LAGUNA HILLS : Murderer’s Plea to Kill Himself Rejected

A Superior Court judge Wednesday took in stride a murder defendant’s request that he be allowed to kill himself, then sentenced the man to life in prison without parole for killing a Laguna Hills nurse by dousing her with acid and gasoline and then setting her afire.

“I request that I be allowed to die by jumping from this 11th floor,” defendant Hossein Ghaffari told the court.

Judge Theodore E. Millard responded by telling Ghaffari: “I’d rather send you to prison so you can have time to think about the horrible crime you have committed.”

Ghaffari, 36, pleaded guilty May 29 to first-degree murder with special circumstances of torture and lying in wait for the Feb. 2, 1990, death of Manaji Bolouri, 35. She was found burned to death in her car, which was parked near her Laguna Hills home just off Alicia Parkway near Interstate 5.

Two weeks after his guilty plea, a jury rejected his argument that he had been legally insane at the time of the killing. It was the special circumstances in Ghaffari’s guilty plea that required the court to automatically sentence him to life imprisonment without parole.

Ghaffari had told authorities upon learning Bolouri had died: “Good. I wanted to kill her. She bothered me.” He also made repeated statements that he wanted to hurt her.

Prosecutors say Ghaffari had been harassing Bolouri because she had spurned his advances and did not want to get involved in a relationship.

The two had met in West Germany three years earlier. Ghaffari, an Iranian citizen, had entered the United States illegally in January, 1989, to pursue her, but was caught and turned back at the Canadian border. However, he was successful in a second attempt to illegally enter the country. He had been living with a brother in Mission Viejo at the time of Bolouri’s death.

Authorities said Ghaffari had waited for the victim to come out of her apartment and then rammed into her car with his own. He jumped out and doused her with acid and gasoline and then set her car on fire.

Ghaffari told a probation officer repeatedly that he wanted to kill himself, that his original plan had been for the two of them to die together so they could be joined in the hereafter.

But when the probation officer asked Ghaffari why he had doused the victim with acid, Ghaffari answered that he thought other men would lose interest in her if she lost her physical beauty and that he could then prove to her that he loved her for more than her looks.

“Clearly, this is a man who is mentally disturbed,” his attorney, Jack W. Earley, said at the time of Ghaffari’s guilty plea.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Pat Donahue had argued to the jury that Ghaffari was sane and knew the consequences of his actions.

“For someone who loved her so much, he sure spent a lot of time talking about hurting her,” Donahue said. “If he loved her, why did he want her to suffer?”