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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. The hunt was on for three brutal kidnappers, leaving an upscale community in fear. Who would want to kidnap Michael in the middle of the night, torture him, and leave him for dead?
all for money that they believed was buried somewhere in the desert. Can forensic experts crack the clues in this unbelievable story? Here's the conclusion of the OC Manhunt. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 203, Orange County Manhunt, part two. ♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases, conduct in-depth fact-based research, and produce and edit this weekly show. You can support my work in two simple ways. Become a valued patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales and leave a positive review. Now, let's get to this week's episode.
Last week on the show, we covered part one of Orange County Manhunt. Before listening to this week's episode, make sure that you've already listened to part one so that you're completely caught up with the story. In last week's episode, a 28-year-old marijuana business owner from Newport Beach, California, was kidnapped alongside his roommate by three men. The victim, Michael, was zip-tied, blindfolded, tortured, and beaten before being dumped in the desert.
According to the kidnappers, they were after Michael's money, which they believed he buried somewhere in the desert. But after failing to find the so-called buried money, the kidnappers got away until forensic evidence was able to identify two of them. Now the Orange County police had their biggest manhunt on their hands to try and catch who they believed was the mastermind behind everything.
As soon as Orange County detectives identified Usain Nayyari, aka Adam, as the mastermind, the hunt was on. Adam was born in Iran in 1978 and immigrated to the U.S. with his mom and sister when he was in middle school. When he arrived in the U.S., his dad, who worked as a doctor, was already living and established in the States. So Adam and his sister quickly settled into their new lives.
But Adam always maintained a solid and strong connection to his friends and family in Iran, which would come in handy years later. Adam's family settled in Fresno, California, a town several hours north of Orange County and part of the state's Central Valley. He grew up speaking Farsi but quickly learned English. And by all accounts, he had a relatively normal childhood.
His dad continued to work as a doctor, and Adam had no problem making friends in school and even joined the wrestling team. Adam met his future accomplice, Kyle Hansley, in high school. Even though they ran in different social circles, they got to know each other a little bit but were never really considered friends. After Adam graduated high school in 1997, he enrolled in the Marines and was sent to San Diego for boot camp.
but he wasn't exactly the person the Marines wanted in a soldier. First, he got caught shoplifting on base with a couple of friends. After that, he got hurt, but it wasn't from anything to do with training or boot camp. He went surfing one day, wiped out, and hit his head on a rock. The impact knocked him out completely, and he ended up in the hospital with a skull fracture. But Adams' reputation in the Marines only got worse.
Once he got out of the hospital and returned to base, he went AWOL. He packed up his bags, left San Diego, and headed back home to Fresno. A couple of weeks later, the Marines caught up to him, and he was arrested for leaving his base without permission. He then received 47 days in the brig, or military jail. After that, the Marines gave him two options. He could recommit himself to the Marines, or he could be dishonorably discharged.
And in this case, Adam was really fortunate to even get these two options. The Marines were basically giving him a second chance despite going AWOL, which doesn't always happen. But he didn't want to go back to San Diego, and he certainly didn't want to recommit himself to the Marines. So he chose option number two, dishonorable discharge.
In 2003, although Adam never smoked marijuana growing up like his friends, he found himself involved in the marijuana business. He set up a small grow house inside his two-bedroom condo. But by this point, growing marijuana was just a hobby. To make financial ends meet, he worked part-time as a server at a Mimi's Cafe restaurant. While working at Mimi's Cafe, he met Courtney, his future wife.
At that time, he was 23 years old and she was only 16. Not long after that, Adam found himself in trouble with the law and fled to Iran for the first time. In 2005, the day after Christmas, Adam and a friend went to a party together in Fresno. This was someone very close to Adam and the two grew marijuana together. But at this particular party in 2005, Adam and his friend had a little bit too much to drink.
