Azita Nikooei’s ex-fiancé, Nathan Mowers, was sentenced to 11 years in prison last Wednesday for killing the 29-year-old in 2004. Mowers showed no emotion as Kern County Superior Court Judge Charles R. Brehmer handed down the sentence.
“Mr. Mowers, Ms. Nikooei’s not here today,” Breh-mer said. “Ms. Nikooei’s not here because you made the decision to kill her.”
Brehmer said the Bakersfield woman is survived by a 14-year-old son who will have to go through life without a mother. He told Mowers he will have plenty of time sitting in prison to think about what he’s done.
Deputy District Attorney Melissa Allen said she’s glad for Nikooei’s family’s sake that the case is over. She added that Nikooei’s job as an exotic dancer had nothing to do with her death—something Allen said media outlets had implied.
Mowers, 38, agreed to the stipulated 11-year sentence as part of pleading no contest to voluntary manslaughter in late January. A charge of first-degree murder was dismissed.
Cases in which the victim’s body is missing are typically far more difficult for police and prosecutors to bring to fruition. That was likely the reason the prosecution agreed to the plea bargain.
Nikooei’s family agreed to the plea deal to gain closure and hopefully find her remains, prosecutors said. A search in a desert area a few miles past the San Bernardino County line has only turned up an acrylic fingernail that may not even belong to Nikooei.
Mowers was a target in the investigation after Nikooei’s September 6, 2004, disappearance, but it wasn’t until May 2011 that he was arrested at his home in La Quinta.
Investigators accumulated evidence through numerous interviews, obtaining cell phone records and wiretapping Mowers’ phone.
Mowers mulled over the plea deal for months, finally agreeing to confess to the crime and tell investigators where he dumped Nikooei’s body. He said he strangled Nikooei following an argument and then drove her body to the desert, leaving it unburied.
The closest major thoroughfare to where Mowers left the body was Highway 395, Bakersfield police said. Investigators searched a rocky area of the high desert studded with mine shafts and dirt roads, finding only the fingernail.
Law enforcement had concluded Nikooei was dead long before Mowers confessed. She hadn’t contacted family members, including relatives in Iran, and there had been no activity on her bank accounts and credit cards.
Also, Nikooei had never missed a child exchange appointment with her ex-husband in four and a half years until the day she disappeared, court documents said. Nikooei’s friends told investigators she would never leave her son.
Friends also told police Mowers had physically abused Nikooei, according to court documents. A co-worker reported that Nikooei told her Mowers had once choked her so badly she nearly lost consciousness.
Nikooei’s ex-husband, Bobby Nikooei, attended the sentencing. The Bakersfield Californian reported he left immediately following sentencing and briskly walked down the hallway, declining to comment.