Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's going to be two types of companies. Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future that is human-centered? I'm Rana Elkhaubi, and on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future, and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find Pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. Previously on. 701 in the breaking news, a tech executive is dead. He was stabbed in San Francisco, south of Market Street. Yeah, the latest reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App and an executive of MobileCoin. One of our best friends called and said, I just saw on the news, and my heart shattered. Elon Musk even weighing in with his tweet, quote, violent crime in San Francisco is horrific, and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately. They're saying he took a kitchen knife from his sister's apartment to his car, you know, with Bob, got in the car, went somewhere else, and then attacked him. It just didn't make sense. Didn't make sense to me. In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups. The police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories. On January 25th, 2024, less than a year after Bob Lee's murder, Law & Order aired the second episode of its 23rd season. It was called Human Innovation. DOA took one in the chest. No wallet, no phone. Odega owner down the street heard the shot around 2 a.m. and called it in but didn't see anything. In the episode, a young tech executive is killed on the street in the middle of the night. in what looks like a random mugging. Evan Marks, the tech guy. CEO of Venzip? Damn, Venzip is how I pay for everything these days. You don't use it? No, man, I'm not trusting my bank at PhotoNap. Immediately after the death, still on the show, the tech community starts posting on social media, blaming the NYPD. Evan Marks was one of the greatest minds of our generation. The NYPD should be ashamed. violent street crime is out of control and Evan's blood is on their hands. So Marx's murder is somehow our fault? No. Apparently, according to James Sawyer, it is. And that guy's got millions of followers that worship him as a genius. Sound familiar? This is a thing that Law & Order does. They take a story from the headlines for inspiration. In this case, the story of Bob Lee's murder. But it's hard to know if Bob's death would have risen to the level of network TV drama if it wasn't for the next plot point. There's an underground scene for people of a certain caliber. It's called the lifestyle. Lifestyle? I did not name it. Evan was super into the whole thing. The Lifestyle. A formal underground group of elite individuals into drugs, wild parties, and promiscuous sex. It's just a way to create safe space for powerful and, you know, famous people to relax. expanding the mind to break old paradigms. And by expanding the mind, you mean taking ketamine, mushrooms? In May of 2023, about five and a half weeks after Bob was killed, the Wall Street Journal published an article with this headline. Before his killing, tech executive Bob Lee led an underground life of sex and drugs. Here's how it opens. In certain wealthy tech circles, it is known as the lifestyle, an underground party scene featuring recreational drug use and casual sex. A successful tech executive named Bob Lee liked to hang out with that crowd, according to people who also participated. So too did Kazar Momeni, the wife of a prominent plastic surgeon. Television coverage picked up on a similar theme. We now know the Cash App founder had drugs and alcohol in his system the night he was stabbed to death in San Francisco. Was a romantic affair behind the stabbing death earlier this spring of the founder of Cash App. An underground sex party and an affair may be what led to the fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee. But for Bob's friends, this version of him that they heard about in the news seemed all wrong. It just didn't seem like the same person. Here's Joshua Block, a software engineer who hired Bob Lee at Google. Josh knew Bob for 20 years. None of the articles that I read at the time mentioned what a special person he was. They just said, yeah, tech bro, basically. No, he wasn't. I've known plenty of tech bros, and he wasn't one of them. He wasn't like that. Bob was Bob. So all of a sudden, his name became a household word for the worst of reasons. And this was before his body was even cold. And it just pissed me off. Once again, what happened to Bob Lee was being squeezed into a narrative that had been established well before his death. We talked in episode one about how his death was used to epitomize the decline of San Francisco. These elected leaders, they are setting loose on us a predatory, criminal, or psychotic element that jeopardizes our safety and makes these