REDMOND — A suspected stalker in a monthslong harassment investigation killed a Redmond couple in their home early Friday morning before killing himself, police said.
The suspect, identified by the Redmond Police Department as Ramin Khodakaramrezaei, 38, 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.
Ahead of Friday's killings, police had been trying to locate Khodakaramrezaei but had not been successful due to his job as a truck driver from Texas, according to Redmond police Chief Darrell Lowe.
Police responded to the home near 168th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 89th Street in Redmond's Education Hill neighborhood around 1:45 a.m.
Officers found a man who lived in the house lying on the floor near the doorway and pulled him outside, where they saw he had a gunshot wound. Officers attempted lifesaving measures until paramedics arrived, but he died at the scene.
The woman and suspect were dead when police found them in the home, Lowe said.
The woman's mother, who lives at the home, encountered the suspect when he broke in through her bedroom window. She was able to run to a neighbor's house and called 911. She was not injured.
Lowe said Khodakaramrezaei reportedly listened to the woman's podcasts, and that the two had met on the app Clubhouse, which allows users to talk over audio chat rooms. The chat room was specifically for Farsi speakers looking for jobs in the tech industry, he said.
Sadeghi was a software engineer who previously worked at Promontory MortgagePath, and 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, as a teenager he was ranked among the best singers in Tehran, 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.
"These delusions make me fear for my life"
Lowe said Sadeghi originally contacted Redmond police in December 2022 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.
The petition for an order of protection filed by the couple in King County District Court, obtained by The Seattle Times, details a monthslong ordeal involving harassing phone calls and threats that escalated to the stalker saying he would show up at her home and set it on fire, and would only stop contacting her if he died.
"That is also in the voice messages he keeps sending me, that he won't let me go and the only thing that will make all this stopped is if he killed himself or died," Sadeghi wrote in the petition order.
She wrote that she had had major back surgery and needed 24-hour care, so she worried about her ability to respond to a crisis, especially because the stalker had ignored all other avenues. The suspected stalker had been warned by Sadeghi and the police to stop calling or sending her messages, but he continued. He sent her gifts, said he was going to have a jazz band play outside her house, and told her to delete her Instagram account or make it public so he could see. He was delusional, she wrote.
"These delusions make me fear for my life and the lives of my loved ones," Sadeghi wrote in the order.
Naseri wrote that he first heard about the man in late 2021, when his wife mentioned him as part of a group of people she had befriended. In the summer of 2022, she met up with Khodakaramrezaei and a few days later, Naseri wrote, he saw a social media notification on her phone from him. He later saw messages from Khodakaramrezaei that weren't inappropriate on her side, but Khodakaramrezaei kept trying to be overly friendly, he said.
In November 2022, Sadeghi told her husband about Khodakaramrezaei, saying the man had threatened to end their marriage. That month they blocked him on WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram and on her phone's call application. The next month, Khodakaramrezaei called Naseri instead. He continued calling and texting Naseri through February 2023.
On Feb. 22, he sent 82 texts to Naseri through the Telegram app, according to the protection order petition.
"Absolute worst outcome for a stalking case"
Lowe said the victim told police the suspect had contacted her over 100 times in a single day. 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 at a Friday afternoon media briefing.
Yellow police tape and vehicles blocked off portions of Northeast 89th Street with a heavy law enforcement presence in the neighborhood and officers walking in and out of the home Friday afternoon.
A red truck with Oregon license plates was seen being towed from the scene. Lowe said police believe the suspect may have arrived at the scene in it, and that police will continue to work with the State Patrol and the Medical Examiner's Office as the investigation continues.
According to police crime data, there have been 120 violent crimes in Redmond, an Eastside city of about 76,000 people, in the past year.
