.
• 28:12
  Intelligence is a tool. It can build a hybrid engine,
• 28:15
  or it can build a murder plot. It depends entirely
• 28:18
  on the hand that wheels it.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: If you want to follow the trial, check your sources,
• 28:22
  check the court filings. This story is far from over. Indeed,
• 28:26
  thanks for listening to this deep dive. Stay curious, Stay safe,