cities unlivable. Of course, the story that Bob died in a random act of violence proved to be wrong. After Bob's toxicology report was released, a new narrative emerged, one that was much more salacious. The report found that Bob died with ketamine, cocaine, alcohol, and an antihistamine in his system. And when rumors surfaced about Bob's personal life, he became a stand-in for the secret world of wealthy elites. One filled with sex, partying, and illicit drugs. How much truth was there to this story? I'm Sean Wen. This is Foundering, The Killing of Bob Lee. the world. We do it early so the news is fresh, not recycled, and so you know what actually matters as the day gets going. From Brussels, I'm following the politics, policy and the people shaping the European Union right now. And from London, I'm looking at what all that means for markets, money and the wider economy. We've got reporters across Europe and around the globe feeding in as stories break. So whether it's geopolitics, energy, tech or markets, you're hearing it while it happens. It's smart, calm and to the point. And it fits into your morning. You can find new episodes of the Bloomberg Daybreak Europe podcast by 7am in Dublin or 8am in Brussels, Berlin and Paris. On Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. When I started reaching out to Bob's friends and family, I found no shortage of people who were happy to talk about him. People would say to me anything for Bob. He was a deeply social person and beloved. Multiple people, I'm talking adult men in their 40s here, told me that Bob was their best friend. Bob never really got older. He always had this smile of an eight-year-old or ten-year-old, like just this little boyish grin. He was just so cute. People were naturally drawn to Bob. It was his charming, his personality, his humor, his laughter. You've got a good-looking guy with a brilliant mind. You've got a doting father. He was very endearing and very cool. But when you really got close to Bob, you realized how genuinely sweet and honest he was about his feelings. People I spoke to felt like the real Bob had been lost behind waves of headlines, rumors, and what they called misinformation. So I wanted to try and understand the Bob they knew, the friend, the dad, the talented programmer. Bob Lee had a humble upbringing. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1979. His dad worked as a warehouse supervisor at Anheuser-Busch. His mom was a mail carrier for the Postal Service and later a journalist. Bob started toying around with computers in middle school. He went to Southeastern Missouri State University on a full ride after designing the school's admissions website. By the way, that website was so well implemented that the school kept using it for 15 years. He met his wife Krista in their hometown. 22 years old, and Bob and I met the old-fashioned way at a bar one night. The only thing I could think of when I first met him was, oh my God, this guy is wearing khakis and a pink polo. Like, wow, what a nerd. They started dating. They were only 24 when Krista called Bob to say I pregnant And he didn even hesitate He put the phone down and did this Woo Guys I gonna be a dad And, of course, I'm like, that's not really the conversation I was planning on having with you and you sharing with everyone. You know, pump the brakes, babe. Like, I'm kind of freaking out here. And he's like, don't worry about it. And he was excited, and he point-blank said, Let's do this. Let's have this baby. You know, I love you, and I know you love me, and we can do this. Around this time, there was another big development in Bob's life. He attracted the attention of Josh Block, Bob's friend that we heard from at the top of this episode. Josh, who didn't know Bob at the time, was posting little brain teasers online involving the Java programming language. I started getting these very, very good answers from this guy that I had never heard of. you know, in the Midwest somewhere. According to Josh, Bob's skills were almost savant-like. He didn't have a computer science degree. He had a working-class background. He was sort of clearly too good for the league that he was playing in. You know, where did he learn all this stuff? Well, he just picked it up. He had an amazing capacity for doing that. All the people in tech I spoke to about Bob Lee told me some version of the same thing. He was a hacker, a code god, a guru. At Google, Bob made two big contributions. First, he worked on the ads platform, which became the financial engine that powers Google. And second, Bob helped write the foundational software for the Android operating system. Here he is talking about it on a panel. It was really fun. There was no iPhone at the time. We were creating basically a BlackBerry competitor. The big challenge for me, I really had to take this code that was