Bob Lee Part 3: The Brilliant Programmer and a Lot of Wild Living

Summary

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Foundering – Bob Lee Part 3: The Brilliant Programmer and a Lot of Wild Living

Podcast by Bloomberg • April 23, 2026
Host: Sean Wen

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Episode Overview

This gripping episode delves into the life, death, and media narrative surrounding Bob Lee—acclaimed programmer and creator of Cash App. It challenges sensational headlines about his reported "lifestyle," explores his profound personal and professional influence, and contextualizes the events leading up to his murder. The episode also highlights the friction between the tech world’s vices, media perceptions, and the realities of living and partying in San Francisco.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Media Sensationalism vs. The Real Bob Lee

• Headline-Driven Storytelling:
  The media rapidly sensationalized Bob Lee’s murder (00:47), focusing on rumors of an underground party lifestyle, drugs, and affairs.
• Bob’s Friends Rebuke Portrayals:
  Close friends and colleagues felt mainstream portrayals were unrecognizable—Bob was not the stereotypical “tech bro” described in the press (05:18).
• Law & Order Adaptation:
  The headline-grabbing aspect of Lee's murder even inspired a Law & Order episode riffing on the case (01:48–03:36).

2. The Birth and Ongoing Myth of The "Lifestyle"

• Origin & Use in Media:
  The term "the lifestyle"—an alleged underground world of elite sex and drug parties—was elevated in media after Lee’s death, notably by the Wall Street Journal (03:54–04:38).
• Friends Call Out Inaccuracy:
  Tech founder Lauren Weiniger and others argue these reports twist ordinary aspects of the San Francisco scene and exaggerate Bob’s role in it (20:13, 20:48).
• Broader Tech Industry Context:
  Drug use and vibrant nightlife are not uncommon in San Francisco’s tech circles; Lee was not unique (21:13).
• “Othering” by Media:
  Harper Reed highlights society’s fascination with “the other”—wealthy people’s eccentricities (22:23).

3. Bob Lee’s Extraordinary Career

• Early Life & Genius:
  Humble beginnings in St. Louis; standout programming talent recognized early (08:35–10:36).
• Major Tech Contributions:
  • At Google: Instrumental in building the Ad platform and writing foundational Android software (11:03).
  • At Square (now Block): Built the engineering team, created Cash App (12:06–12:50).
• Cash App’s Cultural Impact:
  Beyond tech utility, Cash App became a cultural touchstone, referenced in rap lyrics and seen as transformative for marginalized communities (13:12–13:33).

4. Complex, Charismatic, and Loved

• Friends & Family:
  Lee was remembered as deeply social, charismatic, a great dad, and an inspirational friend (07:46, 08:05, 10:19).
• Party Persona:
  While Lee liked nightlife and sometimes partied hard, those close to him say he could separate work from play (14:19–15:10).
• Notable Adventures:
  Friend Cameron Purdy recalls wild adventures—encounters with celebrities, endless nights, and unforgettable moments (16:05).

5. Life After Square and Bob’s Final Days

• Post-Square:
  Tried his hand at startups and angel investing; became CPO at crypto firm MobileCoin (18:57).
• Routine and Relationships:
  Maintained close ties with ex-wife Krista; was present for his children despite partying (17:36).
• Final Weekend:
  Interpersonal drama, heavy drug use, and entanglements with Nima and Kazar Momeni peppered Bob’s last days (29:43–31:03).

6. Setting the Record Straight

• Open Conversations about Drug Use:
  Krista Lee affirms knowledge of Bob's drug use (microdosing ketamine, cocaine use), criticizing judgmental lenses (24:41).
• Diversity of Perspectives:
  Perceptions of Bob’s life and choices vary sharply, especially across different regions and media (25:13).
• Context on Drugs in Elite Circles:
  Drug use is common in Silicon Valley and not seen as shocking by local insiders, despite the outsized reactions outside the Bay Area (21:13).

7. The Tragic End

• Murder Details and Aftermath:
  Bob's interactions with Nima and Kazar Momeni, description of the final night, and the key events leading to his stabbing (31:03–35:47).
• Bob’s Final 911 Call:
  Even severely wounded, Bob did not incriminate his killer—staying true to his character (37:14).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Bob Lee’s Unique Personality

• “He had the smile of an 8 year old or 10 year old, just this little boyish grin. And he was just so cute.”
  — Cameron Purdy (08:05)
• “He could switch it on and switch it off.”
  — Jim McKelvey on Bob’s party/work dichotomy (14:47)

