Johar: AWOL. Photo courtesy Irvine P.D.

Andrea Nelson told police everything she knew about corrupt cops, drugs, sex and her ex-boyfriend Sammy Johar—whose family owned Mr. J’s, the Santa Ana strip club that closed its doors last month. On Jan. 27, 2003, just two days after Tustin police released her name in connection with the firing of several officers for their ties to Johar, the 20-year-old police informant turned up dead.

Homayan Bakhtar, the man who brought Nelson to the hospital unconscious and not breathing from an apparent drug overdose, told Newport Beach police he had nothing to do with the Mr. J’s scandal—didn’t know Johar and wasn’t a regular customer of the club. But former employees of Mr. J’s—none of whom has been interviewed by police or prosecutors—say Bakhtar was a regular club patron and that he was good friends with Johar.

Evidence that Bakhtar may have lied about his relationship with Johar is crucial to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed against Bakhtar by Nelson’s mother, Linda Cator. She claims Bakhtar murdered her daughter for informing against Johar, who is now a fugitive wanted on drug charges.

Her suspicions began just hours after Bakhtar brought Nelson to Hoag Hospital, where he told officials Nelson had just passed out in her car. Newport Beach police found GHB, a popular date-rape drug, in his house and charged him with drug possession. (Bakhtar told the Weekly he’s innocent of any wrongdoing.)

In ruling Nelson’s death accidental, prosecutors said they uncovered no physical evidence she was murdered (see “A Perfect Crime?” Dec. 16). Prosecutors also said they never found any motive to explain why Bakhtar would want to murder Nelson. David Brent, chief of the DA’s homicide unit, said his agency never found any connection between Bakhtar and Nelson’s ex-boyfriend, Johar.

“Bakhtar said he did not know Sam Johar, nor did he go to ‘Mr. J’s’ nightclub regularly,” a Newport Beach police report states.

Three former employees of Mr. J’s who spoke with the Weekly—none of them interviewed by police—directly contradict Bakhtar’s statements.

“He used to come in on a regular basis, almost every day, pretty much,” said an ex-Mr. J’s bouncer who requested anonymity. “He was a sketchy-looking guy, really dirt-baggy, really sweaty . . . He was in there every day religiously.”

Another ex-Mr. J’s employee who recognized Bakhtar is Jeff Underwood, who now works at California Girls, another Santa Ana strip club. Underwood said he didn’t know Bakhtar by name but recognized him as a Mr. J’s regular when his photo appeared in the Weekly.

“He was just another face in the crowd to me,” Underwood said. “I recognized his face, but there was nothing special about him.”

Yet another former Mr. J’s employee who recognized Bakhtar is Carlo Bonanni, who had worked as a doorman at Mr. J’s from its opening in 1988. Informed that Bakhtar had told police he didn’t know Johar, Bonanni insisted that was untrue. “That’s a false statement,” he said. “He did know Johar.”

Bonanni said Bakhtar was not only a regular customer but a personal friend of both Johar and Johar’s older brother, who was also named Sammy. (Among Mr. J’s employees, the elder Johar brother was known as “Older Sammy” or “Big Sammy,” while Johar was known as “Little Sammy.”)

“[Bakhtar] hung out at Mr. J’s all the time,” Bonanni said. “He’d usually ask for Older Sammy. To me, he was like another one of their relatives going in the club . . . I’d just say, ‘Go right ahead; have a nice time.’ Or he’d shake my hand. Conversation was very short. . . . I knew him by name, Bakhtar . . . but we just went by facial [recognition]. Once you checked an ID like five times, you wouldn’t check it anymore.”

According to Bonanni, Bakhtar would typically come into the club on weeknights when it wasn’t busy and often would be greeted at the door by one of the Johar brothers.

But Bonanni said Bakhtar didn’t just hang out at Mr. J’s. He also partied at the Johar brothers’ homes in Irvine. The brothers lived across the street from each other in an exclusive gated community and held parties that frequently drew the attention of Irvine police, who made numerous arrests at the younger Johar’s house. Bonanni said he worked security for the older Johar brother at those parties.

“Older Sammy and Little Sammy lived right across the street,” Bonanni said. “Sometimes Bakhtar would party with Older Sammy and then come on over [to Little Sammy’s house] . . . They were having parties upstairs, drugs going around, girls doing a little striptease . . . that’s the things that were going on at Little Sammy’s house.”

When Big Sammy died of cancer in late 2001, Bonanni attended the funeral. Given the friendship he had witnessed between Bakhtar and the Johar brothers, he said, he wasn’t surprised to see Bakhtar there too. “He was with the family,” Bonanni recalled. In keeping with Muslim convention—the Johar family came from Syria—“all the men stayed up here in the front and all the females stayed in the back.”

Nelson’s mother has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Bakhtar and has launched a website claiming he murdered her daughter, www.andrearemembered.com. A sworn declaration by an investigator working for her attorney cites interviews with several unnamed former Mr. J’s employees. “Mr. Bakhtar had a close personal relationship with Mr. Johar and the Johar family and [he] therefore lied to the police during the initial investigation into the death of Andrea Nelson,” it states.

Matt Murphy, the deputy DA who declined to prosecute Bakhtar for homicide, said evidence that Bakhtar lied to police about his relationship to Nelson’s ex-boyfriend wouldn’t change his mind about her death.

“If I had to prove Bakhtar was a liar, I could do that in a New York minute,” Murphy said. “But that doesn’t prove a homicide case.”

But some lies are more important than others, and if Homayan Bakhtar lied to police, it’s possible he did so to mask a significant fact: the man who showed up at a hospital with Andrea Nelson’s corpse was closely involved with the very scandal she revealed to police.

nschou@ocweekly.com

Contact us about this article.