meant for desktops and servers and make them work on a really low-powered mobile device. And phones are so much more powerful now. But also, nobody foresaw how big this stuff was going to get. Bob's work helped make smartphones cheap and universal. An estimated 75% of cell phones globally now run on Android. I met Bob on my wedding night. This is Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, the mobile payments company, now known as Block. The two were introduced by a mutual friend. Bob Lee knew Jack Dorsey. Jack Dorsey is one of the most famous people in the tech industry. He's a founder of Twitter. And one thing that Dorsey, Bob, and Jim all have in common is that they're all from St. Louis. He came up and said hi, and Jack said hi, and introduced Bob Lee as the best Java programmer in the world. And Jack isn't prone to hyperbole, so I took it very seriously. So my mission was to recruit Bob Lee to come join us and help us build the company. At Square, Bob became CTO. He built the engineering team, and he also created Cash App, the service that would eventually become his legacy. For the past five years, Cash App has been responsible for two-thirds of the revenue of its parent company, Block. It has an estimated 57 million users. If you are a poor person or a marginalized person, Cash App is access to the financial world. It's a bank in your pocket. So if you've always had banking accounts and access to credit, you'll look at Cash App and go, oh, that's kind of cool. But if you've been shut out, it's magic. It's also become something of a cultural sensation. It's famously featured in rap lyrics. Here's a video Bob made for his kids with Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas. Bob was crucial to the creation and growth of this massive, massive brand, both as a coder himself and as someone who managed other engineers. While there is a stereotype of engineers as introverted or socially awkward, this wasn't true of Bob. He loved to party. I don't have a full 360 degree picture of Bob because I go to bed at about 10 o'clock and Bob goes to bed the next day sometime, maybe. Or maybe not. I don't know. I've never made it. Like I've never made it through a full cycle with Bob Lee. Jim McKelvey from Square was clear. While he was Bob's boss and friend, he didn't know the entirety of the man. He was a hard partier and I am not. And so at those moments, our paths diverged. But the beautiful thing about Bob is that he wasn't defined by his hard partying. Like some people bring that with them 24-7. Bob could switch it on and switch it off. I will be the first to tell you that most people couldn't survive Bob's lifestyle. That's Cameron Purdy, an engineer and tech executive from Massachusetts. He and Bob met at a Java conference when Bob was 23 years old. Over the years, they went to many conferences together, and that's how their friendship blossomed. I would fly into San Francisco late at night, get off the plane, drop my bags at the hotel, and meet Bob at the bar at 11, 12 at night. And then we would stay out all night, bar to bar, wherever he could find it was still open, and he knew them all. or go by Stanford and hang out at the frats at the parties there or whatever. And then we'd go to work. Like, if I was lucky, I'd have time for a shower before I went to work in the morning. For Cameron's part, he loved seeing Bob. Because with Bob, life always seemed like an adventure. He was the kind of person that things just happened to. So I was with Bob when we met Lady Gaga. I was with Bob when we met Dennis Rodman. I was with... Yeah, we ended up at Dennis Rodman's birthday party at the Spearmint Rhino in Vegas. That was interesting. Spearmint Rhino is a strip club. Cameron guessed that during a conference, over the course of four or five days, Bob might sleep around eight hours total. The human body's not meant to go nonstop. You got to sleep. So he'd sleep for half an hour and then I'd wake him up and go, are you ready to go? He's like, yeah, let's go. Bob's mid-30s were a turning point in his life. In 2014, he left Square. The next year, he and Krista separated. They remained close friends and co-parents. They still had weekly dinners and went on family vacations. Bob, by all accounts, was a great dad. Very loving, sweet, and present. Most people I spoke to, whether they knew Bob from work or partying, also had stories about hanging out with his kids. Here's the video he sent them while on a work trip. Hey, girls, I'm getting on a flight to Chicago. I'm going to go talk about science. I appreciate the picture and the video you sent. I'd love it if you'd make me another video and send it. I love you. Bye. At the same time, Bob was a single man with a lot of money and a restless personality. Jessica Traynor dated Bob after he and Krista divorced. He was kind of, I guess you could say, like