Friends Condemn the Public Narrative

• “He wasn’t like that. Bob was Bob.”
  — Joshua Block on Bob not fitting the ‘tech bro’ mold (05:18)
• “It was disgusting... it’s taking so out of context.”
  — Lauren Weiniger on media coverage (20:13)
• “There is a fascination with the other... I want to read that!”
  — Harper Reed on why these narratives take off (22:50)
• “This man is an open book... [after his death] I was expecting to find something that would have shocked me, and there was nothing.”
  — Krista Lee (24:41)

The Reality of Bob’s Last Night

• “His close friend group always had his back... but in the end, I think he still ended up with people that were not necessarily great for the last weekend of his life.”
  — Jessica Traynor (29:43)
• “He just wanted help. He just needed help.”
  — Cameron Purdy on Bob’s last words during his 911 call (37:14)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------|---------------| | Media’s “Lifestyle” Narrative Emerges | 03:54–05:02 | | Insider Friends Rebuke Public Image | 05:08–05:44 | | Bob Lee’s Early Life & Tech Genius | 08:35–11:03 | | Building Android & Cash App | 11:03–13:12 | | Cultural Impact of Cash App | 13:12–13:33 | | Bob's Party Persona Discussed | 14:19–15:10 | | Memorable Party Adventures | 16:05–16:18 | | Press Sensationalism and Friends' Outrage | 20:13–22:48 | | Krista Lee's Response to Drug Allegations | 24:22–25:13 | | Final Weekend, Nima and Kazar Momeni | 29:43–35:47 | | Bob’s Last 911 Call and Reflection | 36:53–38:14 |

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Episode Tone & Language

• Intimate, frank, and searching—the host and guests emphasize humanity, contradiction, and nuance over easy narratives. The tone moves between admiration for Bob Lee's intellect and heartbreak at his loss, with persistent frustration at how easily media stories can distort a person's legacy.

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In Summary

This episode of Foundering unpacks the full, unvarnished portrait of Bob Lee: a brilliant programmer, devoted dad, legendary partier, and deeply beloved friend. It pushes back against lurid news coverage, showing how easily public narratives—about the tech elite, about drugs, about “dangerous cities”—can overtake the true, complicated fabric of a life. The story doesn’t shy away from Lee’s flaws, but it refuses to let easy stereotypes triumph over truth. The episode sets the stage for a legal battle where Bob’s lifestyle will be used as a weapon—an issue explored in the next installment.

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Transcript

[IBM Representative]

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[Bloomberg Host]

Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts, radio news

[Sean Wen]

previously on 701. In the breaking news, a tech executive is dead. He was stabbed in San Francisco, south of Market Street.

[Jessica Traynor]

Yeah.

[Narrator/Reporter]

The latest reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash app and an executive of mobilecoin.

[Bloomberg Host]

One of our best friends called and said, I just saw on the news and my heart shattered.

[Sean Wen]

Elon Musk even weighing in with his tweet quote, violent crime in San Francisco is horrific. And even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately.

[Cameron Purdy]

They're saying he took a kitchen knife from his sister's apartment to his car. You know, with Bob, got in the car, went somewhere else, and then attacked him. It just didn't make sense. Didn't make sense to me.

[Narrator/Reporter]

In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups, the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.

[Sean Wen]

On January 25, 2024, less than a year after Bob Lee's murder, Law and order aired the second episode of its 23rd season. It was called Human Innovation.

[Narrator/Reporter]

DOA took one in the chest. No wallet, no phone. Bodega owner down the street heard the shot around 2am and called it in, but didn't see anything.

[Sean Wen]

Okay, in the episode, a young tech executive is killed on the street in the middle of the night in what looks like a random mugging.

[Cameron Purdy]

Evan Marks,

[Narrator/Reporter]

the tech guy, CEO of Venzip. Damn. Venzip is how I pay for everything these days. You don't use it? No, man, I'm not trusting my bank. And photo and app.

[Sean Wen]

Immediately after the death. Still on the show, the tech community starts posting on social media, blaming the nypd.

[Bloomberg Host]

Evan Marx was one of the greatest minds of our generation. The NYPD should be ashamed. Violent street crime is out of control, and Evan's blood is on their hands.

[Narrator/Reporter]

So Marx's murder is somehow our fault now?

[Bloomberg Host]

Well, apparently, according to James Sawyer, it is.

[Narrator/Reporter]

And that guy's got millions of followers that worship him as a genius.

[Sean Wen]

Sound familiar? This is A thing that law and order does. They take a story from the headlines for inspiration. In this case, the story of Bob Lee's murder. But it's hard to know if Bob's death would have risen to the level of network TV drama if it wasn't for the next plot point.