They also took a small amount of cocaine and smoked a little bit of marijuana. After the party, Adam decided that he was going to drive him and his friend home despite being under the influence of both drugs and alcohol. But they didn't make it far. Adam crashed his car by accidentally driving off the side of the road. The SUV then rolled several times and Adam's friend died at the scene.
Adam was fortunately airlifted to a nearby hospital and survived. The doctors and nurses took a sample of Adam's blood, and it was tested for drugs and alcohol. As soon as the police got the results of the blood tests, he was arrested on charges of vehicular manslaughter for killing his close friend. After his arraignment, he posted bail and was released from jail. But he wasn't going to stick around to face the charges.
Instead, he bought a one-way plane ticket to his native country of Iran, a country that doesn't have any extradition laws with the United States. He spent the next two years in Iran and avoided his legal troubles in the U.S. He even got married to someone there despite staying in contact with his girlfriend, Kourtney. Now, he eventually secretly returned to the U.S. under a fake passport that Kourtney had got for him.
And as soon as he got back, he started his small-time marijuana business back up again. In 2009, he eventually faced the music and pleaded no contest to the death of his friend in that car accident. Following his plea, he faced years behind bars. But the judge in the case seemed to show him a little bit of sympathy because instead of sentencing him to prison, he sentenced Adam to probation.
Fast forward to a couple of days before the kidnapping. When Adam returned home the day after the police chase, he told his wife Courtney she needed to go to the police station to file a police report. She needed to tell them that someone had stolen the car used in the chase so that they couldn't blame it on him. If someone had stolen the Tahoe, there would be nothing linking him to the police chase.
So that's exactly what Courtney did. She filed a false police report. After the police chase, Adam's kidnapping plot only intensified. He instructed Courtney to purchase several burner phones so none of them could be traced back to him. So she bought four burner phones. Four days before the kidnapping, Adam took Courtney out to dinner for her birthday at a restaurant in Newport Beach.
After dinner, he reportedly drove by Michael's condo one more time. As expected, Adam saw the white cargo van parked down the street that he and Kyle had left there as planned. The van was all ready to go for the kidnapping, scheduled in just a few days. The entire operation was almost ruined again.
Adam's accomplice Kyle had parked his truck in a metered parking spot near Michael's condo and was soon going to get a ticket because the meter had long expired. If Kyle's truck had gotten a ticket, the police could have easily used that to link them to the kidnapping. So Adam called Courtney from the desert and instructed her to put money in the meter before someone came around and issued a ticket. He also had her buy four more burner phones.
For the next three days after the kidnapping, Adam stayed in Fresno, California, his hometown. But not long after that, he found out that the police had arrested his friend Kyle and executed a search warrant at his house. He returned to Southern California, where he and Courtney did everything possible to destroy any evidence linking them to the case. They got rid of SIM cards with the downloaded surveillance camera footage showing them stalking Michael's every move.
They threw away burner phones so that they couldn't be linked to each other. He even threw away more evidence at a gas station off Pacific Coast Highway. After that, Adam and Courtney drove to Kyle's house where they took televisions, watches, and anything else of value. And he told Courtney she needed to sell everything for cash. He didn't tell her exactly why, and she never asked.
Knowing the police were on to him, he bought a one-way ticket to Iran on October 14th. By this point, Kyle had already been charged with kidnapping and mutilation, and Adam feared that he was going to be next. So, he made his next calculated move. For almost a year, Adam remained in Iran. Meanwhile, detectives in Orange County started putting the hammer down on his wife, Courtney.
They knew that their best chance at getting him would be through her, so they started pressuring her into cooperating. Otherwise, she could be criminally charged for helping Adam with the kidnapping plot. Those charges would mean that she was facing decades behind bars if she wasn't willing to cooperate. Eventually, Courtney did agree to sit down with detectives and tell them everything that she knew, including where her husband was. Now, investigators weren't promising anything, but
They wouldn't guarantee she would receive immunity in the case, but they wanted to hear what she had to say. And if it helps them get Adam, they would be willing to negotiate with her. But first, she had to be willing to do one very important thing, help lure Adam back to the United States. Do you know what I don't miss at all? That vicious week before my period each month.
