Tyrese Haspil, personal assistant to tech CEO Fahim Saleh, is said to have beheaded his boss to stop his girlfriend from finding out he’d stolen $400k from him.
Fahim, who founded the Nigerian motorcycle ride-sharing company Gokada, was discovered in his $2.4 million apartment in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in July 2020. It is said that Tyrese, who worked for the victim at his investment firm Adventure Capital, forced his way in then tasered his boss, stabbed him multiple times then dismembered him.
He pleaded not guilty to first degree murder (which, if convicted, would see him jailed for a minimum sentence of 20 years and maximum sentence of life). Tyrese’s attorney Sam Roberts told the jury that he suffered from “extreme emotional disturbance,” and would be hoping the jury opted for a manslaughter conviction. This could mean less prison time – somewhere between five and 25 years.
Over three years, Tyrese used PayPal and Intuit transfers – and continued to send money to himself after Fahim’s death. Prior to this, Fahim discovered $90,000 had been taken by his assistant but decided against pressing charges due to seeing his employee as his protégé. Instead, he arranged a payment plan – but the stealing continued and, again, was uncovered.
Police sources initially thought the murder was the fatal result of a soured business deal. But text messages where Fahim had accessed Tyrese of stealing led detectives to the EA.
Tyrese appeared to have planned the murder carefully to avoid getting caught. Manhattan assistant district attorney Linda Ford said: “He was planning not only to commit the homicide but to get away with it …To cover it up and how to erase his debt and prevent Fahim Saleh from testifying in criminal proceedings.”
It was reported that Tyrese had purchased a power saw and cleaning products at Home Depot but he missed a single ‘anti-felon disk’ identification tag. Police linked this to the taser ordered to Tyrese’s Brooklyn address the previous month.
Speculation suggests that when the killer came back to clean up the following day he was caught short by the victim’s cousin ringing the buzzer to check in on him. Tyrese is expected to have abandoned his disposal efforts and made a sharp exit through the fire escape.