[Narrator/Reporter]

There's an underground scene for people of a certain caliber. It's called the lifestyle.

[Lauren Weiniger]

Lifestyle.

[Narrator/Reporter]

I did not name it. Evan was super into the whole thing.

[Sean Wen]

The lifestyle, a formal underground group of elite individuals into drugs, wild parties, and promiscuous sex.

[Narrator/Reporter]

It's just a way to create safe space for powerful and, you know, famous people to relax. Expanding the mind to break old paradigms. And by expanding the mind, you mean taking ketamine mushrooms.

[Sean Wen]

In May of 2023, about five and a half weeks after Bob was killed, the Wall Street Journal published an article with this headline. Before his killing, tech executive Bob Lee led an underground life of sex and drugs. Here's how it opens. In certain wealthy tech circles, it is known as the Lifestyle. An underground party scene featuring recreational drug use and casual sex. A successful tech executive named Bob Lee liked to hang out with that crowd, According to people who also participated. So too did Kazar Momeni, the wife of a prominent plastic surgeon. Television coverage picked up on a similar theme.

[Bloomberg News Anchor]

We now know the Cash app founder had drugs and alcohol in his system. The night he was stabbed to death in San Francisco was a romantic affair behind the stabbing death earlier this spring of the founder of Cash App.

[Bloomberg Host]

An underground sex party and an affair

[Narrator/Reporter]

may be what led to the fatal

[Bloomberg Host]

stabbing of Cash app founder Bob Lee.

[Sean Wen]

But for Bob's friends, this version of him that they heard about in the news seemed all wrong.

[Narrator/Reporter]

It just didn't seem like the same person.

[Sean Wen]

Here's Joshua Block, a software engineer who hired Bob Lee at Google. Josh knew Bob for 20 years.

[Narrator/Reporter]

None of the articles that I read at the time mentioned what a special person he was. They just said, yeah, tech tech bro, basically. No, he wasn't. I've known plenty of tech bros, and he wasn't one of them. He wasn't like that. Bob was Bob. So all of a sudden, his name became household word for the worst of reasons. And this was before his body was even cold. And it just pissed me off

[Sean Wen]

once again. What happened to Bob Lee was being squeezed into a narrative that had been established well before his death. We talked in episode one about how his death was used to epitomize the decline of San Francisco.

[Doug Dalton]

These elected leaders, they are setting loose on us a predatory criminal or psychotic element that jeopardizes our safety and makes these cities unlivable.

[Sean Wen]

Of course, the story that Bob died in a random act of violence proved to be wrong. After Bob's toxicology report was released, a new narrative emerged, one that was much more salacious. The report found that Bob died with ketamine, cocaine, alcohol and an antihistamine in his system. And when rumors surfaced about Bob's personal life, he became a stand in for the secret world of wealthy elites, one filled with sex, partying and illicit drugs. How much truth was there to this story? I'm sean wen. This is foundering the killing of bob lee.

[Bloomberg News Anchor]

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[Bloomberg Host]

Then.

[Sean Wen]

When I started reaching out to Bob's friends and family, I found no shortage of people who were happy to talk about him. People would say to me, anything for Bob. He was a deeply social person and beloved. Multiple people, I'm talking adult men in their 40s here, told me that Bob was their best friend.

[Cameron Purdy]

Bob never really got older. He always had the smile of an 8 year old or 10 year old, like just this little boyish grin. And he was just so cute.

[Narrator/Reporter]

People were naturally drawn to Bob. It was his charming, his personality, his humor, his laughter. You've got a good looking guy with a brilliant mind. You've got a doting father.

[Doug Dalton]

He was very endearing and very cool. But when you really got close to Bob, you realized how genuinely sweet and honest he was about his feelings.

[Sean Wen]

People I spoke to felt like the real Bob had been lost behind waves of headlines, rumors, and what they called misinformation. So I wanted to try and understand the Bob they knew, the friend, the dad, the talented programmer. Bob Lee had a humble upbringing. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1979. His dad worked as a warehouse supervisor at Anheuser Busch. His mom was a mail carrier for the Postal service and later a journalist. Bob started toying around with computers in middle school. He went to Southeastern Missouri State University on a full ride after designing the school's admissions website. By the way, that website was so well Implemented that. The school kept using it for 15 years. He met his wife Krista in their hometown.

[Bloomberg Host]

22 years old. And Bob and I met the old fashioned way at a bar one night. The only thing I could think of when I first met him was, oh my God, this guy is wearing khakis and a pink polo. Like, wow, what a nerd.

[Sean Wen]

They started dating. They were only 24 when Krista called Bob to say I'm pregnant.