a playboy. Wasn't really looking for anything serious when I met him. Understandably, he had been married before and just had a huge background and was also trying to get to know himself still, I think, in some ways. When Jessica met Bob, she felt like he was in the middle of a reinvention. When you have free time and you've achieved so much, you're kind of chasing a new kind of rush in your life. There is a truth to this ability to travel all over the world and hang out and meet cool people and kind of, you know, party, if you will. He was getting more into electronic dance music. Sometimes he'd fly around the world following specific DJs on tour. They gave him backstage. He'd always have like a table right next to the DJ. Jessica says that she and Bob started working out together. Afterwards, they'd lay in the sun and work on their tans. felt really cool. You know, Bob came from a, you know, nerdy background as, you know, someone who worked in tech. You know, this kind of cool tech bro, you know, image that he got later in time came, you know, after he had a little bit more freedom. In the years after Square, Bob's next projects flopped. He founded a startup, which failed. he tried his hand at becoming an angel investor. About a year and a half before his death, Bob became the chief product officer of a cryptocurrency company called MobileCoin. This job allowed Bob to live in Miami, fly back to San Francisco a week every month to work, and travel as he wanted. When the Wall Street Journal published its piece on Bob Lee and the so-called lifestyle, it had an explosive effect. The Daily Mail and the New York Post followed up with more salacious stories about Bob. Details about sex and drugs turned Bob Lee's death from a news story into one that true crime shows had a field day with. The Wall Street Journal reported that Bob was part of an underground party scene. This is from a podcast called Serialistly, which has more than 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube alone. Filled with recreational drugs and casual sex, and that this party scene was called the lifestyle, and that he was involved in this for several years prior to his death. Bob's friends, at least the ones I spoke with, were furious about the portrayal in the article. It was disgusting honestly When I saw it we were all shocked And I know most of the people that were quoted but even reading between life before I even talked to them I like wait like this stuff is taking so out of context Lauren Weineger is a tech founder. She had known Bob for almost a decade. They became friends after meeting at South by Southwest. She and others will be the first to admit Bob liked to party. He took drugs, but she took issue with the idea that he was part of an underground secret society spread out across San Francisco. Does San Francisco have a lot of poly and is there a lot of drugs? And I'm not even there's no judgment on these things. It's just these are statements that are true of San Francisco more than many places. But the statements in that article weren't even made about Bob. So they tried to create this story about this dark underbelly of the tech world. There is a fair amount of what many people consider vice within the tech industry. Drug use is common. Bob Lee was hardly an outlier. Elon Musk has spoken openly about his ketamine use. Sam Altman said that psychedelics were life-changing. Even Bill Gates has admitted to drug use. And there's a subculture of sex parties that my colleague Emily Chang has written about extensively. Though when I interviewed people who knew Bob, no one could tell me definitively that he attended any of these. In response to our questions, a spokesperson from the Wall Street Journal said, we stand by our reporting. There's been a lot of questions about the lifestyle, and I don't actually know where it came from. It feels like something that is a thing for a specific group of people, but I think is misused and turned into something else. That's Harper Reid. He's also a friend of Bob's. They knew each other for 15 years. He's a programmer and a tech entrepreneur, best known for being CTO of Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. When I have it described back to me by people, oftentimes it seems like they're talking about, honestly, just going outside and going to listen to DJs and going to clubs and having underground parties and like really having a part of your life be about nightlife. My experience with Bob specifically, it was much more about just nightlife, like DJs, having fun, partying, hanging out. Why do you think it's taken on such a life of its own? And I think this is probably a story as old as time. There is a fascination with the other and like, we want to hear about rich people and what crazy things they do. I do. I want to read that. Like, how often are you