Fiery Death in Car Called Spurned Lover’s Revenge

Narges Bolouri was murdered a few weeks before her wedding day after a spurned lover had threatened to kill her if ever she married another man, relatives said Saturday.

“It was a very, very tragic way of loving somebody,” said her cousin, Mike Bagheri of Laguna Niguel. “Very insane, of course.”

The 34-year-old, Iranian-born practical nurse was engaged to Dr. Mohammed Gahromi of San Diego. The two families had intended to meet Saturday to discuss wedding plans, said Bolouri’s brother-in-law, Hormoz Massoudi. Instead, stunned family members gathered for her wake.

Bolouri was killed Friday morning about 9 a.m. when she got in her car to go to work. Relatives, police and neighbors said her assailant had been sitting in his car in a parking lot across the street, waiting for her to leave her condominium on Via Lomas.

When she got in her car, he gunned his car out of the parking lot and rammed it headlong into hers, they said.

“One of the (neighborhood) boys said they saw him pouring something on the car,” Bagheri said. Moments later, her car burst into flames. Neighbors and relatives never heard Bolouri scream.

An autopsy conducted Saturday found that the preliminary cause of death was “smoke inhalation and fourth-degree burns over 90% of the body,” according to Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Larry Richey. Coroners will not be able to confirm the identity until they check dental records, Richey said.

Relatives said the attacker was injured in the crash. Immediately afterward, they said, he ran to the front door of her home, leaving a trail of blood on the sidewalk and a bloody handprint on the front gate. He pounded on the door, relatives said, just as Bolouri’s mother, who had heard the crash outside, ran to open it.

“He was shouting in Farsi, ‘I have killed your daughter,’ ” Bagheri said.

About four hours later, Orange County sheriff’s deputies arrested Hossein Ghaffari, 34, on suspicion of murder when they found him trying to hitch a ride at an intersection in Laguna Hills, less than a mile from Bolouri’s home.

Ghaffari, who said he was from Canada, was being held Saturday in the jail ward of Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, Orange County Jail officials said.

Black-clothed relatives sat nearly motionless on black leather chairs on the white marble floor in Bagheri’s living room Saturday. Bolouri’s mother, who had been visiting from Iran and had planned to stay to see her daughter married, wept quietly.

Bagheri, a former lawyer and architecture student, explained that Bolouri’s real name was Narges, but everyone called her “Manijeh.” The nickname, he said, comes from a 600-year-old epic poem about star-crossed lovers called “Bijan and Manijeh.”

Bagheri said his family was finding it especially difficult to understand Bolouri’s death because such murders are so rare in Iran.

“This kind of thing is as old as the history of mankind,” Bagheri said. “You love somebody, and at the same time there is jealousy and hate.

“The love triangle is frequent,” he added. “The killing is not.”

Relatives said they had never met Ghaffari and did not know how long he had been in the area, though neighbors said they had seen his car speeding through the neighborhood many times.

Relatives said Ghaffari had met Bolouri nearly a decade ago in Europe, but she had never talked about the relationship and they had no idea how serious it was.

During the past 18 months, however, Bolouri told several family members that she had received calls from an old boyfriend who had threatened to kill her if she married someone else.

About six months ago, “She told me that ‘This guy’s crazy about me,’ ” Massoudi said. But Bolouri, who had ended an unhappy early marriage, was a beauty who had several suitors, and she told Massoudi she wasn’t ready to settle down.

“She had a bad experience . . . so she wanted to be able to take care of herself,” Massoudi said. “That’s why she was planning to become a doctor.”

Then, Bagheri said, Bolouri met her fiance while studying acupuncture, and they planned to marry in a few weeks, though a date had not been set.

Bolouri’s mother, who speaks only Farsi, said that the night before the murder, her daughter had received a phone call.

“She said she got very upset on the phone, and she hung up,” Bagheri said. “And in the morning, before she left for work, she said she didn’t sleep at all last night.”

Police arrested Ghaffari after residents called to report a bleeding man running down Alicia Parkway.

Police said Friday they had found a “strong odor” of a flammable substance inside Bolouri’s car, and that neither car had its gas tank ruptured before the fire broke out.

But relatives believe she died instantly in the crash because the driver’s side of the car was demolished and the impact was strong enough to thrust the car up onto the sidewalk.

On Saturday afternoon, Bolouri’s nephew, Ramin Bolouri, 24, sat on the curb outside Bagheri’s home, sobbing. Massoudi explained that when the attacker came to the door, the young man had chased and caught him. Only then did the man, who does not speak English, hear the cries for help by Narges Bolouri’s mother. He let the attacker go, and ran back to try to douse the fire, first with a bucket, then with a garden hose.

“He is thinking if he hadn’t gone after the guy, he would have been able to save her,” Massoudi said. “But it’s not true. The accident was so bad she probably died right away.”

Bolouri had been saving money to try to put her nephew through college, Massoudi said.

“She liked to talk, to dance, to laugh,” Bagheri said. “She was a very sociable person. She was a very warm person.”

The family is making plans for a funeral a week from today in Los Angeles. Bolouri’s remains will be returned to Iran, Bagheri said.