[Bloomberg Host]

And he didn't even hesitate. He put the phone down and did this. Woo, guys, I want to be a dad. And of course I'm like, that's not really the conversation I was planning on having with you and you sharing with everyone. You know, pump the brakes, babe. Like, I'm kind of freaking out here. He's like, don't worry about it. And he was excited and he point blank said, let's do this, let's have this baby. You know I love you and I know you love me and we can do this.

[Sean Wen]

Around this time, there was another big development in Bob's life. He attracted the attention of Josh Block, Bob's friend that we heard from at the top of this episode. Josh, who didn't know Bob at the time, was posting little brain teasers online involving the Java programming language.

[Narrator/Reporter]

He started getting these very, very good answers from this guy that I had never heard of, you know, in the Midwest somewhere.

[Sean Wen]

According to Josh, Bob's skills were almost savant.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Like he didn't have a computer science degree, he had a working class background. He was sort of clearly too good for the league that he was playing in. You know, where did he learn all this stuff? Well, he just picked it up. He had an amazing capacity for doing that.

[Sean Wen]

All the people in tech I spoke to about Bob Lee told me some version of the same thing. He was a hacker, a code God, a guru. At Google, Bob made two big contributions. First, he worked on the ADS platform, which became the financial engine that powers Google. And second, Bob helped write the foundational software for the Android operating system. Here he is talking about it on a panel.

[Will.i.am]

It was really fun. There was no iPhone at the time. We were just trying to. We were creating basically like a BlackBerry competitor. Like the big challenge for me, like we really had to take this code that was meant for desktops and servers and make them work on a really low powered mobile device. And phones are so much more powerful now. But also nobody foresaw how big this stuff was going to get.

[Sean Wen]

Bob's work helped make smartphones cheap and universal. An estimated 75% of cell phones globally now run on Android.

[Jim McKelvey]

I met Bob on my wedding night.

[Sean Wen]

This is Jim McKelvey, co founder of Square, the mobile payments company now known as Block. The two were introduced by a mutual

[Jim McKelvey]

friend, Bob Lee New Jack Dorsey.

[Sean Wen]

Jack Dorsey is one of the most famous people in the tech industry. He's a founder of Twitter. And one thing that Dorsey, Bob and Jim all have in common is that they're all from St. Louis.

[Jim McKelvey]

He came up and said hi, and Jack said hi and introduced Bob Lee as the best Java programmer in the world. And Jack isn't prone to hyperbole, so I took it very seriously. So my mission was to recruit Bob Lee to come join us and help us build the company.

[Sean Wen]

At Square. Bob became cto, he built the engineering team, and he also created Cash App, the service that would eventually become his legacy. For the past five years, Cash App has been responsible for 2/3 of the revenue of its parent company, Block. It has an estimated 57 million users.

[Jim McKelvey]

If you are a poor person or a marginalized person, Cash App is access to the financial world. It's a bank in your pocket. So if you've always had banking accounts and access to credit, you'll look at Cash App and you go, oh, that's kind of cool. But if you've been shut out, it's magic.

[Sean Wen]

It's also become something of a cultural sensation. It's famously featured in rap lyrics

[Bloomberg Host]

bundles.

[Narrator/Reporter]

What's your cash out? I use my Cash App card when I cash her out.

[Sean Wen]

Here's a video Bob made for his kids with Will. I am from the Black Eyed Peas.

[Narrator/Reporter]

What's up, Dagny and Scott? I'm chilling here with your pops. Hey, babies.

[Sean Wen]

Will, I am.

[Will.i.am]

You there rocks.

[Sean Wen]

Bob was crucial to the creation and growth of this massive, massive brand. Both as a coder himself and as someone who managed other engineers. While there is a stereotype of engineers as introverted or socially awkward, this wasn't true of Bob. He loved to party.

[Jim McKelvey]

I don't have a full 360 degree picture of Bob. Cause I go to bed at about 10 o' clock and Bob goes to bed the next day. Sometime, maybe, or maybe not. I don't know. I've never made it. Like, I've never made it through a full cycle with Bob Lee.

[Sean Wen]

Jim McKelvey from Square was clear. While he was Bob's boss and friend, he didn't know the entirety of the man.

[Jim McKelvey]

He was a hard partier and I am not. And so at those moments, our paths diverged. But the beautiful thing About Bob is that he wasn't defined by his hard partying. Like some people bring that with them 24 7. Bob could switch it on and switch it off.

[Cameron Purdy]

I will be the first to tell you that most people couldn't survive Bob's lifestyle.

[Sean Wen]

That's Cameron Purdy, an engineer and tech executive from Massachusetts. He and Bob met at a Java conference when Bob was 23 years old. Over the years they went to many conferences together and that's how their friendship blossomed.

