What we know about the Redmond couple killed by a suspected stalker on Friday

Seattle Times

A Texas man suspected of stalking a Redmond couple for months killed the wife and husband Friday in a home invasion before killing himself, police said.

Portions of Redmond’s Education Hill neighborhood were blocked off Friday with heavy law enforcement presence in the area as investigators tried to piece together the events that led up to the killings.

But the suspect, identified by the Redmond Police Department as Ramin Khodakaramrezaei, 38, was a man known to police. He had been the subject of a misdemeanor stalking investigation after the female victim, Zohreh Sadeghi, 33, and her husband, Mohammad Milad Naseri, 35, filed a request for a no-contact order against him.

A warrant was issued for Khodakaramrezaei, a long-haul truck driver, just last week and a hearing was set for March 17. But due to his work, authorities say they weren’t able to locate him before Friday’s slayings.

Here’s what we know.

What happened?

Police responded to the home near 168th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 89th Street around 1:45 a.m. Sadeghi’s mother, who lived at the home, called 911 after she escaped from her bedroom, where Khodakaramrezaei broke in through a window.

Naseri was found by officers lying on the floor near the front entrance. They pulled him outside, where they discovered he had a gunshot wound. Despite attempts to save him, he died at the scene, police said.

Sadeghi and Khodakaramrezaei, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, were found dead inside.

A red truck with Oregon plates, which police say is believed to have been used by the suspect to get to the home, was towed.

When did the suspected stalking begin?

Sadeghi met up with Khodakaramrezaei in summer 2022, after she met him as part of a group of people she befriended, according to a petition for an order of protection filed by the couple in King County District Court, obtained by the Seattle Times.

Police say he reportedly listened to her podcasts, and that the two had met on the app Clubhouse, which allows users to talk in audio chatrooms. The chatroom was specifically for Farsi speakers looking for jobs in the tech industry.

The court documents detail a monthslong ordeal involving harassing phone calls and threats that escalated to Khodakaramrezaei saying he would show up at Sadeghi’s home and set it on fire, and would only stop contacting her if he died.

Sadeghi told police the suspect had contacted her over 100 times in a single day.

In November, Sadeghi told her husband about Khodakaramrezaei, saying the man threatened to end their marriage. That month they blocked him from calling her and on several social media and chat apps. The next month, he called Naseri instead, continuing to call and text Naseri through February.

When did police get involved?

Police say Sadeghi originally contacted Redmond police in December and again in January after the suspect’s actions “intensified.”

A temporary order of protection was signed March 3, and a hearing was scheduled March 17, according to court documents.

A bench warrant had been issued last week for Khodakaramrezaei, who was accused of two counts of telephone harassment and one count of stalking. Bail was set at $100,000.

Redmond police Chief Darrell Lowe said Friday that police sought to serve Khodakaramrezaei the protection order and to arrest him, so he could “understand the seriousness, to stop the behavior or significantly mitigate it.”

A restraining order, he added, only allows police to take action if the order is violated but cannot protect the person if “someone is intent on causing them harm.”

“This is the absolute worst outcome for a stalking case. This is every victim, every detective, every police chief’s worst nightmare,” Lowe said.

Who were the couple?

Sadeghi was a software engineer who previously worked at Promontory MortgagePath. She attended the University of Washington, Tacoma’s graduate and Ph.D. programs, according to her LinkedIn page. She worked as a researcher and a web developer in Iran.

Naseri joined Amazon in January 2022 as a software engineer, according to his LinkedIn page. He previously worked for Google in Kirkland and software company CDK Global.

Born in Iran, Naseri was ranked among the best singers in Tehran as a teenager, according to his blog. He attended the Sharif University of Technology and began working for a software company. It’s unclear when they moved to the U.S., but he and Sadeghi married around 2011. They purchased the Redmond home in 2021, according to King County property records.

Sadeghi wrote in the petition order that she had major back surgery and needed 24-hour care, which made her concerned about her ability to respond to a crisis, especially because the stalker ignored all the couple’s warnings to stop contacting them. He sent her gifts and was “delusional,” she wrote.

“These delusions make me fear for my life and the lives of my loved ones,” Sadeghi wrote in the order.

Seattle Times staff reporters Paige Cornwell, Amanda Zhou, Vonnai Phair and news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.