A marijuana grower was convicted on Thursday of kidnapping, torturing and hacking off the penis of a pot dispensary owner he mistakenly thought had buried $1million in cash in the California desert.
Kyle Shirakawa Handley was found guilty of a grisly 2012 assault that included burning the then-29-year-old victim with a blowtorch, shocking him with a Taser, dousing him with bleach and mutilating his sex organ, before leaving him for dead in the Mojave Desert.
‘We hope this verdict provides some solace to the victims in this case,’ prosecutor Matt Murphy said.
Guilty: Kyle Shirakawa Handley (pictured in court Thursday) was found guilty of kidnapping, torturing and hacking off the penis of a pot dispensary owner in 2012
Accomplices: Naomi Rhodus (left) and her ex-husband Ryan Kevorkian (right) have pleaded not guilty in the kidnapping and assault case and are facing trial
Handley, 38, of Fountain Valley, is one of four people who were accused of kidnapping the Newport Beach marijuana dispensary owner, who has not been named because he is believed to be the victim of a sexual assault.
Handley, who had befriended the victim, made trips to Las Vegas with him and came to believe that he had stashed proceeds from his cash-based pot business in the Mojave Desert, prosecutors said.
In reality, the victim was looking into an investment deal in the area.
‘Mastermind’: Hossein Nayeri, 39, the accused ring leader behind the failed extortion plot, fled to Iran after the attack but was captured in Prague 2013
An extortion plot was hatched that used surveillance cameras and a GPS tracker to keep tabs on the dispensary owner for months, both at his home and when he made trips to the desert, authorities said.
On October 2, 2012, the kidnappers took the man and his roommate’s girlfriend, then aged 53, from their Newport Beach home, drove them to the desert and then tortured the man to make him reveal where he had buried money, prosecutors said.
At trial the dispensary owner testified that they continued to torture him even though he told them he hadn’t buried any cash. Finally, after being convinced he had no money, the kidnappers severed his penis and threw it from the window of the getaway van as they laughed at him. Authorities never recovered the organ.
The kidnapped woman eventually was able to cut herself free of her bonds using a knife the kidnappers left her. She staggered barefoot to a highway and flagged down a Kern County sheriff’s deputy.
Authorities connected the four suspect to the crime after a ‘thorough extensive investigation’.in
Initially, police pegged Handley because the white pickup truck neighbors reported seeing outside the victim’s home was registered to him.
The other three were linked to the crime through DNA evidence.
On Thursday, the dispensary owner breathed a sigh of relief as Handley was convicted of kidnapping for ransom, aggravated mayhem and torture. His fiancee held his hand and rubbed his shoulder, the Orange County Register reported.
Handley is facing life in prison without chance of parole when he is sentenced on March 23.
Two other men, Ryan Kevorkian, 38, and Hossein Nayeri, 39, and Kevorkian’s ex-wife, Naomi Rhodus, have pleaded not guilty and are facing trial in the case.
‘These people were ruthless and they were efficient in the way that they carried out the crime,’ Murphy said, according to reporting by NBC4.
Nayeri, the alleged mastermind of the failed desert heist and a high school friend of Handley’s, fled to Iran after the attack. The FBI and Czech authorities arrested him at the Prague airport in 2013 on his way from Iran to Spain to visit family.
Nayeri also is facing charges for escaping from the Orange County Jail in 2016. He and two other inmates cut through a metal screen on a wall, crawled through plumbing shafts and rappelled from the roof. They were recaptured after a statewide manhunt.
The escape was captured on a smuggled cellphone and was made public by Nayeri’s attorney last year.