Detective says victim tracked to home
REDWOOD CITY — The cellphone of homicide victim Keith Green was tracked to his ex-girlfriend’s house the night he disappeared, an investigator testified Thursday, contradicting the account of the woman, Tiffany Li, who is charged with his murder.
Green’s iPhone 6 made contact with a cellular network from inside Li’s luxury Hillsborough home on the night of April 28, 2016, shortly after the pair met outside a Millbrae eatery to discuss a custody dispute involving their two young daughters, Detective Gaby Cha- ghouri told a San Mateo County Superior Court judge during a preliminary hearing.
Green never returned home from the Millbrae Pancake House. His decomposing body, nude but for a pair of black socks, was found May 11 along a dirt road near Highway 101 in Sonoma County. An autopsy found he had been killed by a single gunshot to the neck.
Li and two co-defendants — boyfriend Kaveh Bayat, 30, and Burlingame resident Olivier Adella, 41 — face charges of felony murder along with a special allegation that one of them was armed with a gun while carrying out the crime. They have pleaded not guilty.
At the conclusion of the hearing, slated to last three days, Judge Lisa Novak will determine whether there is enough evidence for Li and Bayat to stand trial before a jury. Adella has waived his right to a preliminary hearing.
Li, 31, told investigators she
and Green met for about an hour on the night of April 28 in the parking lot of the Millbrae restaurant, just across the street from the apartment where Green had been living since the couple split in the fall of 2015.
Sitting inside Li’s Mercedes-Benz SUV, the estranged couple talked about the custody dispute and Green’s desire to move to Ohio, Li told Chaghouri. Then he got out of the car, Li told him, and she drove south on El Camino Real to her 5-bedroom, roughly 5,000-square-foot Hillsborough home.
Li and Green had a falling out about six months before his death, said Li, who claimed he was abusive. She began dating Bayat, a mutual friend, soon after the breakup.
Bayat told sheriff’s Deputy Bryant Watt that, in the months before Green’s death, he had challenged Green to a fight.
“He told me they did not like each other, for obvious reasons,” Watt testified.
At the time of his death, Green had not seen his children without supervision for several months, Li told Chaghouri. He was scheduled for an unsupervised visit April 30, two days after he disappeared, the detective testified.
Video surveillance footage along El Camino Real in Millbrae showed that, as Li drove home in her AMG G63 after meeting with Green, she was trailed by a 2005 Chrysler belonging to Adella, according to Chaghouri.
Adella traded in the Chrysler on May 5 at a San Jose dealership, Chaghouri testified. The new owner told investigators the car smelled of bleach.
On May 20, police pulled over Adella’s wife near 1800 Trousdale Drive in Burlingame, where the couple shared an apartment filled with his mixed martial arts paraphernalia, and obtained his FasTrak transponder, according to Detective John Carroll. Records showed the device had crossed the Golden Gate Bridge headed south around 3:30 a.m. on April 29.
Adella’s wife, Uta Bredenstein, has defended her husband, who stands about 6 feet 5 inches and weighs roughly 250 pounds, as a gentle soul who “could not hurt a fly.” She told detectives he drove a limousine and worked as a personal trainer and bodyguard.
Green’s autopsy revealed chipping of a front tooth indicating his killer may have put the firearm, likely a 9 mm handgun, in Green’s mouth before pulling the trigger. A forensic specialist found particles consistent with gunshot residue on a golf bag found in the garage of Li’s home.
Li’s attorney, Geoffrey Carr, questioned investiga- tors Thursday about Li’s actions on the night of April 28, suggesting her text exchanges with a tenant of an apartment building owned by her mother were not those of a woman participating in a murder. A lawyer for Bayat noted the accused killer was not evasive when talking to investigators about his dispute with Green.
The young father was studying to become a chef at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in San Francisco. Friends who have attended court hearings have described Green as a caring father.