Left inset: Ramy Fahim (LinkedIn). Right inset: Griffin Cuomo (Chapman University). Background: Ring camera footage showing Ramy Fahim inside Griffin Cuomo's California apartment building before he stabbed Cuomo to death (KTLA/YouTube).
A California jury has found that an Orange County financial analyst was sane when he ambushed and stabbed his colleague more than 40 times with a "hunting dagger" after complaining that the victim was micromanaging him and giving him assignments he disliked. The analyst tried to claim insanity before he pleaded guilty to murder on the eve of his trial.
Ramy Fahim, 30, admitted to killing Griffin Cuomo, 23, and a witness who lived with him, Jonathan Bahm, also 23, in April 2022 at the pair's apartment in Anaheim. The Orange County District Attorney's Office announced last week that a jury found Fahim sane after he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, which prompted a trial.
According to The Orange County Register, Fahim pleaded guilty to the killings a day before the trial began, so jurors only had to determine whether Fahim was legally sane at the time he committed the murders. The local newspaper reports that prosecutors told the jury Fahim snapped after complaining about being micromanaged by Cuomo and becoming frustrated with the level of assignments he was getting from him while the two of them worked at Pence Wealth Management in Newport Beach.
Cuomo was a marketing and media assistant, while Fahim — an Egypt native — was a research associate, according to his LinkedIn page.
Prosecutors said during Fahim's trial that employees were raising concerns and complaining about bizarre and erratic behavior that Fahim displayed and his poor hygiene at the office. Fahim's mother was a friend of one of the firm's owners and working at Pence allowed him to renew his visa to remain in the United States, the Register reports.
"A building security guard had encountered Fahim on the [victim's] apartment complex's roof at midnight on April 18, 2022, just hours before the murders," the DA's office said last week. "Fahim was seen on the same floor of the victims' apartment the morning of the murders."
According to Anaheim police, cops "responded to reports of an in-progress assault in an apartment in the 2100 block of E. Katella Avenue" around 6:50 a.m. that morning. Officers found Cuomo and Bahm dead in the apartment. Fahim was still inside the victims' apartment when police arrived.
Prosecutors told jurors that Fahim attacked Cuomo as he started to leave his apartment for work. He allegedly planned to kill Cuomo, cut off his head, then bury it somewhere while leaving his body in a dumpster to be hauled off to a landfill. But this alleged plan failed to come to fruition due to Bahm being present and calling police, the Register reports.
Fahim stabbed both men more than 40 times each — over 80 times total — before cops arrived at the scene. Police later found a tarp and shovel in his car, along with evidence showing that Fahim documented how if he got caught he would blame a schizophrenia diagnosis he received in the past.
"The violence carried out in that apartment was not an act of insanity," blasted Orange County DA Todd Spitzer in a statement.
"He carefully calculated how to gain access to his victims' apartment building, waiting for hours on the roof until he had the perfect opportunity to ambush his victim and execute a witness in the hopes of getting away with all of it," Spitzer said. "A mental illness defense should not be used as an attempt to escape accountability by defendants who were very much sane when they engaged in horrific acts of violence and when we have the facts to refute those claims of insanity, we will ensure justice is served."
Fahim pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and special circumstance allegations of lying in wait, multiple murders, and murder to avoid arrest related to the killing of Bahm. The DA's office says he will be sentenced to two consecutive sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole "as a result of the jury's determination Fahim was sane when he committed the special circumstance murders," according to the press release last week.
Fahim is scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday, May 13.
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