“I had to get rid of him”: Hillsborough heiress’ murder trial could hinge on testimony of alleged accomplice

Hillsborough heiress Tiffany Li and her boyfriend were charged with murder in the 2016 death of Keith Green, the father of Li's children.

The murder trial of Hillsborough real-estate heiress Tiffany Li gets underway in a San Mateo County courtroom this week, bringing to a head a years-long legal drama that has already included one of the most expensive bails in U.S. history and a lengthy delay after Li was diagnosed with cancer.

Li and her boyfriend, Kaveh Bayat, are charged with the murder of 27-year-old Keith Green, the father of Li’s children. As they prepare for a trial that is expected to last into November, attorneys for the prosecution and defense say the verdict could hinge in large part on whether jurors believe the testimony of a former co-defendant who the prosecution turned into a star witness, and who says he hid Green’s body after Li and Bayat killed him.

Authorities allege Li, 33, and Bayat, 32, murdered Green on the night of April 28, 2016, because Li feared she would lose a custody battle with Green over their two young daughters. Li and Bayat, whose attorneys say they had nothing to do with the murder, will be tried together for the crime.

Green’s body, shot through the neck and naked except for a pair of socks, was found along a dirt road in Sonoma County, nearly two weeks after he had been last seen meeting with Li at the Millbrae Pancake House to discuss their dispute.

The trial officially begins Monday, as attorneys move through a list of motions. Jury selection is set to start the week after Labor Day, with opening statements planned for about two weeks after that.

Li has been out of jail awaiting the trail since her family and friends put up $66 million worth of cash and property to secure her release in the spring of 2017. Prosecutors set the sky-high bail out of concern that Li, a naturalized American citizen who was born in China, would flee the country. Bayat remains in custody.

Since posting bail, Li has been under electronic monitoring and subject to a raft of conditions that have kept her almost entirely confined to the French chateau-style mansion she owns in Hillsborough. Neighbors saw a fleet of exotic cars in the driveway of the estate in the years before a SWAT team broke down its wrought-iron security gate and arrested Li and Bayat during an early morning raid a few weeks after Green was killed.

The trial was delayed for nearly a year last September after Li was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer. Her attorney, Geoffrey Carr, said Li had two surgeries and chemotherapy treatment, but is now in remission.

Case could hinge on witness

What may turn out to be the most important testimony in the trial will come from prosecution witness Olivier Adella, who admitted to loading Green’s body into the trunk of his car on the night of the murder and driving it to the spot near Highway 101 outside Healdsburg, where it was eventually discovered.

Adella was initially charged with Green’s murder along with Li and Bayat, but he was released from jail last fall after striking a deal to testify against them and pleading no contest to a lesser charge of being an accessory to murder.

In hundreds of pages of transcripts from Adella’s conversations with investigators, submitted as evidence for the trial, Adella said he watched Green meet with Li at the Millbrae Pancake House before the murder because Bayat had asked him to follow Green. Li has alleged that Green was abusive during their relationship.

Prosecutors wrote in court documents that Li then drove Green from the restaurant to her house about 15 minutes away. A detective testified at a preliminary hearing that location data placed Green’s cellphone inside Li’s home on the night he went missing.

Later that night, Adella said, Bayat and Li showed up outside his home, with Green shot dead in the front seat of Li’s Mercedes SUV.

When he saw Green’s body, Adella claimed Bayat told him, “Yeah, it had to be done. I had to get rid of him. So now you got to pull your weight.”

According to Adella, Bayat told him he owed the couple, who had helped Adella find a place to live in an apartment building Li owned.

Adella said he and Bayat stripped Green’s clothing and moved him into Adella’s car. He then drove north through San Francisco — tossing Green’s phone in Golden Gate Park, where it was later found by a hiker — and on to Sonoma County.

Speaking with detectives, Adella was adamant that he was not present for Green’s murder and didn’t follow him and Li to the Hillsborough mansion.

But defense attorneys argue that Adella isn’t just an untrustworthy witness, he was the real killer.

“The prosecution’s case rests almost entirely on Olivier Adella, a habitual liar who can be proven to have lied in this case and continues to lie,” lawyers for Li wrote in a court filing earlier this year.

The attorneys added that they plan to present evidence at trial that Adella killed Green in an “attempted kidnapping … that may have gone wrong.”

“Our case may be as long or longer (than) the prosecution’s,” said Geoffrey Carr, one of Li’s attorneys.

San Mateo County District Attorney Steven Wagstaffe has declined to detail what authorities contend happened after Green went to Li’s home on the night of the murder.

When the state presents its case at the trial, Wagstaffe said, “A big part of it is simply going to be proving our belief that Tiffany Li and Mr. Bayat committed this murder, but equally there will be an effort to prove Mr. Adella did not commit it.”

Still, Wagstaffe contends Adella’s testimony corroborates what other evidence already shows, adding, “We do not think the case rises or falls on him.”