like, what? This is happening to this rich person that I don't know? This is wonderful. all my experience with Bob in the nightlife was nothing sketchy. I will say that making the choice to participate in nightlife the way that I know Bob did and the way that I did is a lifestyle. That is a thing. Like, I was going out every single night to, you know, I was sleeping weird so I could go out more. Like, it was wild. It was really fun. I highly recommend it. It was a genuine clash of cultures. For those close to Bob, it felt like the media was clutching its pearls, passing moral judgment on Bob's personal choices, choices they felt had little, if anything, to do with Bob's death. For more conservative media outlets, Bob's personal life seemed far outside the bounds of what most Americans might consider normal behavior, normal partying. And given the toxicology report, it was easy to draw a connection between Bob's partying and the 2 a.m. stabbing. The Wall Street Journal article in particular profoundly changed public perception of Bob. Krista Lee, his former wife, the mother of his children, who knew him for 20 years, had trouble reconciling the portrayal with the man she knew. I would sit there and read these things and I would get angry. And then I would start second-guessing Bob himself. Like, you know, is there something I didn't know? Like, this man is an open book. Was there some weird side life that I had no clue about? After Bob's death, Krista went to Miami to clear out his apartment. I was expecting to find something that I would have been shocked by, and it was nothing. There was absolutely nothing that was shocking. I was perfectly aware that he was microdosing ketamine for depression, perfectly aware that he would use cocaine from time to time. So do I, you know. And it's not that uncommon of a drug these days. Let's, you know, let's be real. I know that there's a lot of more conservative people out there that will be shocked by that. But sorry, just kind of a reality. Krista's response reveals something important. The way people interpret this part of Bob Lee's story depends on how they perceive illegal drug use. There are many people, especially in the Bay Area, who see it as fine, common, whatever. And others who see it as something so dirty, so illicit, the implication becomes maybe Bob had it coming. After the break, Nima enters the picture. We'll be right back. The news doesn't stop on the weekends. Context changes constantly. And now Bloomberg is the place to stay on top of it all. Hi, I'm David Gurra. Join us every Saturday and Sunday for the new Bloomberg This Weekend. I'm Christina Ruffini. will bring you the latest headlines, in-depth analysis, and big interviews. All the stories that hit home on your days off. And I'm Lisa Mateo. Watch and listen to Bloomberg this weekend for thoughtful, enlightening conversations about business, lifestyle, people, and culture. On Saturday mornings, we put the past week's events into context, examining what happened in the markets and the world. Then on Sundays, we speak with journalists, columnists, and key political figures to prepare you for the week ahead. Join us as soon as you wake up and bring us with you wherever your weekend plans take you. Watch us on Bloomberg Television, listen on Bloomberg Radio, stream the show live on the Bloomberg Business app, or listen to the podcast. That's Bloomberg this weekend, Saturdays and Sundays starting at 7 a.m. Eastern. Make us part of your weekend routine on Bloomberg Television, radio, and wherever you get your podcasts. We can confirm that Mr. Lee and Mr. Mominny knew each other. I think now that we know the facts and understand that this is somebody that Mr. Lee knew that this was a targeted killing, this is not indicative of the state of affairs here in San Francisco on our streets. San Francisco officials wanted to make it very, very clear that Bob Lee knew his killer, Nima Momeni. During the trial, it came up that Bob and Nima met Akazar's house the weekend he was killed. Though I also came across a few instances where their social circles overlapped. In 2021, they both pursued Jessica Traynor. She met Nima at a nightclub in San Francisco. He had come up to the bar and I just kind of met him there. And we just kind of started talking. And he was kind of slouched over and, you know, didn't really make great eye contact. So he just had the signs of someone, you know, without a lot of confidence. Nima asked for her phone number. And later he sent her a text, inviting her to hang out. I said, OK, sure. You know, not thinking anything necessarily romantic, but just to, you know, friendly. And then his suggestion was, I have a boat. let's go out on the water this afternoon. And I was like, I don't know that this is a good idea to go one-on-one on a boat out into the water stranded in the middle of the lake