A tech CEO's personal assistant admitted to beheading his boss in a fit of passion, his lawyer argued on Friday. Tyrese Haspil, 25, was desperate to cover his tracks after stealing thousands of dollars from his boss and feared that his French girlfriend, Marine Chaveuz, would find out his crime and leave him, his defense said.
This motivated Haspil to break into the $2.4 million Lower East Side apartment of Fahim Saleh, 33, Taser him, and stab him to death, defense attorney Sam Roberts told jurors at Manhattan Supreme Court. Roberts is trying to convince the 12-person jury that Haspil acted under "extreme emotional disturbance" when he committed the murder.
Crime of Passion
Prosecutors stated that Haspil feared being "abandoned" if Chaveuz discovered the $400,000 he had stolen, leading him to believe his only options were "suicide or homicide," and he chose the latter, the New York Post reported.
In January 2020, Saleh, a venture capitalist and the CEO of the Nigeria-based motorbike startup Gokada, confronted Haspil about the missing money after noticing $90,000 had vanished from a corporate spending account.
The money was traced back to Haspil, but Saleh, seeing him as a protégé, chose not to press charges and instead arranged for him to repay the amount through a payment plan. Despite this, Haspil continued to steal from Saleh's company using a PayPal account and his crime was caught again.
Prosecutors say that with the threat of prosecution looming, Haspil meticulously researched and planned how to commit murder and evade capture.
"Over this period of time, 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," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Linda Ford told the court.
Sources told The Post that Haspil had allegedly used Saleh's credit cards to pay for rides to and from the Home Depot store on West 23rd Street, where he bought supplies to clean up the murder.
Crime Never Pays
Prosecutors presented a detailed account of Saleh's alleged murder to the jury. They said that Haspil, wearing a mask, used a Taser to incapacitate Saleh, stabbed him, and then dismembered the body the next day, including decapitating him.
After the murder, Haspil attempted to clean up by vacuuming but failed to remove an "anti-felon disk" identification tag, which was found at the scene.
This disk had a unique number linked to the Taser Haspil had ordered to his Brooklyn address a month before the murder, according to prosecutors.
Saleh's body was discovered by his cousin, who found his torso in the living room alongside construction bags after not hearing from him for several days. Despite his supposed dedication to Chaveuz, Haspil was seen two days after the murder with another woman in Noho, purchasing birthday balloons.
Prosecutors said that Haspil was planning a birthday party for his new girlfriend at a loft-like Airbnb on Crosby St, where he showered her with cakes and luxury items.
Haspil has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges, which carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years to life if convicted.
His attorneys hope the jury will instead convict him of manslaughter due to his "emotionally disturbed" defense, which carries a lighter sentence of five to 25 years.
Roberts said that Haspil's life has been marked by trauma, starting with a difficult childhood where he endured years of abuse by his schizophrenic mother. She reportedly kept him confined to a bedroom and physically abused him.
