Beautiful Virgin Islands

Tuesday, Jun 03, 2025

Tech C.E.O.’s Former Assistant Charged With His Grisly Murder

Tech C.E.O.’s Former Assistant Charged With His Grisly Murder

The police said the former employee, who had been fired for stealing $90,000, stabbed and dismembered Fahim Saleh in his Manhattan apartment.





When a young tech entrepreneur with a history of doing business in Nigeria and Bangladesh was found dismembered this week in his multimillion dollar Manhattan condominium, the case at first seemed to have all the trappings of an international thriller.

Someone in a black suit, a mask and latex gloves had followed the victim, Fahim Saleh, into his apartment while carrying a duffel bag, a security video showed. The person then subdued Mr. Saleh with a Taser, stabbed him to death and returned the next day to dismember him with an electric saw, the police said. One law enforcement official said it “looked like a professional job.”

But instead of leading detectives toward Mr. Saleh’s overseas business projects, the evidence quickly pointed to someone close to home, the police said: his onetime personal assistant.

On Friday, the former assistant, Tyrese Devon Haspil, 21, was arrested and charged with murdering Mr. Saleh, 33. Some investigators theorized that the suspect had tried to make the killing look like a professional assassination to divert attention from himself.

transcript

Tyrese Devon Haspil was charged in the murder of Fahim Saleh, a young tech entrepreneur who was found dismembered in his luxury Manhattan condo.

“Tyrese, why did you do it? Tyrese, why did you do it?” “OK, Tyrese, look this way.” “Tyrese, why did you have to chop him up.” “Did you take any money from him?” “Tyrese, why did you do it?” “Tyrese, do you have anything to say?” “One more Tyrese.”

Tyrese Devon Haspil was charged in the murder of Fahim Saleh, a young tech entrepreneur who was found dismembered in his luxury Manhattan condo.Yuki Iwamura for The New York Times

“Mr. Haspil was Mr. Saleh’s executive assistant and handled his finances and personal matters,” the chief of detectives, Rodney K. Harrison, said at a brief news conference on Friday afternoon. “It is also believed that he owed the victim a significant amount of money.”

According to three officials briefed on the matter, Mr. Saleh had discovered that Mr. Haspil had stolen roughly $90,000 from him. Though Mr. Saleh, who friends said was a generous man, fired Mr. Haspil, he did not report the theft, the officials said. He even offered to arrange a way for his former employee to work off his debt in what amounted to a payment plan.

Mr. Haspil, a Long Island native who had recently attended Hofstra University, was arrested at 8:45 a.m. on Friday in the lobby of a building at 172 Crosby Street in SoHo, where he had been staying in an apartment with a female friend, one official said. New York detectives and federal agents from a U.S. Marshals Service regional fugitive task force took him into custody.

“He tried to run,” said the building’s superintendent, who declined to give his name, explaining that he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the owner. The superintendent added that Mr. Haspil had arrived at the Crosby Street apartment at some point on Wednesday and that he was planning to leave on Monday.

Mr. Haspil, who has no previous criminal record, was formally charged with second-degree murder on Saturday morning in criminal court in Manhattan. Judge Jonathan Svetkey ordered him held without bail.

Mr. Haspil’s lawyers, Sam Roberts and Neville Mitchell, said their client had pleaded not guilty. They were in the early stages of gathering facts in a complex case, they said in a statement.

“We urge the public to keep an open mind,” the lawyers said. “There is much more to this narrative than the accusations, an arrest by the police and a charge by the district attorney.”


Mr. Saleh was discovered dead on Tuesday, when his cousin went to check on him at his $2.25 million condo in a luxury building on East Houston Street on the Lower East Side. The cousin, officials said, was worried after not hearing from him for about a day.

When the cousin got to the apartment, the police said, she discovered a horrifying scene: Mr. Saleh’s head and limbs had been removed, and parts of his body had been placed in plastic bags designed for construction debris. An electric saw was plugged in nearby. (The police had originally said Mr. Saleh’s sister had made the discovery.) 

