The former personal assistant of a young tech entrepreneur who was found beheaded and dismembered in his Manhattan apartment was arrested Friday and charged with murder, police said.
The businessman, Fahim Saleh, 33, was discovered dead Tuesday afternoon by his cousin inside his $ 2.25 million condo in a luxury building on the Lower East Side, police said. The cousin had come to see him after not hearing from him for about a day.
Mr. Saleh’s head and limbs had been removed, and parts of his body had been placed in large plastic bags designed for construction debris. An electric saw was still connected nearby.
Former aide Tyrese Devon Haspil, 21, had worked for Saleh since he was 16, officials with knowledge of the investigation said.
“Sir. Haspil was Mr. Saleh’s executive assistant and handled his finances and personal affairs, and owed the victim a significant amount of money,” Chief Detective Rodney K. Harrison said at a brief press conference. Friday evening.
Detectives believe the motive for the murder stemmed from Saleh’s discovery that Haspil had stolen approximately $ 90,000 from him, two officials familiar with the investigation said.
Saleh fired Haspil, but did not report the theft and even offered to set up what amounted to a payment plan so he could return the money, officials said.
One of the officials said that Mr. Saleh had paid Mr. Haspil so well that he was able to pay the debts of several family members.
Mr. Haspil was arrested Friday at 8:45 am outside an apartment building on Crosby Street in SoHo, where he had been staying with a friend, the official said. New York detectives and federal agents from a fugitive regional task force of the US Marshals Service detained him.
Investigators have concluded that Mr. Saleh was killed on Monday afternoon, the day before his body was found, a fourth official with knowledge of the investigation said.
After the murder, the killer used a credit card to pay for a car at a Home Depot on West 23rd Street in Manhattan and to buy cleaning supplies, the fourth official said. He returned to Mr. Saleh’s apartment the next day to dismember the body and clean up the crime scene.
On the day of the murder, detectives believe that the killer, dressed in a black three-piece suit, with a black mask and latex gloves, and with a duffel bag, followed Mr. Saleh in an opening elevator. in his apartment. Police officials said. When the two men got out of the elevator, the killer used a Taser to immobilize Mr. Saleh and then stabbed him to death.
Security video taken from inside the elevator showed the killer then used a portable vacuum cleaner, perhaps in an effort to remove the debris left behind when the Taser was fired, officials said. He also used the vacuum cleaner inside the apartment.
Saleh died of multiple stab wounds to the neck and torso, the New York City coroner’s office determined Thursday.
Initially, a law enforcement officer described the murder as a “hit” and said it seemed “a professional job.” But now some investigators theorize that the killer may have tried to make the creepy murder look like a professional murder to give the impression that it could be related to a failed international trade deal. Mr. Saleh was involved with companies in Nigeria, Colombia and Bangladesh.
But what one investigator characterized as “several rookie mistakes,” including buying the Taser online with his own credit card and signing the package when it arrived in June, quickly led police to Mr. Haspil, two said of officials.
Detectives investigating the murder believe that the work of the murderer who dismembered the body was interrupted when Mr. Saleh’s cousin buzzed from the building’s lobby, officials said, prompting him to flee through the apartment’s back door. and enter a ladder before the cousin arrived. Authorities had previously said that Mr. Saleh was discovered by his sister, not by his cousin.
Mr. Saleh’s family said in a statement Wednesday that the horrific murder was so shocking that it was unfathomable.
“Fahim is more than what you are reading,” the family said. “He is much more. His brilliant and innovative mind took everyone on his world on a journey and made sure he never left anyone behind. “
Mr. Saleh was born in Saudi Arabia to Bangladeshi parents who eventually settled near Poughkeepsie, New York, a small town on the Hudson River.
After graduating from Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 2009, he created an app called PrankDial that allowed users to send prerecorded prank calls. Saleh said he eventually turned PrankDial into a $ 10 million business.
Saleh founded Pathao, a new motorcycle-sharing company in Bangladesh. He left that company in 2018 to start a similar company in Nigeria, an app known as Gokada.
At the time of his death, Saleh was the CEO of Gokada and oversaw a change in his business during a turbulent time. In February, Nigerian officials began enforcing the motorcycle taxi ban in the main commercial and residential areas of the country’s largest city, Lagos.
Gokada was forced to stop his transportation business and laid off workers, but Mr. Saleh made the company focus on food and package delivery and commercial logistics.
“Fahim’s passion for Nigeria and his youth was immeasurable,” Gokada said in a statement. “I believed that young Nigerians were extremely bright and talented people who would flourish if given the right opportunity.”
Mr. Saleh was also the founding partner of a Manhattan-based venture capital fund, Adventure Capital, which invested in similar startup startups in Colombia and Bangladesh.