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That's happymammoth.com and use code tails for 15% off today. By June of the following year, Adam risked everything and contacted Courtney. He called over and over again. During one of these phone conversations, Courtney recorded it for the police. Not only did they get to hear Adam's phone call, but they also found out the third accomplice in the kidnapping, Ryan Kervokian.
During this call between Adam and Courtney, Adam finally admitted that his high school friend and former wrestling teammate Ryan was the third person involved in the kidnapping. He was in on the plot to get Michael's money. But instead of simply taking Adam's word for it, detectives set out to get the forensic evidence to prove it.
One day, a couple of undercover Orange County detectives followed Ryan as he went inside a 24-hour gym for his workout. As soon as they saw him drop his sweaty towel into a bin, they reached in and grabbed it. They then sent the towel to a crime lab to have it tested for DNA. A few days later, they got the results.
The DNA on the gym towel matched the unknown DNA found on some of the zip ties found in the garbage bag at Kyle's house. Ryan was, in fact, the third suspect. To bring Adam back to the United States, detectives needed him to travel to a country that had an extradition treaty with the U.S. because as long as he stayed in Iran, their hands were tied.
So investigators devised a plan to have Courtney convince Adam to travel outside of Iran to a different country. She called and told Adam they should meet in Spain to celebrate her recent graduation from law school. The plan was for him to meet up with Courtney in Spain via a layover in Prague, a place with a very good relationship with the United States. So as soon as the plans were finalized, Adam boarded a plane in Iran headed to Prague.
And the instant his plane landed, armed Prague police and the FBI handcuffed him. But he denied everything. He denied knowing Michael, or Mary, and everything else about the crime. By the time he was extradited to the U.S. about a year after his arrest, the Orange County DA's office had developed a narrative about who did what.
They believed Kyle Hanley was simply the dumb friend who just went along with anything anyone asked him to do. Ryan Corvokian was added to the mix later on as he was described as being the quote-unquote muscles behind everything. But according to the DA, Adam was in fact the mastermind behind the entire operation. And after nearly two years, the massive manhunt was finally over.
But was it? Everything that's happened so far in this story could be a plot fit for a Hollywood film. Parts of it are stranger than fiction, from Orange County kidnappings to mutilations. But this next part of the story takes the cake.
When Adam arrived at the Men's Central Jail in Orange County, a jail that's just a few miles away from Disneyland, he was labeled as a white wristbander. The white wristbands are usually for inmates with the lowest security and the most freedom. Why Orange County jail officials designated someone like Adam as a white bander makes no sense, given everything that we know about him. But that's what he was given.
So while Adam was in jail awaiting his upcoming criminal charges, he had a little bit of freedom. He wasn't considered a high priority for Orange County deputies to supervise. Like the other white banders, he was only subject to one to maybe two counts a day. And someone like Adam wasn't going to go down without a fight. He gathered some other inmates and again began devising a plan.
This time, an escape plan. Most jail breaks are only talked about in movies and television shows. Some inmates might try to escape, but most aren't successful. They end up back in jail with additional charges put over their head. But if anyone could pull off a jail escape, it was someone like Adam Nyeri. While in jail, Adam made friends with a few other inmates.
The first was Jonathan Too, a guy facing murder charges from a drive-by shooting. He also had gang connections. The second guy was Bok Dung, another member of a gang who was in jail on attempted murder charges. Both would be the kind of people down to try a jailbreak. But this required not only the help of other inmates, but also the help from someone on the inside.
So Adam enlisted the help of an ESL teacher he befriended while behind bars. Somehow, Adam had convinced this female teacher to give him a Google Maps printout of the entire Orange County Men's Central Jail. Once he had the map of the jail, he got his hands on a cutting tool. Now, it's unclear exactly how he managed to get it while being locked up, but he did.
