Ahang Kelk stood toward the back of her addiction treatment center in Woodland Hills, where photos of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe adorned the walls and a glass chandelier hung over the grieving crowd.
She wore all black. It was September, and she was hosting a memorial for her ex-husband, Hamid Mirshojae, a doctor who had been killed just outside in the parking lot a week earlier in an execution-style hit.
Two of her children stood stoically beside her at the service, and Kelk wept as she hugged family and friends.
But in a twist, police announced the arrest on Thursday of Kelk and two others — Sarallah Jawed, 26, and Shawn Randolph, 46 — in connection with the killing of her former spouse. They all face murder charges.
Ahang Kelk held a memorial for her ex-husband, Hamid Mirshojae, on Sept. 1 at a facility near where he was killed.
(Noah Goldberg / Los Angeles Times)
Just two days before, Los Angeles police had arrested two others, Ashley Rose Sweeting and Evan Hardman, in connection with the killing.
Police have not revealed an suspected motive for the killing or detailed their case except to accuse the five of conspiring to kill Mirshojae. It is also unclear what connection Kelk had to the four other suspects.
Soon after her ex-husband’s killing, suspicion focused on their years of conflict, which are detailed in court filings.
“It’s all lies,” Kelk said in an interview in August about those suspicions. Though she and her husband were tied up in legal battles, she insisted she was not responsible for his death. She said she cared about him still.
“These are civil matters and have nothing to do with his personality or who he is,” she said. “He’s a kind man. He had started a new life and was very happy.”
As for the killer, Kelk wished that individual nothing but pain.
“I hope he suffers for the rest of the moments he breathes. I hope his kids suffer the way my kids are suffering now. I hope he sees his loved ones suffering the way we are suffering now,” she said.
“I’m speechless. It’s horrible. Words cannot explain what has happened,” she told The Times. “Hamid has always been a helpful and amazing person toward everybody. He never harmed anybody in any way or any shape. He’s a good doctor and very good father. He was a good husband.”
Underlying the solemn scene at the memorial was tension. For the last 15 years, a fierce legal battle between Kelk and her ex-husband had played out in court, where each had accused the other of threatening murder.
The Mirshojaes’ finances appeared in court records to fluctuate wildly — at one moment, they seemed to be high-flying Valley residents, driving an Aston Martin and a Mercedes-Benz and sending their children to expensive private schools; at another, they were accused of failing to pay legal bills and claimed they had no money.
The legal claims Mirshojae and Kelk faced revealed complicated financial situations as well as accusations of violence and fraud.
Although the couple divorced in 2009, litigation related to their marital dissolution continued on and off through 2024. It includes weighty allegations from both sides. Both Mirshojae and Kelk at different times claimed to be in fear for their life. The two battled over real estate and child support, and in February, Mirshojae sued his former wife, alleging she fraudulently transferred her ownership stakes in certain properties in order to evade paying him hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlement funds and attorney fees.
The bad blood appeared to begin in the late 2000s. Although Mirshojae said his wife had been a hard worker, a good partner and a “family person” for much of their marriage, things changed around 2008, he testified.
“She just snapped. You know, maybe too much pressure. Maybe stress. Her mindset totally changed,” Mirshojae testified in 2018. “You know, she was just not … a normal wife or mom. … She became just deceitful and dishonest.”
Soon after, the pair got divorced.
In 2009, Mirshojae requested a restraining order against Kelk. He said she had struck him repeatedly with both fists in their home, then followed him to his medical office and blocked the exit, according to court records.
“If I had a knife I would stab you to death,” he claimed she said.
“I am fearful for my life,” the doctor wrote in the application for the restraining order, which was granted.
That was the first of three allegations of threats of violence between the pair.
In 2016, as part of the former couple’s protracted legal fight over their divorce, Kelk claimed that Mirshojae had threatened to kill her while holding a bloody hunting knife. He later threatened to kill her with a knife and a gun and also hunt down and kill her new partner, Allen Yadegar, she claimed in court papers.
In December of that year, she said, Mirshojae came to the home where she lived with their children and told her that a blind shaman had appeared to him deep in the woods of Wyoming while he was hunting and told Mirshojae to build a castle, create moats, build an army and remove Kelk from his life, she said in her court filing.
She alleged he threatened to kill her with a knife and threatened to shoot her.
“He threatened to kill me, ‘split me open to make me squeal like a pig,’ while brandishing a large bloody hunting knife. He pushed me then grabbed my arm and hand, bruising me badly,” wrote Kelk in a filing as part of her request for a restraining order.
Kelk provided no evidence for her claims.
The temporary restraining order was granted.
A portrait of Hamid Mirshojae was displayed at his memorial in Woodland Hills.
(Noah Goldberg / Los Angeles Times)
Days later, Mirshojae made his own allegation. Kelk and Yadegar came to his clinic on Dec. 14, 2016, he wrote in court papers as part of the divorce.
“She physically assaulted me while she was there,” Mirshojae wrote. “In addition, her fiance told me he had a weapon and that he was going to kill me.”
Yadegar could not be reached for comment. He was never charged with any crimes related to the allegation.
Mirshojae said he believed his wife was suffering from mental illness.
“She needs to be evaluated. She needs to be helped,” he said in the deposition.
It was not the only time for Kelk that a relationship had progressed to allegations of violence and a lawsuit.
After her divorce from Mirshojae, Kelk began to date a man named Taimoor Bidari, who had been a patient of Mirshojae. Kelk and Bidari entered a partnership to purchase a condo in Malibu, but when they bought it, Bidari claimed in court documents, Kelk put the apartment in her own name. She responded in court papers that the $630,000 Bidari paid her was not for the apartment but for jewelry.
But in late 2014, after a judge found that Kelk filed “fabricated and unauthentic” evidence in support of her claim, she was ordered to pay Bidari more than $1.7 million.
Months after the judgment, Kelk claimed to L.A. County sheriff’s deputies that two men had tried to kill her in the apartment in Malibu. She said the attackers were Joseph Mikhail and Reza Bidari, Taimoor’s son.
Kelk claimed in a statement to deputies that the two men followed her into her house and that Reza Bidari tried to strangle her with the laces of two shoes tied together. When her cousin, Justin Langdon, intervened, Mikhail slashed him with a knife, according to Kelk’s statement.
But the case fell apart after a lengthy investigation by a Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department detective.
“I didn’t do anything to her,” Mikhail told The Times in an interview.
“None of that ever happened,” said Reza Bidari.
Taimoor Bidari could not be reached for comment.
Mikhail and Reza Bidari were arrested shortly after the alleged attack, but the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office declined to prosecute the case in March 2017, saying the crime scene appeared staged. Both Bidari and Mikhail had alibis and proof that they were not at the apartment when the attacks occurred, prosecutors wrote. Phone records and cellphone data showed they were elsewhere. Even Mirshojae told detectives he believed his ex-wife’s story was “made up,” and that she “was simply angry about losing the Malibu condominium,” according to the district attorney’s report.
“I’ve never seen something like this,” said Phillip Stirling, the deputy district attorney who was on the case, in an interview. “I’ve never personally dealt with a case in which someone faked or made up a … home invasion assault with a deadly weapon. They’re rarely faked.”
But Stirling said Kelk’s details did not add up.
“We didn’t believe her,” he said.
Meanwhile, the financial disagreement between Kelk and Mirshojae continued into this year.
After Kelk requested child support and fees for litigation, Mirshojae’s attorney claimed that she had a net worth of $41 million despite her claims in court papers of being destitute. That case is still open.