Investigators have concluded that Mr. Saleh had been killed the day before, according to a fourth official with knowledge of the inquiry.

A video shows the man the police believe to be Mr. Haspil following Mr. Saleh into his building and then into an elevator, where they appear to engage in small talk, the officials said.

The suspect was dressed in a black three-piece suit and wore a black mask and latex gloves, the officials said. He was carrying a duffel bag.

As the two men left the elevator, which opened directly into Mr. Saleh’s seventh-floor unit, the assailant fired a Taser into Mr. Saleh’s back, immobilizing him, at about 1:44 p.m. on Monday, according to a criminal complaint. He then stabbed Mr. Saleh to death, wounding him multiple times in his neck and torso.

The next morning, Mr. Haspil used a credit card to hire a car to go to a Home Depot, on West 23rd Street in Manhattan, and to buy an electric saw and cleaning supplies, the fourth official said. The criminal complaint said he was captured on video by a store camera buying the goods at 9:30 a.m.

Later that day, dressed in a gray hooded sweatshirt, the assailant returned to Mr. Saleh’s apartment to dismember the body and clean up the crime scene.

Security video from inside Mr. Saleh’s elevator showed that the suspect used a portable vacuum cleaner, perhaps in an effort to remove residue that was left behind when the Taser was fired, the officials said.

But while the assailant was cutting up the body, Mr. Saleh’s cousin buzzed the apartment from the building’s lobby. Before she got upstairs, the attacker fled through a back door and down a stairwell, officials said.

Only four years ago, Mr. Haspil graduated from Central High School in Valley Stream, N.Y., where he won an award for website design, according to local news articles. In 2017, he entered Hofstra as a member of its class of 2021.

Detectives believe that he began working for Mr. Saleh when he was 16, and eventually started managing some of his finances as well as taking care of personal matters, like caring for his dog. One official said Mr. Saleh paid him well enough that he was able to settle the debts of several members of his family.

Mr. Haspil had recently lived on Woodruff Avenue in Brooklyn, where Kate Hain, one of his neighbors, said that nothing about him suggested he was capable of homicide.

“He and his roommate seemed to keep to themselves and not cause any issues in the building,” Ms. Hain said. She added that Mr. Haspil had done “nothing unusual” in all the time he lived there.

Mr. Saleh was born in Saudi Arabia to Bangladeshi parents who eventually settled near Poughkeepsie, N.Y., a small city on the Hudson River. In a statement this week, his family called his death an “unfathomable” shock.

After graduating from Bentley University in Waltham, Mass., in 2009, he built an app called PrankDial that allowed users to send prerecorded prank calls. Mr. Saleh has said he eventually built PrankDial into a $10 million business.

Mr. Saleh went on to found Pathao, a motorcycle ride-sharing start-up in Bangladesh. He left that company in 2018 to begin a similar venture in Nigeria, an app known as Gokada. He was also the founding partner in a Manhattan-based venture capital fund, Adventure Capital, that invested in similar transit start-ups in Colombia and Bangladesh.

Shortly after 5 p.m. on Friday, Mr. Haspil was led out of the Seventh Precinct station house on the Lower East Side in handcuffs and a white jumpsuit. He declined to answer questions fired at him by reporters.

Initially, a law enforcement official had described Mr. Saleh’s death as a “hit,” but some investigators now believe that Mr. Haspil may have tried to make the killing look like a professional assassination in an effort to trick detectives into thinking it was linked to Mr. Saleh’s business deals.

Still, one investigator said that Mr. Haspil made “several rookie mistakes” — including buying a Taser online with his own credit card and signing for the package when it arrived in June.

The superintendent at the Crosby Street apartment said the police told him that Mr. Haspil had also used one of Mr. Saleh’s credit cards to buy balloons to celebrate the birthday of the woman he was staying with. On Friday afternoon, the superintendent said, the balloons were still in the apartment.