[Cameron Purdy]

I would fly into San Francisco late at night, get off the plane, drop my bags at the hotel and meet Bob at the bar at, you know, 11:12 at night. And then we would stay out all night, bar to bar, wherever he could find that was still open and he knew them all. Or go by Stanford and hang out at the frats, at the parties there or whatever. And then we'd go to work. Like, if I was lucky, I'd have time for a shower before I went to work in the morning.

[Sean Wen]

For Cameron's part, he loved seeing Bob because with Bob, life always seemed like an adventure. He was the kind of person that things just happened to.

[Cameron Purdy]

So I was with Bob when we met Lady Gaga. I was with Bob when we met Dennis Rodman. I was with. Yeah, we ended up at Dennis Rodman's birthday party at the Spearmint Rhino in Vegas. That was interesting.

[Sean Wen]

Spearmint Rhino is a strip club. Cameron guessed that during a conference over the course of four or five days, Bob might sleep around eight hours total.

[Cameron Purdy]

The human body's not meant to go nonstop. You gotta sleep. So he'd sleep for half an hour and then I'd wake him up and you ready to go? He's like, yeah, let's go.

[Sean Wen]

Bob's mid-30s were a turning point in his life. In 2014, he left square. The next year, he and Krista separated. They remained close friends and co parents. They still had weekly dinners and went on family vacations. Bob, by all accounts, was a great dad. Very loving, sweet and present. Most people I spoke to, whether they knew Bob from work or partying, also had stories about hanging out with his kids. Here's a video he sent them while on a work trip. Hey, girls, I'm getting on a flight to Chicago. I'm gonna go talk about science. I appreciate the picture and the video you sent. I'd love it if you'd make me another video and send it. I love you.

[Will.i.am]

Bye.

[Sean Wen]

At the same time, Bob was a single man with a lot of money and and a restless personality. Jessica Traynor dated Bob after he and Krista divorced.

[Jessica Traynor]

He was kind of, I guess you could say, like a playboy. Wasn't really looking for anything serious when I met him. Understandably, he had been married before and just had a huge background and was also trying to get to know himself. Still, I think in some ways when

[Sean Wen]

Jessica met Bob, she felt like he was in the middle of a reinvention.

[Jessica Traynor]

When you have free time and you've achieved so much, you're kind of chasing a new kind of rush in your life. There is a truth to this ability to travel all over the world and hang out and meet cool people and kind of, you know, party, if you will.

[Sean Wen]

He was getting more into electronic dance music. Sometimes he'd fly around the world following specific DJs on tour.

[Jessica Traynor]

They gave him backstage. He'd always have like a table right next to the dj.

[Sean Wen]

Jessica says that she and Bob started working out together. Afterwards, they'd lay in the sun and work on their tans.

[Jessica Traynor]

Felt really cool, you know. Bob came from a nerdy background as, you know, someone who worked in tech. You know, this kind of cool tech bro image that he got. Later in time came, you know, after he had a little bit more freedom.

[Sean Wen]

In the years after Square, Bob's next projects flopped. He founded a startup which failed. He tried his hand at becoming an angel investor. About a year and a half before his death, Bob became the chief product officer of a cryptocurrency company called mobilecoin. This job allowed Bob to live in Miami, fly back to San Francisco a week every month to work and travel as he wanted. When the Wall Street Journal published its piece on Bob Lee and the so called lifestyle, it had an explosive effect. The Daily Mail and the New York Post followed up with more salacious stories about Bob. Details about sex and drugs turned Bob Lee's death from a news story into one that true crime shows had a field day with. The Wall Street Journal reported that Bob was part of an underground party scene. This is from a podcast called Serialistly, which has more than 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube alone. Filled with recreational drugs and casual sex. And that this party scene was called the Lifestyle and that he was involved in this for several years prior to his death. Bob's friends, at least the ones I spoke with, were furious about the portrayal in the article.

[Lauren Weiniger]

It was disgusting. Honestly, when I saw it, we were all shocked. And I know most of the people that were quoted, but even reading between, like before I even talked to them, I'm like, wait, like this stuff is Taking so out of context.

[Sean Wen]

Lauren Weiniger is a tech founder. She had known Bob for almost a decade. They became friends after meeting at south by Southwest. She and others will be the first to admit Bob liked to party. He took drugs. But she took issue with the idea that he was part of an underground secret society spread out across San Francisco.

[Lauren Weiniger]

Does San Francisco have a lot of poly and is there a lot of drugs? And I'm not even. There's no judgment on these things. It's just these are statements that are true of San Francisco more than many places. But the statements in that article weren't even made about Bob. So they tried to create this story about this dark underbelly of the tech world.

