Heiress faces murder charge
Jet-setter fell in love with pal of children’s dad
HILLSBOROUGH, Calif. — Keith Green was a popular but troubled Northern California high school football star who had recently washed out of college when he met Tiffany Li.
Li was a pretty, jet-setting daughter of a rich and powerful Chinese family who was born in Beijing and grew up in Silicon Valley. She changed his life. Then, according to prosecutors, she orchestrated his murder last year when she fell in love with another man after more than six years with Green.
That man, his “bodyguard” and Li have all been charged with first-degree murder. The men are jailed pending a September trial.
Li, however, called on her wealthy family and friends to post $4 million in cash and put up more than $60 million in real estate to secure bail. The district attorney called the amount unprecedented in the region.
Li and the two men have pleaded not guilty. Babies and a mansion
Li and Green met when he was 21 and she was 23 and quickly decided to live together.
They soon moved into a newly built $7 million mansion in the San Francisco suburb of Hillsborough owned by her mother. Li gave birth to a daughter in 2012 and to a second daughter two years later, and the home was staffed with nannies, housekeepers and landscapers.
Sometime after they met, Green introduced Li to his friend. Li and Kaveh Bayat soon began an affair.
Prosecutors say Li kicked Green out of the mansion in October 2015, closed their joint bank accounts and turned off his phone. Bayat moved into the mansion.
Green and Li began a legal battle over custody of their daughters, eventually agreeing Green could gradually retain 50 percent, starting with unsupervised weekend visits.
The first weekend visit was to take place April 30, 2016, but Green disappeared two days before.
Prosecutors say Green agreed to meet Li in a restaurant parking lot in Millbrae, near San Mateo, the night of April 28, 2016.
Li told detectives they sat in her car for an hour, discussing their children, then Green left. But court records show investigators tracked both of their cellphones back to her mansion.
A walker found Green’s body nearly two weeks later 70 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Bodyguard arrested
Police arrested Olivier Adella, a 6-foot-5 Frenchborn mixed martial arts professional who describes himself as Bayat’s bodyguard. He said Li and Bayat showed up at his apartment the night of the restaurant meeting with Green’s body in the front passenger seat of Li’s SUV, blood coming from his mouth and ears.
“I need you to take out the trash,” Adella says Bayat told him.
Geoff Carr, Li’s attorney, says Adella is lying about Li’s involvement. Charles Smith and John Halley, lawyers for Bayat and Adella, did not return calls for comment.
Bayat and Li were arrested the day after Adella’s arrest.