On Tuesday night, police arrived to an Overland house to find 65-year-old Hossein Cyrus Rastegar dead.
His body was bound with vacuum cord and rope, and his feet and hands were tied behind his back, says St. Louis County Circuit Attorney spokesman Christopher King. Rastegar also had “gashes to his head."
Yesterday, David Todd Smith, 47, was charged second degree murder, as well as robbery and stealing.
On March 11, Rastegar had reported a large amount of cash stolen from his house. Smith was a suspect.
"Law-enforcement believes it was [Smith] but just can’t prove it," King tells us, about the burglary.
On March 29, Rastegar's daughter requested that police conduct a wellness check on her father, from whom she had not heard in two days.
The official cause of death is listed as a heart attack.
After the discovery of Rastegar’s body, the Major Case Squad tracked Smith to the nearby Super 8 Motel off St. Charles Rock Road in Breckenridge Hills.
There, Smith was apprehended. Police discovered $13,000 in Smith's room, as well as clothes that matched those worn by an individual seen outside Rastegar's home on the morning of his death.
A source requesting anonymity says Smith had been at the motel about two weeks prior to the killing and rode around the area on his bicycle. He said "20 or 30" police participated in the arrest.
Rastegar's Overland home sits on more than two and a half acres, recessed from Midland Avenue and buffered by trees from neighboring houses.
Today, it’s surrounded by yellow crime tape. A neighbor told us she didn't know Rastegar but that he was friendly, quick to wave hello, and always outside working in his yard.
David Todd Smith's sister Angela Becker says that Smith was a methamphetamine user who had been in prison for stealing.
"In his younger years he was in and out of prison for a couple of different things," she says. "He just never did straighten his life out."
After being released from prison his life seemed back on track. But when Smith's mother died four years ago he began using meth again.
Becker says her brother lived an itinerant existence. "He went from place to place. He'd drop in on my stepdad and take a shower but he wouldn't stay," she says.
Smith's stepfather, a retired asphalt worker who didn't want his name printed, lives in Breckenridge Hills, not far from the Super 8.
"I don't deal with him. I don't get along with him," he says. "He's threatened me before."
Smith's stepfather says that Smith sometimes tried staying at his house without paying rent.
Becker says Smith stayed in hotels when he could.
King says that the only connection between Smith and Rastegar was that Smith "was known to frequent the area" near Rastegar's home. "He was homeless but would spend time at a house in the victim's neighborhood," King says.
Both Becker and Smith's stepfather say they didn't know of Cyrus Rastegar until they heard the murder accusation.
"I wish I could reach out to his family," Becker says. "I really do. I would if I could."