[Sean Wen]

There is a fair amount of what many people consider vice. Within the tech industry. Drug use is common. Bob Lee was hardly an outlier. Elon Musk has spoken openly about his ketamine use. Sam Altman said that psychedelics were life changing. Even Bill Gates has admitted to drug use. And there's a subculture of sex parties that my colleague Emily Chang has written about extensively. Though when I interviewed people who knew Bob, no one could tell me definitively that he attended any of these. In response to our questions, a spokesperson from the Wall Street Journal said, we stand by our reporting.

[Harper Reed]

There's been a lot of questions about the lifestyle and I don't actually know where it came from. It feels like something that is a thing for a specific group of people, but I think is misused and turned into something else.

[Sean Wen]

That's Harper Reed. He's also a friend of Bob's. They knew each other for 15 years. He's a programmer and a tech entrepreneur best known for being CTO of Barack Obama's 2012 re election campaign.

[Harper Reed]

When I have it described back to me by people, oftentimes it seems like they're talking about honestly just going outside and going to listen to DJs and going to clubs and having underground parties and like really having a part of your life be about nightlife. My experience with Bob specifically, it was much more about just nightlife, like DJs having fun, partying, hanging out.

[Sean Wen]

Why do you think it's taken on such a life of its own?

[Harper Reed]

And I think this is probably a story as old as time. There is a fascination with the other. And like we want to hear about rich people and what crazy things they do. I do. I want to read that. Like how often are you like what this is happening to this rich person that I don't know. This is wonderful. All my Experience with Bob in the nightlife was nothing sketchy. I will say that making the choice to participate in nightlife the way that I know Bob did in the way that I did is a lifestyle that is a thing. Like I was. I was going out every single night to, you know, I was sleeping weird so I could go out more. Like, it was wild. It was really fun. I highly recommend

[Sean Wen]

was a genuine clash of cultures for those close to Bob. It felt like the media was clutching its pearls, passing moral judgment on Bob's personal choices, choices they felt had little if anything to do with Bob's death. For more conservative media outlets, Bob's personal life seemed far outside the bounds of what most Americans might consider no normal behavior, normal partying. And given the toxicology report, it was easy to draw a connection between Bob's partying and the 2am stabbing. The wall Street Journal article in particular, profoundly changed public perception of Bob. Krista Lee, his former wife, the mother of his children, who knew him for 20 years, had trouble reconciling the portrayal with the man she knew.

[Bloomberg Host]

I would sit there and read these things and I would get angry, and then I would start second guessing Bob himself. Like, you know, is there something I didn't know? Like, this man is an open book. Was there some weird side life that I had no clue about?

[Sean Wen]

After Bob's death, Krista went to Miami to clear out his apartment.

[Bloomberg Host]

I was expecting to find something that I would have been shocked by, and it was nothing. There was absolutely nothing that was shocking. I was perfectly aware that he was microdosing ketamine for depression, perfectly aware that he would use cocaine from time to time. So do I. You know, it's not that uncommon of a drug these days. Let's, you know, let's be real. I know that there's a lot of, you know, more conservative people out there that will be shocked by that, but sorry, just kind of a reality.

[Sean Wen]

Christa's response reveals something important. The way people interpret this part of Bob Lee's story depends on how they perceive illegal drug use. There are many people, especially in the Bay Area, who see it as fine, common, whatever, and others who see it as something so dirty, so illicit, the implication becomes maybe Bob had it coming. After the break, Nima enters the picture. We'll be right back.

[Bloomberg Host]

Humans will never be more intelligent than AI.

[Narrator/Reporter]

There's going to be two types of companies those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't.

[Sean Wen]

How do we build a future that is human centered?

[Rana El Khaliubi]

I'm Rana El Khaliubi. And on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future, and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find Pioneers of AI With Wherever you

[Sean Wen]

tune in,

[Narrator/Reporter]

We can confirm that Mr. Lee and Mr. Momenti knew each other.

[Bloomberg News Anchor]

I think now that we know the facts and understand that this is somebody that Mr. Lee knew, that this was a targeted killing. This is not indicative of the state of affairs here in San Francisco on our streets.

[Sean Wen]

San Francisco officials wanted to make it very, very clear that Bob Lee knew his killer, Neema Momeni. During the trial, it came up that Bob and Nima met at Kazar's house the weekend he was killed, though I also came across a few instances where their social circles overlapped. In 2021, they both pursued Jessica Traynor. She met Nima at a nightclub in San Francisco.

