“He had no regard for my daughter’s life,” she said.
Isis Rimson
Assistant Macomb Prosecutor Carmen Defranco told the jury in closing arguments Friday morning Bahri, who was involved in drug dealing with Moore, killed for greed.
“This man’s greed is avarice, and his disgusting desire to have a temporary boost in status because of some money is the reason these three people are dead,” Defranco said. “His need to have flashy watches and prostitutes is why that little boy didn’t get to live to see his first tooth come out the next morning. That is why Isis Moore is not going to see her daughter … grow up and that is why Tukoyo Moore will not see any of his children grow up.”
Tukoyo Moore and his son Tai’raz.
Bahri befriended Moore while both were in prison. They had become close enough that four days before the killings, Moore and his son visited Bahri at his home, where he lived with his parents, and they had pizza; Tai’Raz is seen in a video playing in the front yard.
“He (Tai’Raz) called that man uncle Nick,” Defranco said.
The two men are seen in security video outside of Bahri’s home two days before the killing exchanging a bag immediately after Moore returned from a one-day round trip to West Virginia, where he went for a drug transaction, Defranco said.
“They’re in this together,” Defranco said. “Whatever agreement they had wasn’t enough. It didn’t get him an expensive watch quick enough. So he takes matters into his own hands. … He knows Tukoyo Moore has money because he just returned from West Virginia. Maybe he got some of it. He wants a bigger slice.”
Bahri put the gun-carrying Moore in a vulnerable position, he said.
“Tukoyo Moore is a big dude, much bigger than the 5 foot 5 or 5 foot Nick Bahri,” he said. “So he has to ambush him because he has no choice.”
Bahri’ shot Moore shortly before 8 p.m. Sept. 30 as he entered the passenger side front door and Moore was seated in the driver’s seat of Moore’s rented Kia Sorrento, after Moore had parked in the driveway, exited and returned to the vehicle. The incident was captured on video from the home.
Assistant Macomb County Prosecutor Carmen Defranco talks to a jury during closing arguments Friday at the Nicholas Bahri triple-murder trial in Macomb County Circuit Court.
MACOMB DAILY PHOTO/JAMESON COOK
The Hertz rental car was equipped with a GPS, so authorities afterward were able to track Bahri to Moore’s Otis Avenue home, where he arrived with Moore’s body moved to the center console.
Bahri did not expect Rimson and Tai’Raz to be home because they were supposed to be at a birthday party, but Rimson had dropped off her daughter to the party and went home with Tai’Raz, he said.
Bahri used Moore’s keys to enter the home and surprise Rimson and Tai’Raz, Defranco said. He tortured and killed Rimson and Tai-Raz in the basement. Evidence showed Bahri shot each of them once in the face and multiple times in the arms as, according to Defranco, Bahri was trying to get them to reveal where cash was located. Rimson also was shot in the leg as she laid on the ground and held up her leg in a defensive position, he said.
He said at one point, Rimson was shot in her arm as she grabbed Bahri, indicated by gunpowder found on her arm.
Police believe Bahri, who ransacked the home, found some cash but did not find $40,000 and a Rolex watch in a safe, and $8,000 in cash hidden in ceiling rafters.
After the slayings, Bahri drove to a gas station at Eight Mile Road and Woodward Avenue, where he wore baggy clothes and a University of Michigan knit hat, telling the clerk he was “a man on a mission.”
Sorrento drove to several areas in the western suburbs, west side of Detroit, near the Clinton River Spillway in Macomb County and finally to Hyde Park on Detroit’s near east side where he set the car on fire and walked to Greektown.
Video shows him walking on Monroe Street in Detroit and tossing the hat into a trash can and finding a taxi cab that took him to his home, where arrived at 3:47 a.m. Oct. 1.
The burning Sorrento and Moore’s body were discovered between 2-3 a.m., and police found the bodies of Rimson and Tai’Raz about 10 a.m.
Bahri was arrested two weeks later.
Defranco referred to Bahri as living with his “mommy” as his mother testified at the trial that she paid most of her son’s bills. She paid for the temporary phone he purchased at a Kroger store on Orchard Lake Road and for his hotel room in Birmingham.
No one from or connected to Bahri’s family attended the trial other than his ex-girlfriend and mother of his child, who supported family members of the victims.
About a dozen people from the victim’s families and extended families attended the closing arguments.
Assistant Macomb County prosecutors Carmen Defranco and Dana Chiamp, who served as “second chair”at the Nicholas Bahri triple-murder trial, discuss the case during a break in the trial in Macomb County Circuit Court in Mount Clemens.
MACOMB DAILY PHOTO/JAMESON COOK