“The credit card was used to buy balloons, and this and that, because he was with a girl for her birthday,” the superintendent said. “How stupid can you be?”



Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Harvard Urges US to Unfreeze Funds for Public Health Research
Businessman Mauled by Lion at Luxury Namibian Lodge
Researchers Consider New Destinations Beyond the U.S.
53-Year-Old Doctor Claims Biological Age of 23
Trump Struggles to Secure Trade Deals With China and Europe
Russia to Return 6,000 Corpses Under Ukraine Prisoner Swap Deal
Microsoft Lays Off Hundreds More Amid Restructuring
Harvey Weinstein’s Publicist Embraces Notoriety
Macron and Meloni Seek Unity Despite Tensions
Trump Administration Accused of Obstructing Deportation Cases
Newark Mayor Sues Over Arrest at Immigration Facility
Center-Left Candidate Projected to Win South Korean Presidency
Trump’s Tariffs Predicted to Stall Global Economic Growth
South Korea’s President-Elect Expected to Take Softer Line on Trump and North Korea
Trump’s China Strategy Remains a Geopolitical Puzzle
Ukraine Executes Long-Range Drone Strikes on Russian Airbases
Conservative Karol Nawrocki wins Poland’s presidential election
Study Identifies Potential Radicalization Risk Among Over One Million Muslims in Germany
Good news: Annalena Baerbock Elected President of the UN General Assembly
Apple Appeals EU Law Over User Data Sharing Requirements
South Africa: "First Black Bank" Collapses after Being Looted by Owners
Poland will now withdraw from the EU migration pact after pro-Trump nationalist wins Election
"That's Disgusting, Don’t Say It Again": The Trump Joke That Made the President Boil
Trump Cancels NASA Nominee Over Democratic Donations
Paris Saint-Germain's Greatest Triumph Is Football’s Lowest Point
OnlyFans for Sale: From Lockdown Lifeline to Eight-Billion-Dollar Empire
Mayor’s Security Officer Implicated | Shocking New Details Emerge in NYC Kidnapping Case
Hegseth Warns of Potential Chinese Military Action Against Taiwan
OPEC+ Agrees to Increase Oil Output for Third Consecutive Month
Jamie Dimon Warns U.S. Bond Market Faces Pressure from Rising Debt
Turkey Detains Istanbul Officials Amid Anti-Corruption Crackdown
Taylor Swift Gains Ownership of Her First Six Albums
Bangkok Ranked World's Top City for Remote Work in 2025
Satirical Sketch Sparks Political Spouse Feud in South Korea
Indonesia Quarry Collapse Leaves Multiple Dead and Missing
South Korean Election Video Pulled Amid Misogyny Outcry
Asian Economies Shift Away from US Dollar Amid Trade Tensions
Netflix Investigates Allegations of On-Set Mistreatment in K-Drama Production
US Defence Chief Reaffirms Strong Ties with Singapore Amid Regional Tensions
Vietnam Faces Strategic Dilemma Over China's Mekong River Projects
Malaysia's First AI Preacher Sparks Debate on Islamic Principles
White House Press Secretary Criticizes Harvard Funding, Advocates for Vocational Training
France to Implement Nationwide Smoking Ban in Outdoor Spaces Frequented by Children
Meta and Anduril Collaborate on AI-Driven Military Augmented Reality Systems
Russia's Fossil Fuel Revenues Approach €900 Billion Since Ukraine Invasion
U.S. Justice Department Reduces American Bar Association's Role in Judicial Nominations
U.S. Department of Energy Unveils 'Doudna' Supercomputer to Advance AI Research
U.S. SEC Dismisses Lawsuit Against Binance Amid Regulatory Shift
Alcohol Industry Faces Increased Scrutiny Amid Health Concerns
Italy Faces Population Decline Amid Youth Emigration
×