A wealthy Southern California tech entrepreneur has been charged with murdering his estranged wife, whose body was found at the bottom of a 75-foot embankment off a mountain road late last year, police said.
Gordon Abas Goodarzi, 66, was charged Sunday by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office with first-degree murder in the death of Aryan Papoli, 58, of Newport Beach.
Her body was discovered down the embankment in Crestline on November 18 but not identified until December 1.
Goodarzi was arrested at his home Friday in luxury Rolling Hills Estates. He is currently being held without bail at San Bernardino’s Central Detention Center.
The charging document states that Popali was “particularly vulnerable” and that Goodarzi carried out the alleged murder with “planning, sophistication, or professionalism.” It also said that the alleged crime involved “an attempted or actual taking or damage of great monetary value.”
The couple, who records show filed for divorce in June of last year, met 30 years ago in California. Goodarzi founded US Hybrid, a clean energy company specializing in zero-emission powertrain components for commercial and military vehicles and served as CEO, while Papoli worked as the CFO and vice president of operations. US Hybrid was acquired in 2021 by Torrance-based Ideanomics for $50 million in a cash-and-stock deal.
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Goodarzi is a research affiliate at UCLA, according to the university’s website, which touted his decades of experience with electric vehicles.
The couple has two sons, Navid and Milad, and purchased their five-bedroom home in Rolling Hills Estates in 2017 for around $1.3 million, records show.
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Papoli relocated to Newport Beach six months before her death, seeking a “serene place to thrive creatively” after retiring from corporate life, according to son Navid.
Goodarzi is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges Tuesday.