[Jessica Traynor]

He had come up to the bar, and I just kind of met him there. And we just kind of started talking and he was kind of slouched over and, you know, didn't really make great eye contact. So he just had the signs of someone, you know, without a. Of confidence.

[Sean Wen]

NIMH asked for her phone number, and later he sent her a text inviting her to hang out.

[Jessica Traynor]

I said, okay, sure, you know, not thinking anything necessarily romantic, but just to, you know, friendly. And then his suggestion was, I have a boat. Let's go out on the water this afternoon. And I was like, I don't know that this is a good idea to go one on one on a boat. Boat out into the water, stranded in the middle of the lake or wherever, you know, with just somebody I met. So it started to feel a little creepy in that way, too.

[Sean Wen]

Jessica said that another time, Nima reached out to her. She said no, and actually she was going out with Bob that night.

[Jessica Traynor]

And we ended up at the same party, a little after party. So we ended up there and it was kind of awkward. So I'm not sure if Nima or Bob are remembered meeting at that moment. They didn't really exchange much conversation. And I never mentioned to Bob that, you know, oh, yeah, this guy had my phone number. So it was just kind of a short, brief interaction.

[Sean Wen]

She said that Nima's displeasure was clear.

[Jessica Traynor]

It was pretty clear that he showed up with Bob and left with Bob. And he was pretty quiet the whole time. But, yeah, I would Say he had like glaring looks, like, you know, piercing stairs.

[Sean Wen]

Can you contrast what Nima's like at a party versus what Bob is like at a party?

[Jessica Traynor]

Hmm. Nima is the guy that's kind of standing off to the side, not interacting with anybody. Even so, you know, I only had a couple real interactions with him in a social setting. But every time he. He stood off to the side, not really talking to anybody and just kind of staring maybe, you know, just. Yeah, kind of like that outsider vibe. And in contrast, Bob was the guy in the center of attention talking to everybody. So it was a huge contrast.

[Sean Wen]

Jessica saw that Bob attracted many people to him and she was less trusting of some of the people he spent time with.

[Jessica Traynor]

His close friend group always had his back and he had some really amazing close friends. And I don't want to take away from that at all. But in the end, I think, you know, he still ended up with people that were not necessarily great for the last weekend of his life.

[Sean Wen]

That last weekend, Bob hung out with Nima twice and at least three times with Nima's sister, Kazar Momeni. Some of her friends call her Tina.

[Doug Dalton]

As far as I knew, Bob's relationship with Tina was solely his friends. I didn't think there was anything more than that.

[Sean Wen]

This is Doug Dalton. Doug used to be a computer programmer and tech executive. Nowadays he owns several well known bars in San Francisco, including Rick House and Bourbon and Branch. He's also one of Bob Lee's best friends.

[Doug Dalton]

I think that Tina was just somebody that Bob gravitated towards. Tina was just always fun to kind of hang around with. She was always kind of a life of a party. She mostly hosted her own parties within her house or having mutual friends who were going from one party to another within that same Millennium Tower.

[Sean Wen]

And do you know why she wanted to mostly host parties in her own house?

[Doug Dalton]

Probably just to be away from prying eyes.

[Bloomberg News Anchor]

So at this time, what we've revealed is that Mr. Momenti and Mr. Lee were both at the Millennium Tower, which is where Mr. Momeni's sister resides with her husband.

[Sean Wen]

This is Brooke Jenkins, San Francisco's District Attorney. The day after Nima Momeni was arrested, she gave a press conference outlining the last minutes of Bob's life.

[Bloomberg News Anchor]

The two gentlemen, late in the early. In the early morning hours, I should say, leave the Millennium Tower together. They are seen on video leaving the tower and getting into Mr. Momeni's vehicle. They then proceed to drive away and that subsequently to that is when the stabbing takes place.

[Sean Wen]

Can you tell Me? Like what you found out about his final hours, like who he was hanging out with, where was he, and what led to him getting in the car with Nima.

[Doug Dalton]

All I can say is that I tracked down two of his friends. They had been with Tina.

[Sean Wen]

That's Doug Dalton again. According to court testimony, on the afternoon of April 3, Bob Kazar and two other friends were hanging out at the apartment of a guy named Jeremy Boyvin. Multiple people describe him as Bob's drug dealer. Remember his name. We'll come back to Jeremy Boyvin a few times. People have different views about whether rich people doing drugs is a big deal, but there's no way around it. There were lots of drugs involved in Bob Lee's final hours. Kazar, by her own admission, took ketamine, acid, whippets, cocaine, and ghb. GHB is also known as the date rape drug. When mixed with alcohol, it can make you blackout. At some point, Bob left the party, and sometime thereafter, Kazar lost consciousness. When she woke up, she was distraught. She called Nima to come get her.