or wherever, you know, with just somebody I met. So it started to feel a little creepy in that way too. Jessica said that another time, Nima reached out to her. She said no. And actually she was going out with Bob that night. And we ended up at the same party a little after party. So we ended up there and it was kind of awkward. So I'm not sure if Nima or Bob remembered meeting at that moment. They didn't really exchange much conversation. And I never mentioned to Bob that, you know, oh yeah, this guy had my phone number. So it was just kind of a short, brief interaction. She said that Nima's displeasure was clear. It was pretty clear that he showed up with Bob and left with Bob. And he was pretty quiet the whole time but yeah i would say he had like glaring looks like you know piercing stares can you contrast what nema's like at a party versus what bob is like at a party nema is the guy that's kind of standing off to the side not interacting with anybody even so you know i only had a couple real interactions with him in a social setting but every time he he stood off to the side, not really talking to anybody and just kind of staring, maybe, you know, just, yeah, kind of like that outsider vibe. And in contrast, Bob was the guy in the center of attention, talking to everybody. So it was a huge contrast. Jessica saw that Bob attracted many people to him, and she was less trusting of some of the people he spent time with. His close friend group always had his back, and he had some really amazing close friends, and I don't want to take away from that at all. But in the end, I think, you know, he still ended up with people that were not necessarily great for the last weekend of his life. That last weekend, Bob hung out with Nima twice and at least three times with Nima's sister, Kazar Momeni. Some of her friends call her Tina. As far as I knew, Bob's relationship with Tina was solely his friends. I didn't think there was anything more than that. This is Doug Dalton. Doug used to be a computer programmer and tech executive Nowadays he owns several well bars in San Francisco including Rickhouse and Bourbon Branch He also one of Bob Lee best friends I think that Tina was just somebody that Bob gravitated towards. Tina was just always fun to kind of hang around with. She was always kind of a life of a party. She mostly hosted her own parties within her house or having mutual friends who were going from one party to another within that same Millennium Tower. And do you know why she wanted to mostly host parties in her own house? Probably just to be away from prying her eyes. So at this time, what we've revealed is that Mr. Momeni and Mr. Lee were both at the Millennium Tower, which is where Mr. Momeni's sister resides with her husband. This is Brooke Jenkins, San Francisco's district attorney. The day after Nima Momeni was arrested, she gave a press conference outlining the last minutes of Bob's life. The two gentlemen late in the early in the early morning hours, I should say, leave the Millennium Tower together. They are seen on video leaving the tower and getting into Mr. Momeni's vehicle. They then proceed to drive away, and subsequently to that is when the stabbing takes place. Can you tell me what you found out about his final hours? Like who he was hanging out with, where was he, and what led to him getting in the car with Nima? All I can say is that I tracked down two of his friends. They had been with Tina. That's Doug Dalton again. According to court testimony, on the afternoon of April 3rd, Bob, Kazar, and two other friends were hanging out at the apartment of a guy named Jeremy Boyvin. Multiple people describe him as Bob's drug dealer. Remember his name. We'll come back to Jeremy Boyvin a few times. People have different views about whether rich people doing drugs is a big deal, but there's no way around it. There were lots of drugs involved in Bob Lee's final hours. Kazar, by her own admission, took ketamine, acid, whippets, cocaine, and GHB. GHB is also known as the date rape drug. When mixed with alcohol, it can make you black out. At some point, Bob left the party. And sometime thereafter, Kazar lost consciousness. When she woke up, she was distraught. She called Nima to come get her. Tina had called Nima for a ride home, and Nima came, picked her up, was upset that she had been drinking throughout the day and asked who she was with and then called Bob and was yelling at Bob over the phone. Bob was actually hanging out with another friend when he took Nima's call. He had the phone on speaker. So his friend, a guy named Bo Mohazabi, overheard their conversation. Bob's friend would later testify in trial that Nima sounded, quote, almost like a detective asking questions. What were you guys doing? What was going on with my sister? What did she take? How about the girls getting naked? This was