SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) - A former pot grower and jail escapee convicted in the kidnapping and torture of a marijuana dispensary owner in Southern California eight years ago was sentenced Friday to life in prison.
Hossein Nayeri was ordered to serve two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, one for each kidnapping charge, the Orange County Register reported. Superior Court Judge Gregg L. Prickett also sentenced Nayeri to a third consecutive term of seven years to life for the torture charge.
A jury last year found Nayeri guilty for the 2012 abduction he carried out with the help of two friends in a plot to locate $1 million they believed the dispensary owner had buried in the Mojave desert. No money was ever found.
The three broke into a Newport Beach home and tied up the dispensary owner, along with the girlfriend of the man who owned the house, and forced them into a van.
During a drive into the desert, the men tortured the dispensary owner with rubber piping, a stun gun and a blow torch, demanding he give them the $1 million and ignoring his pleas that he didn’t have the money.
When they arrived in the desert, the kidnappers cut off the dispensary owner’s penis. They left him and the woman, still bound, behind and drove off.
The woman and dispensary owner survived, though authorities were unable to recover his missing body part.
Investigators ultimately identified Nayeri and Kyle Handley and Ryan Kevorkian as the main suspects.
Naomi Rhodus, Kevorkian’s estranged wife, was accused of purchasing the weapons used in the kidnapping and helping to rent the van.
Nayeri fled to Iran but was ultimately arrested. While awaiting trial, Nayeri teamed up with two other inmates to lead a daring escape from Orange County jail, spending a little more than a week on the run before being recaptured.
Handley, the first to go to trial, was convicted and sentenced to four life terms in prison. Kevorkian and Rhodus await trial.
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