[Doug Dalton]

Tina had called Nima for a ride home, and Nima came, picked her up, was upset that she had been drinking throughout the day and asked who she was with, and then called Bob and was yelling at Bob over the phone.

[Sean Wen]

Bob was actually hanging out with another friend when he took Nima's call. He had the phone on speaker. So his friend, a guy named Bo Mohasabi, overheard their conversation. Bob's friend would later testify in trial that Nima sounded, quote, almost like a detective asking questions. What were you guys doing? What was going on with my sister? What did she take? How about the girls getting naked? This was really confusing to Bob and his friend who hadn't been there to see the girls getting naked. That's when the friend says to Bob, who the hell is this person? Get off the phone with this person. This person is crazy.

[Doug Dalton]

Bob was one of those people who can't stand when somebody's upset with him. It will just eat out of him knowing that somebody's upset with him. So he wanted to smooth that over.

[Sean Wen]

When Bob took the call, he had been hanging out with his friend in his hotel room, talking through the friend's business idea. Then they facetimed people they knew, including Krista. They had a drink at the hotel bar. They had a drink at the Battery, a private social club that was once popular among the tech elite. Then they went to the friend's house to wind down the night. At 12:30, Bob left his friend's apartment. He Headed for Kazar's place at the

[Doug Dalton]

Millennium Tower, and Nima was there. And so Bob was at the to go smooth things over with Nima for sure, because Tina was not upset in any way with Bob. At least you can see from their text messages. As far as I understand, it was very calm. It was not like a huge fight or an altercation or anything of that nature. Even in the video that you can see that the police released, they're not fighting. There's no altercation. They're, like, walking calmly out to Nima's car. It was not like they were tussling. They seemed totally fine. So the only thing I can imagine is Nima had harbored something and attacked Bob for no reason. I mean, it's just absurd. The only thing Bob was probably doing was trying to ensure that Nima wasn't mad at him. He just was that kind of guy.

[Sean Wen]

In fact, Bob's last text to Nima was a suggestion that they go to a strip club together. Gold Club, question mark. Doug said that after Bob died, he started calling around to his friends, asking what happened.

[Doug Dalton]

I was just shocked that he felt comfortable enough to leave with someone that ended up killing him. And I can't even put that into words. That's just. He was so excited about everything that he had going on. Friends were getting ready to fly back with him to Miami to see kind of all the stuff that he was excited about. It's unbelievable. I just can't. I can't grasp my head around it. And when I do, it's just heartbreakingly sad.

[Cameron Purdy]

I couldn't bear to listen to the 911 recording, but I did. I did read the transcript. And, you know, I've never heard anyone else point this out, but it was so Bob.

[Sean Wen]

Cameron Purdy again, Bob's conference buddy from Massachusetts.

[Cameron Purdy]

Here he is. He's on the phone. He's just been stabbed, and he's bleeding profusely. I mean, he's bleeding out, and it's cold, and he's outside, and he can't get help. And he calls 911, and he says, I've been stabbed. He tells him where he is, and he knows how he got there. It was in a car with a guy whose name he knew, and he knows the guy did it. Like, he was. Like, he was there. He saw it, he felt it, right? And he came there with the guy in the car from the guy's sister's apartment, like, plain as day. And he never said who did it. He never gave the name. He never blamed anyone, and that was Bob. He wasn't trying to get the guy in trouble. He just wanted help. He just needed help.

[Sean Wen]

Bob was a trusting person. He was a social person. He loved his work and his family, and he also wanted to stay out late and do drugs. And he didn't like it when people were mad at him. Like all of his friends would acknowledge, he was complex. But as can happen in death, Bob's story was reduced to stereotypes, convenient narratives that were easy to understand about violent cities and hedonistic rich people that had it coming. This provided an opportunity not just for network television, but also for Nima Momeni's defense team.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Cocaine is not recreational. He was a guy that had flaws, just like every one of us has flaws. And it could have been that one of those flaws was that he got angry in a split second and made a bad decision.

[Sean Wen]

On the next episode, Nima Momeni goes to trial, and he claims it was actually Bob who had the knife. Foundering is reported, hosted and executive produced by me, Sean Wen. Eric Masitsi's Mental produced our show. Bart Warshaw is our audio engineer. Our story editors are Joshua Brustein, Tom Giles, Ann Vanderme and Nicole Beamster Boer. Be sure to subscribe and if you like our show, leave a review. Most importantly, tell your friends. See you next time.

[Bloomberg Event Announcer]

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