really confusing to Bob and his friend, who hadn't been there to see the girls getting naked. That's when the friend says to Bob, who the hell is this person? Get off the phone with this person. This person is crazy. Bob was one of those people who can't stand when somebody's upset with him. It will just eat out of him knowing that somebody's upset with him. So he wanted to smooth that over. When Bob took the call, he had been hanging out with his friend in his hotel room, talking through the friend's business idea. Then they FaceTimed to people they knew, including Krista. They had a drink at the hotel bar. They had a drink at The Battery, a private social club that was once popular among the tech elite. Then they went to the friend's house to wind down the night. At 12.30, Bob left his friend's apartment. He headed for Kazar's place at the Millennium Tower. And Nima was the hair. And so Bob was apt to go smooth things over with Nima, for sure. Because Tina was not upset in any way with Bob. at least you can see from their text messages. As far as I understand, it was very calm. It was not like a huge fight or an altercation or anything of that nature. Even in the video that you can see that the police released, they're not fighting, there's no altercation, they're like walking calmly out to Nima's car. It was not like they were tussling, they seemed totally fine. So the only thing I can imagine is Nima had harbored something and attacked Bob for no reason. I mean, it's just absurd. The only thing Bob was probably doing was trying to ensure that Nima wasn't mad at him. He just was that kind of guy. In fact, Bob's last text to Nima was a suggestion that they go to a strip club together. Gold club? Doug said that after Bob died, he started calling around to his friends, asking what happened. I was just shocked that he felt comfortable enough to leave with someone that ended up killing him. And I can't even put that into words. That's just, he was so excited about everything that he had going on. Friends were getting ready to fly back with him to Miami to see kind of all the stuff that he was excited about. It's unbelievable. I just can't, I can't grasp my head around it. And when I do, it's just heartbreakingly sad. I couldn't bear to listen to the 911 recording, but I did read the transcript. And, you know, I've never heard anyone else point this out, but it was so Bob. Cameron Purdy again. Bob's conference buddy from Massachusetts. Here he is. He's on the phone. He's just been stabbed and he's bleeding profusely. I mean, he's bleeding out and it's cold and he's outside and he can't get help. And he calls 911 and he says, I've been stabbed. He tells him where he is. And he knows how he got there. It was in a car with a guy whose name he knew. And he knows the guy did it. Like he was like he was there. He saw it. He felt it. Right. Like, and he came there with the guy in the car from the guy's sister's apartment. Like, plain as day. And he never said who did it. He never gave the name. He never blamed anyone. And that was Bob. Like, he wasn't trying to get the guy in trouble. He just wanted help. He just needed help. Bob was a trusting person. He was a social person. He loved his work and his family. And he also wanted to stay out late and do drugs. And he didn't like it when people were mad at him. Like all of his friends would acknowledge, he was complex. But as can happen in death, Bob's story was reduced to stereotypes. Convenient narratives that were easy to understand about violent cities and hedonistic rich people that had it coming. This provided an opportunity, not just for network television, but also for Nima Momeni's defense team. Cocaine is not recreational. He was a guy that had flaws, just like every one of us has flaws. And it could have been that one of those flaws was that he got angry in a split second and made a bad decision. On the next episode, Nima Momeni goes to trial. And he claims it was actually Bob who had the knife. Foundering is reported, hosted, and executive produced by me, Sean Huen. Eric Masitsi's Menel produced our show Bart Warshaw is our audio engineer Our story editors are Joshua Brustein, Tom Giles, Anne Bandermay, and Nicole Beamster-Bower Be sure to subscribe, and if you like our show, leave a review Most importantly, tell your friends See you next time I'm Francine Lacroix, an award-winning journalist, and I've got a new podcast, Leaders with Francine Lacroix from Bloomberg Podcasts. I've interviewed everyone from heads of state to fashion icons about the news of the moment, but I've always been curious, who are these people as leaders? I don't think there's one right way to be a leader. Make decisions. A poor decision is always better than no decision. Listen to new episodes every other Monday. Follow Leaders with Francine Lacroix wherever you get your podcasts.
