A California jury hearing the gruesome details this week of a double slaying in April 2022 must decide whether the defendant — who worked for an LPL-affiliated advisory firm — was insane when he fatally a stabbed a co-worker and the co-worker's roommate or had plotted murder.

Ramy Hany Mounir Fahim, 30, of Irvine, recently pleaded guilty to murdering co-worker Griffin Cuomo, 23, and Cuomo's roommate, Jonathan Bahm, 23, both Chapman University alumni, ambushing them in their Anaheim apartment, the Orange County Register noted in a story Tuesday.

The trial has now entered the sanity phase, in which the jury must decide whether Fahim was sane when he killed the men, according to the newspaper, which reported that if he is found to have been insane, he could be sent to a state hospital for treatment.

Fahim met Cuomo, a marketing assistant, at Pence Wealth Management, where Cuomo gave assignments to him, according to the Register.
Prosecution and defense attorneys agreed that the co-workers' work relationship soured, with Fahim apparently displeased with the assignments and complaining he was being micromanaged, the publication reported.

Meanwhile, Cuomo and other employees, unhappy with Fahim's erratic behavior and personal hygiene, tried to no avail to persuade the firm to fire him, according to the Register. The firm had hired Fahim in 2021 as a favor to his mother, at the time a high-ranking Egyptian government official, as a way to renew his visa, the Register reported, citing court filings.

Fahim admitted the fatal stabbings to police, blaming his actions on schizophrenia and voices that had directed him to kill the men, according to the Register. The newspaper's trial coverage, while not always attributing the information to specific attorneys, witnesses or records, also reports that:

  • Fahim, around the time he was in college, was involuntarily hospitalized, given a schizophrenia diagnosis and started taking anti-psychotic medication.
  • Fahim entered Cuomo and Bahm's apartment complex the night before the killings, stayed there over 10 hours — attracting attention from other residents and a security guard — and went to their floor, waiting outside their apartment early the next day.
  • Fahim slit Cuomo's throat as soon as he left the apartment for work, according to lawyers from both sides.
  • Bahm locked himself in the bathroom and called 911 but Fahim burst in and killed him.
  • Writings found on Fahim's computer "lead to madness," his lawyer told jurors.
  • Fahim had also told his mother in a message that he was going to kill Cuomo, his lawyer told the jury.
  • A prosecutor acknowledged Fahim's schizophrenia but told jurors that 10 days before the fatal stabbings, he wrote that he would blame it on that condition if caught.
  • Fahim's writings showed an obsession with murder and death, and he had planned to decapitate Cuomo, according to the prosecutor.
  • The defendant had scouted the apartment complex several times and driven to places where he might have buried his co-worker's head.
  • The roommate's presence and witnessing the attack "blew up" Fahim's plans, the prosecutor told jurors.

The sanity phase was to continue Wednesday.Photo of Ramy Fahim courtesy of the Anaheim Police Department

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