Heiress to pay estranged daughters $10M in dad's wrongful death lawsuit
A wealthy California heiress, once accused of killing her daughters' father, has agreed to pay them $10 million (£7.85m) following a wrongful death lawsuit.
Tiffany Li, 38, known as the 'Hillsborough heiress', was acquitted in a high-profile murder trial in 2019 over the death of her ex-boyfriend Keith Green. Li, who comes from a family worth over $100 million (£78.45m) in China, earned her nickname after posting an astonishing $35 million bail.
Despite being found not guilty of murder, she faced a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of her two daughters, aged nine and 11. This week, a settlement was filed that would see Li paying her estranged daughters $10 million (£7.85m). The girls will split the money equally when they turn 18.
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It took two weeks for Keith's decomposed body to be found (Facebook)Li made headlines during her trial for Keith's murder five years ago, where she was controversially acquitted. She told investigators she had ended their relationship in October 2015.
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Following their split, Li quickly moved Keith out of her grand $7.5 million (£5.9m) Hillsborough mansion. Within a month, she had moved on with Keith's alleged marijuana dealer, Kaveh Bayat, who soon moved into the luxury property with Li and her children.
Li's relationship with Bayat reportedly caused a rift between her and her children. In one video shown in court, Bayat was heard referring to one of Li's children as "my daughter".
A recording obtained by ABC7 revealed an argument involving Li, Bayat, Keith, and his friend Jasmine. During the heated exchange, Keith threatened: "I'm going to kill Kav because he wasn't listening."
By April 2016, things seemed to have settled down. However, Keith was financially struggling after his split from Li.
Li became known as the 'Hillsborough heiress' due to the multimillion-dollar property she owned in California (AP)On April 25, he told Li he was moving into a rented property in Ohio owned by his grandma, as he was finding it hard to make ends meet while finishing culinary school. A recording of his phone call to Li heard Keith saying: "I mean, it sucks, I don't want to leave the kids, but I just - I don't know what to do. I've been so stressed trying to figure this out. It's been really, really bad."
Li offered to bring their daughters to Ohio during the holidays if he couldn't afford flights, but the tension from their breakup was still evident. Li said on the call: "I'm saying to you, we both made mistakes and that you know, let's just move on. There's nothing I can say right now."
"It's very easy for you to sit here and say whatever you want to say because your life has not changed at all," responded Keith. "The only thing that's different is that you have a new man that you sleep next to at night. That's it."
Li snapped back: "I'm very happy, aren't you happy that I'm happy? I thought you care about me. You would think that I'm happy." But Keith just hung up the phone.
Just three days later, Keith was nowhere to be found and a huge manhunt was launched. During the three-week search, police interviewed Li and Bayat.
While Keith was still missing, Li left a message on his phone saying: "I guess you're missing or something? Like I - can you give me a call back, like, you know, I don't know if it's... give me a call back when you hear this, 'kay? Bye."
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Kaveh Bayat, the alleged marijuana dealer of Green who moved into Li's mansion shortly after their split in October 2015, was cleared after a jury was deadlocked over his murder charges (AP)
Tiffany Li was acquitted of the murder of her ex-boyfriend, Keith Green (San Mateo County Sheriff's Office)When the police asked Li questions, she said that Keith wanted $20 million (£15.7m) for each of their daughters after they broke up. She told them: "He asked my mom, for each kid, and my mom said, 'You're ridiculous'."
The police were not sure if they could believe her. They asked her: "Would you harm Keith? Would you have anybody else harm Keith?" Li said she had nothing to do with Keith going missing.
She told the cops that she met Keith at a pancake place the night he disappeared to talk about their girls and to give him a car seat for the kids. She said the last time she saw Keith was in the car park.
But officers seemed to catch her in a lie when they showed phone records that had both their phones moving together, back to her huge house in Hillsborough. One officer said to her that Keith must have been with her "because it's following your same time", talking about the phone data.
But Li said Keith was never in the car with her. In court, the prosecutors tried but failed to prove that Li took Keith to the house they used to live in and that Bayat shot him dead.
A huge twist came in 2017, before Li's trial, when the couple's trainer and sometimes bodyguard Olivier Adella admitted a different story. He said to ABC7 that on the night of the murder, the couple came to his flat out of the blue, with Keith's body in the car.
Li raised suspicions among law enforcement during her questioning (ABC 7 News)"So, they pull up with the car, Kaveh was in the back seat, Tiffany was in the front seat and Keith Green was in the front seat," he remembered. "But Keith Green was dead."
Olivier said Bayat made him get rid of the body by showing him a black gun as a threat. Looking back at that night, he thought: "What's going through my mind? Well, you're a Black man in America, my friend, you're screwed.
"You get rid of the body, you're screwed. You don't get rid of the body, you're screwed."
He said he dumped Keith's body down a hill off Highway 101. It took the police nearly two weeks to find Keith's body, which was already starting to rot by the time he was discovered.
Cops were taken aback by Li's reaction when she learned about her former boyfriend's death, as she simply responded with "okay" and "are you sure it's him?" Her lawyer suggested that the tone of her voice signified her shock at discovering that her girls' dad had been murdered.
After ten days, Li, Bayat, and Olivier were charged in relation to Keith's demise. Li was cleared of charges while there was a deadlock in Bayat's case. Conversely, Olivier pleaded guilty to being an accessory in the offence after the fact.
Olivier Adella, the couple's trainer and occasional bodyguard, admitted to disposing of Green's body and pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact (AP)The unresolved nature of Keith's murder angered local folks. In a statement following the trial, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe lamented: "As of today, there will be nobody held accountable for Keith Green's murder. The evidence ultimately was not enough."
During the court hearings, Li's lawyers argued that Olivier was the one who committed the murder in a botched kidnapping plot. His lawyers argue that his narrative has remained consistent and he is now free after serving his prison sentence.
Two years after Keith's tragic end, in 2018, a wrongful death lawsuit was launched against Li on behalf of her daughters and Keith's mum, Colleen Cudd. Reports claim that this got settled in 2022, and Ms Cudd's lawyer, Duffy Magilligan confirmed this week that they've filed the settlement for approval at the San Mateo Superior Court.
He mentioned that the large sums will give the girls financial freedom from their mum's family, allowing them to live their own lives. He said: "If they want answers about what kind of guy their dad was, this gives them the ability to reach out to Keith's mum and to his family and learn what a great father he was. Obviously, they'd rather have their father that loved them but this is what we can do in the civil justice system, is give them financial independence."
The settlement will likely "ensure that the girls had something for themselves when they turned 18 and that they weren't controlled by their mother," Ms Cudd added. In addition to the two $5 million (£3.92m) payments she is due to make to her daughters, Li will also pay $50,000 (£39,000) to Keith's estate and $100,000 (£78,450) to Ms Cudd.
* An AI tool was used to add an extra layer to the editing process for this story. You can report any errors to [email protected]
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