With that cutting tool, Adam was able to saw off a corner of a metal bunk bed, gaining access to an air vent behind it. Once he cut through that, he could squeeze through the small hole and get into a maintenance cavity behind the wall. Inside there, he climbed a ventilation shaft with a homemade bedsheet ladder. Once he got to the top, he could cut through the steel bars, blocking the access to the roof.
From there, freedom. A scene straight out of Shawshank Redemption. Adam and the two other inmates made their escape from jail during the early morning hours of January 22, 2016. None of them wanted to spend the rest of their lives in prison, so why not go for it? Everything went smoothly. It was the perfect escape from jail. No alarms sounded. No guards were alerted.
Instead, the three escaped. Everything went according to plan. Once they got outside, they had a getaway driver lined up to drive them far away. Now get this. Orange County deputies didn't find out about the escape until almost 15 hours later. That meant for 15 hours, Adam and his two new friends had a head start. A 15-hour head start.
While the jail authorities finally realized that the three men were missing, it took them another several hours to respond. When everyone learned that the inmates had escaped, a massive fight broke out in the jail, causing even more chaos and confusion, allowing Adam and his accomplices to get even farther away. At first, the getaway driver helped the guys by driving around Orange County, picking up money and guns, but the driver eventually ditched them.
Then they had to get into a cab. They gave the cab driver $100 in cash and told him that they needed to make a couple of stops, including at a Target store, so that Adam could pick up some clothes and extra burner phones. But instead of letting the cab driver go after finishing the errands, they decided to hold him captive, and he was forced to go everywhere with the three men, including to their hideout spot.
The three men and the cab driver stayed together for a couple of nights, renting a room at the Flamingo End, a cheap motel in Rosemead, California. And by all accounts, the three escapees partied like rock stars. They drank. They smoked marijuana. They watched the news for updates on the Orange County Sheriff's Department's attempt to try and find them.
Their escape from jail was like one big party, while the community feared for their safety because there was no telling what these men were capable of. The police offered up a $200,000 reward for any information leading to the three escapees. But not even that kind of money seemed to work. It was like Adam and the others had vanished into thin air after escaping the men's central jail.
The men eventually decided to ditch their room at the Flamingo Inn and headed north on January 26 to San Jose, California. They even took the cab driver with them, who had been held hostage for this point for the last couple of days. But not long after they got to San Jose, the men turned on each other. According to one of them, Bach, Adam wanted to kill the cab driver and dispose of his body.
But Bach refused. He didn't want to hurt the cab driver any more than they already had. So when he told Adam that he didn't want to do it, Adam got mad and turned on him. According to Bach, Adam pinned him to the ground, broke his nose, and threatened to kill him if he didn't agree to go along with his plan to kill the cab driver.
So Bach said once Adam and the other escapee, Jonathan, left the hotel briefly to go run an errand, he and the cab driver grabbed the stolen gun they picked up right after they escaped to jail and drove back down to Orange County so that he could turn himself in. After the entire ordeal, Bach had this to say about Adam, quote, he's terrifying. I'd rather spend my life in prison than be out there with this guy, end quote.
After Bach turned himself in to the Orange County Sheriff's Department, the other two men still remained at large, Adam and Jonathan. After staying in San Jose for a bit, they drove farther north to San Francisco. Now that move proved to be a major mistake. As soon as they arrived in San Francisco, someone recognized Adam and Jonathan inside a Whole Foods grocery store parking lot.
They had watched the news and saw that the two men who escaped a Southern California jail were still on the loose. They called the San Francisco police and said, quote, Hey, that Hannibal Lecter guy you're looking for is over there in that van, end quote. Within seconds of that phone call coming in, dozens of San Francisco police officers surrounded the van parked inside the Whole Foods parking lot.
Moments later, Adam and Jonathan were finally taken into custody. Their nine-day prison break was over. Once Adam was back in custody, they weren't going to take any chances with him. He escaped jail once, and they wouldn't let that happen again. So he was transported to an individual cell at a maximum security facility so there was no chance of another escape.
