Murder trial for Tiffany Li begins

Deputy District Attorney Bryan Abanto described the evidence the 12-person jury and three alternate jurors will review as technical in nature, including downloads of text messages and locations from the phones of Li, Bayat, Green and 44-year-old Burlingame man Olivier Adella, who has been alleged by prosecutors to have acted as a co-conspirator with Bayat and Li and disposed of Green’s body. Though he was long slated to be a key prosecution witness, Adella will no longer take the stand at Bayat and Li’s trial after allegations he intimidated a defense witness arose just before opening statements were scheduled to start earlier this month.

In laying out the steps Li and Bayat allegedly took to plot out and cover up Green’s murder, Abanto contended an ongoing custody battle was behind Li’s motive to get rid of the father of her two children. Abanto said texts between Li and Bayat demonstrate the frustration they shared with Green’s requests for money to raise their daughters, who were toddlers at the time of the murder, in the manner to which they had become accustomed. He argued Li and Bayat had been in contact with Adella and his wife in the days leading up to Li’s April 28, 2016, meeting with Green at the Millbrae Pancake House, the last time Green is believed to have been seen alive before he was shot in the head and his body was dumped along Highway 101 in Healdsburg.

Abanto said the story Li told detectives that she parted ways with Green at the Millbrae Pancake House that night was just the beginning of the lies she told to cover up her role in the murder, noting cellphone records show Green was at Li’s home in Hillsborough a little more an hour after they met at the restaurant. Abanto is alleging Li and Bayat lured Green to the Hillsborough home Li once shared with Green and at the time of his murder shared with Bayat, who prosecutors believe shot Green in the mouth in the home’s garage.

“Over time, as he kept asking her for money, she got angrier and angrier,” said Abanto. “The lies she tells, some of those were telling, too.”

But May Mar, one of Li’s attorneys, alleged there is no evidence Li conspired to kill Green, and instead indicated she wanted Green in her daughters’ lives in multiple phone calls, adding the pair resolved their lengthy custody battle 10 days prior to Green’s disappearance. Mar said phone records show Green’s last known meeting was not with Li but instead was with Adella, who pretended to be a former professional football player named “Keon” when he contacted Green through a burner phone days before his murder.

“The man who killed Keith Green is not in this courtroom,” she said. “[Keith Green]’s last plans were not with Tiffany Li. His last plan in life was to meet up with Olivier Adella.”

Mar said a series of phone calls and text messages show Green and “Keon” were arranging to meet April 28, 2016. She showed the jury another set of phone communications between Adella and three other men she believes reveals an effort to locate a gun in the weeks before Green’s murder. It is only after a gun is secured that Adella purchases a burner phone and pretends to be “Keon” when he contacts Green, said Mar. She noted that questions as to why these men in communication with Adella would want to stage an assault on Green still remain but there is currently no evidence showing Li directed Adella’s actions.

Mar also challenged the police investigations of the garage of Li’s home, where prosecutors alleged gunshot residue was found on a golf bag and Green’s blood was found on Li’s Mercedes G-Class SUV. She told jurors they would hear from ballistics experts who will tell them more gunshot residue and blood should have been found in Li’s garage if Green had been killed in the manner prosecutors allege. She added efforts to rip up seats of Li’s car and find additional blood were unsuccessful, and noted investigators didn’t use the same level of scrutiny when searching Adella’s Chrysler 300 for evidence even though Green’s blood was found in the car’s trunk and the vehicle’s backseat and trunk emergency latch were damaged.

Mar said investigators searching Adella’s apartment at 1800 Trousdale Drive in Burlingame after his arrest found a lunchbox with $35,500 in cash, his passport and two cellphones. But she noted a Cartier watch belonging to Green that was also in the lunchbox wasn’t itemized as a piece of evidence until defense attorneys asked to look at the lunchbox months after it was found.

Bayat’s defense attorney John May argued the prosecution’s evidence is largely circumstantial and does not include any direct connections between his client and Green’s murder. Without physical evidence or an eyewitness linking his client to the crime — which he said took place when Bayat was watching a movie with Li’s two children — May contended cellphone records for Adella’s burner phone, blood stains on Adella’s car and parking space and Adella’s alleged attempt to bleach Green’s car point to Adella as Green’s killer.

“The prosecutor has put the wrong people on trial,” he said. “That is what the evidence will show.”

One of the 12 jurors was excused at Monday’s hearing, so Judge Robert Foiles appointed an alternate juror to serve as a replacement. There are currently three other alternate jurors, and the trial will resume 9 a.m. Tuesday. Adella is in custody on no bail status.

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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