Two Arrested in Targeted Murder of Missing Burnaby Man Found in Mission

Neighbours noticed something was wrong first. On Feb. 2, concerned residents alerted Burnaby RCMP that 45-year-old Masood Masjoody had gone missing, setting off an investigation that would end six weeks later with two people charged with first-degree murder and a body recovered 60 kilometres east in Mission.

Mehdi Ahmadzadeh Razavi, 48, of Maple Ridge, and Arezou Soltani, 45, of North Vancouver, were arrested Friday and each charged with one count of first-degree murder. The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team announced the charges on March 14, one week after Masjoody's body was found in Mission on March 6. Both accused were in custody as of the announcement and expected to appear in court Monday.

IHIT Sgt. Freda Fong, speaking at a news conference at B.C. RCMP headquarters in Surrey, described Masjoody's death as "a targeted incident" and said he and the accused had "ongoing disputes that we're aware of as well as some exchanges on social media." Whether those disputes drove the killing remains an open question. "Whether or not that forms a motive of the homicide, it is still under investigation," Fong said.

The case began as a missing-persons inquiry. Burnaby RCMP determined early on that Masjoody's disappearance was out of character and that criminality was involved, prompting IHIT to assume the investigation. Investigators pieced together a timeline of his movements leading up to his disappearance and found evidence confirming he had been murdered. Court records show that among the lawsuits Masjoody filed in recent years, some named the two people now accused of killing him.

Masjoody was a former PhD student and math instructor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby. The Vancouver Sun described him as an Iranian man critical of the Tehran regime. In the years before his death, he had filed several defamation lawsuits naming academics, legal figures, and journalists, including Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran. The B.C. Court of Appeal declared him a vexatious litigant last year.

IHIT is a multi-agency team comprising officers from the RCMP and several municipal police forces across British Columbia. The investigation remains active as police continue to establish motive.