BATON ROUGE - The son of a used car dealer accused of arranging his ex-wife’s killing in 2015 took the stand at his father’s murder trial Friday and recounted how he returned home from a night out and noticed the woman was missing.

Hamed Ghassemi said he checked with his mother’s friends for two days about her whereabouts before people started texting him saying they had seen reports that she was found dead.

His father, Hamid Ghassemi, is accused of hiring three men to kill the woman. All three pleaded guilty, and one has died in prison.

The elder Ghassemi had gone through a bitter divorce with his ex-wife and was ordered to pay her over a million dollars. In testimony Friday, questions were raised whether the couple had been legally married in Iran before they moved separately to the United States

Prosecutors said the elder Ghassemi paid the men a total of $10,000 to kidnap Tahereh Ghassemi from her home, torch her car, shoot her and bury her body. Her body was found in a remote area of St. Helena Parish, and investigators said she had been shot. Her car was found burned out on Chalma Avenue.

Hamid Ghassemi, 72, owned used car lots in Baton Rouge and Lafayette.

Hamed Ghassemi, 45, broke down in tears when talking about his mother, whom he lived with in Iran for 18 years before coming to the United States. He also says he was responsible for getting his mother to the U.S..

However, defense attorney Bob Neal questioned the son about a drug arrest, a strained relationship with his father and a crude text he sent to his mother before she died, saying he was going to move out.

“Don’t start with that,” the younger Ghassemi said, drawing admonition from Judge Tarvald Smith, who instructed him to just answer the questions posed.

Hamed Ghassemi, under questioning by Assistant District Attorney Dana Cummings, said he last spoke to his father in 2013, two years before his mother’s death. He acknowledged not being honest with police initially as they investigated his mother’s disappearance.

He told the prosecutor he had been at a night club when his mother disappeared, and under questioning from the defense said his mother had wanted him “to live in a strict Iranian way.”

He also testified that, in 2011, he met one of the men who pleaded guilty in his mother’s death — Daniel Richter — at his father’s car dealership in Baton Rouge. He said that was the only time they met.

Later Friday, prosecutors used motor vehicle records to show that a vehicle tied to the kidnapping and killing had gone through Ghassemi’s dealership.

Also, an investigator narrated surveillance video from a Home Depot store at which his alleged co-conspirators Tyler Ashpaugh and Skyler Williams purchased a utility knife and 18 feet of rope.