Trial for suspected kidnapper in 2015 murder-for-hire plot pushed to next year
BATON ROUGE - The trial for one of four men accused of a 2015 murder-for-hire has been pushed back.
Skyler Williams trial, originally scheduled to begin Monday, has been continued to April 22, 2019.
The men are accused in the death of Tahereh Ghassemi following her divorce from her ex-husband Hamid, who is one of the four charged. The other suspects are Tyler Ashpaugh and Daniel Richter.
Earlier this year, Ashpaugh admitted to his role in the murder-for-hire plot and agreed to testify against his accused co-conspirators in exchange for a lesser charge of manslaughter.
In April of 2015, Taherah was found shot in the head and buried in a remote part of St. Helena Parish about a month after she went missing. Her car was found burned in East Baton Rouge Parish that same month.
At the time of his arrest, Hamid was in the middle of a divorce settlement worth more than $1 million.
Court records showed the two married in Iran before Hamid moved to the United States on a student visa. While in the U.S. he remarried an American while remaining married to his wife in Iran. The records showed Hamid tried to challenge the legitimacy of his marriage to Tahereh, but the court sided with her and ordered him to pay her more than a million dollars and give her two pieces of property.
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At the time of the murder, Hamid owned Import One and Import One Elite on Airline Highway.