Tiffany Li is on house arrest on a record bail of $65 million in cash and real estate for plotting to kill Millbrae resident Keith Green. Her current boyfriend Kaveh Bayat and the couple's former trainer and bodyguard Olivier Adella were also charged with the murder.
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TIMELINE: Peninsula murder mystery: Death of Millbrae resident Keith Green
But on Thursday morning, Adella cut a deal with prosecutors that will result in them potentially dropping the murder charge against him in exchange for his truthful testimony against Li and Bayat. Adella entered a no contest plea Thursday to accessory after the fact.
"The elements of the offense are you know that someone has committed a felony and you do something to aid that person either to accomplice the crime, avoid prosecution, avoid being apprehended knowing that that felony has occurred and the people you are helping committed the crime," said San Mateo County Deputy District Attorney Sean Gallagher Thursday.
Adella will remain in jail until he testifies.
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The trial is slated to begin in September. He could serve up to three years or longer depending on when the trial begins.
In an exclusive interview last fall with ABC7 News I-Team reporter Dan Noyes, Adella admitted that he disposed of Green's body, but said he feared for his life and his family's safety if he didn't go along. He says he was also afraid Li and Bayat would try to pin the murder on him.
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"What's going through my mind, well, you're a black man in America, my friend," Adella told the I-Team. "You're screwed. You get rid of the body, you're screwed. Don't get rid of the body, you're screwed."
Both Adella and Bayat have been in jail since their arrest in May 2016, days after Green's body was found in a remote field near Geyserville in Sonoma County. Prosecutors believe Bayat shot Green in the garage of Li's Hillsborough mansion. They say the killing was orchestrated by Li, who had fought with Green over the custody of the couple's two small children.
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Li was released on that unprecedented bail last year, but prosecutors are still concerned that she is a flight risk because of her family's resources. Li comes from a wealthy Chinese family who brought her to the US as a child.
Adella said Bayat and Li had asked him to kill Green for $50,000 but he refused. Now, he says his testimony will help put the couple away. But Li and Bayat's lawyers tell ABC7 News that Adella is a liar and can't be trusted.
Contrary to the prosecution's theory of what happened, Kaveh Bayat's criminal defense attorney Chuck Green told Dan Noyes, "We believe that Adella is the killer, we believe that he fired the shot that killed Keith Green."
Click here for full coverage on the investigation into the death of Millbrae father Keith Green.