The escape itself pushed Adam's original trial date for the kidnapping back another year and a half. On top of those original charges, prosecutors now had an additional criminal charge to sort through and charge Adam with. But the trial eventually got underway in July of 2019, seven years after Michael and his roommate Mary were kidnapped in October 2012.
It had been a long time coming for Orange County prosecutors. Even though DNA and forensic testing seemed to prove that Adam was involved, it took years for them to finally have him behind bars and ready to stand trial. The trial itself was emotionally charged right from the start. The prosecution called Mary to the stand to testify, Michael's roommate. She told the jury every detail about that terrifying night in 2012.
She told him what it was like to be woken up in the middle of the night, handcuffed with zip ties and driven out to the middle of the desert. She felt like she was about to be killed at any moment. Next was Michael's turn to testify. His testimony was even more heart-wrenching. He gave the jury his own account of the horror that he experienced, including the painful sexual mutilation he suffered.
But the star witness for the prosecution wasn't Michael and it wasn't Mary. It was in fact Adam's wife, Courtney. In exchange for full immunity in the case, Courtney agreed to testify for the prosecution against her husband and tell them everything.
Courtney laid out every detail for the jury for hours on the stand. The purchasing of the GPS trackers they put on Michael's car and home, the burner phones, the rental cars, the preparation, and finally, the plan for the kidnapping. Courtney explained everything to the jury. As the state prepared to show its forensic evidence, they saw it as a pivotal moment that could significantly impact the case.
In other words, a home run. Experts from the Orange County Crime Lab testified that they had received a blue latex glove from detectives after they searched Kyle Hanley's car. When they tested the glove for DNA, they got a hit. Adam's DNA was a match, which meant he was the one who wore the glove that investigators believed was used in the kidnapping.
On top of all the other damning evidence in the case, it was DNA that seemed to seal the deal for prosecutors. After more than three weeks of testimony, the case was handed over to the jury. Their deliberations began on August 11th, but no verdict was returned right away. Maybe the prosecution's DNA evidence wasn't enough. Day one of deliberations passed, then day two, then three and four.
One juror wasn't convinced. One single person had their doubts about Adam's guilt. So the court, the prosecutors, and Michael anxiously awaited. On August 16th, Adam was brought back to court to hear the jury's decision. What was the verdict? Guilty or was it a hung jury?
Adam was found guilty of three charges, felony kidnapping for ransom, reward, or extortion of Michael and Mary and felony torture of Michael. But the jury was deadlocked on a felony mayhem charge. At his sentencing hearing in October, Adam still refused to accept responsibility for his actions. He showed absolutely no remorse, an attitude that the judge noticed as well.
He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the kidnapping, plus an additional seven years to life for the torture charge. In other words, he will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. His two co-conspirators also received prison sentences. Kyle Hanley received four life sentences without the possibility of parole in 2018.
Ryan Kervokian pleaded guilty in May 2021 to two kidnapping charges, burglary, and assault with a firearm. Since prosecutors believed that he cooperated with their investigation more than the others, he received a far more lenient sentence of just 12 years. He could be considered for parole as early as this year, although that seems unlikely.
The victim at the center of this incredible story, a guy that we've called Michael to help protect his identity, still works in the legal marijuana business. Even though marijuana is still considered illegal in the eyes of the federal government and is considered by some to be extremely dangerous. In March 2023, Adam was found guilty of escape charges related to that 2016 jailbreak.
He received additional years in prison on top of his two consecutive life sentences. The other two men involved in the escape were also convicted and sentenced to prison. The story of Hussein Adam Nayyari and the Orange County manhunt is almost too twisted and wild to be true. What could drive someone to commit such a horrific crime against another human being? Was it all about the money that he believed was buried in the desert?
Or was there more to this crazy story? We might never fully understand the motive behind what happened, but thanks to forensic science, we can hold the three men behind the kidnapping criminally accountable. To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.
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