According to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, 66-year-old Gordon Abas Goodarzi now stands accused of murdering his estranged wife, 58-year-old Aryan Papoli. Her body was discovered partway down a steep embankment in San Bernardino County shortly before midday in November, after someone reported a person down the slope.1
From Missing Person to Unidentified Body
When deputies and emergency medical personnel reached Papoli, she was already dead. An autopsy later found that she had died from “injuries consistent with a fall,” language that initially supported the idea of an accidental death, according to Law&Crime’s summary of the case.
For nearly two weeks after the discovery, authorities did not know who she was. The sheriff’s department classified her as a Jane Doe while investigators worked to match her fingerprints and other identifiers. During that same period, in Newport Beach, about 75 miles away, someone reported Papoli missing. That missing persons report was logged several days after her body had already been found in the embankment area, according to Law&Crime’s reporting on statements from investigators.
The two threads, an unidentified body in San Bernardino County and a missing person in coastal Orange County, eventually converged. After about two weeks, authorities identified the woman in the embankment as Papoli. Only then did detectives begin to examine whether the initial assumption of an accident fully fit the facts they were uncovering.
A Persistent Investigation and a Shift to Homicide
Once Papoli was identified, the case was assigned to detectives for what the sheriff’s department described as an “extensive and persistent investigation.” According to Law&Crime, that investigative work led detectives to focus on Goodarzi, who lived in Rolling Hills, an affluent community in Los Angeles County.
At some point during that process, the county medical examiner changed the classification of Papoli’s death. While her physical injuries still matched a fall, investigators now believed those injuries had been inflicted in a criminal context. The medical examiner determined that the manner of death was homicide, according to the sheriff’s department account summarized by Law&Crime.
The difference between cause and manner is significant in death investigations. The cause describes how the body was fatally injured, such as a fall. The manner describes how that cause came about, such as accident, suicide, natural, or homicide. A fall can be accidental, but it can also be intentionally caused by another person. In this case, authorities now say the fall that killed Papoli is suspected to be the result of a crime.
San Bernardino County describes its homicide work as a collaboration between patrol deputies, specialized detectives, and medical examiners. The sheriff’s department notes that its Specialized Investigations Division handles suspicious deaths and homicides across the county, coordinating scene work, evidence collection, and follow-up interviews. That structure appears to have shaped the progression of Papoli’s case from an apparent accident to an alleged killing.
The Arrest and What Authorities Have Not Said
After months of work, detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Goodarzi. According to Law&Crime, deputies arrested him at his home in Rolling Hills on a Friday and booked him into the San Bernardino Central Detention Center. He is being held without bond, a status that typically signals that authorities view a defendant as either a flight risk, a danger to the community, or both, although no judge’s order has been made public in the materials summarised by Law&Crime.
Gordon Abas Goodarzi, 66, has been arrested on suspicion of murder causing the death of his wife, Aryan Papoli, 58, in San Bernardino County, California.
A deceased woman was found two months ago, on Nov. 18, 2025, approximately 75 feet down a steep embankment. It took about two… pic.twitter.com/1UAN9H2c8Q
— Eva Knott (@EvaKnott) January 25, 2026
Goodarzi “stands accused of murder” in Papoli’s death, Law&Crime reported, citing the sheriff’s department. That phrasing indicates that, at a minimum, he was arrested on suspicion of murder. Whether prosecutors have filed formal charges, and if so, on what exact counts, was not detailed in the article. Court records were not referenced, and no plea information appeared in the available reporting.
Key details also remain undisclosed. Investigators have not publicly described what evidence led them to focus on Goodarzi. The sheriff’s department has not said whether there were any witnesses near the embankment, nor whether cell phone records, vehicle data, or surveillance footage played a role in the case. Law&Crime reported that authorities have not released a possible motive or explained the events they believe preceded Papoli’s fatal fall.
Those absences are notable but not unusual in an active homicide investigation. Agencies frequently withhold specific evidence to protect the integrity of the case or the privacy of surviving family members. It also remains unclear from public reporting whether investigators believe the killing occurred in the same place where the body was found, or whether Papoli might have been moved.
A Life Remembered Beyond the Case File
While detectives worked to reconstruct Papoli’s final hours, her family had to confront a very different reality. Her son, 25-year-old Navid Goodarzi, spoke with the Los Angeles Times in December, in comments relayed later by Law&Crime. He said his mother had fled Iran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, a personal history that placed her death within a longer story of migration and rebuilding that is common among Iranian families in Southern California.
He described her in vivid, personal terms. “My mom was a ray of light, sunshine manifested,” he told the newspaper, according to Law&Crime. “She always gave 150% to herself and to everyone.”
The son declined to discuss the circumstances of his mother’s death, citing the ongoing investigation. Instead, he focused on how she lived, not how she died. He told the Times that it was painful to see his mother reduced to a short crime summary. “It’s hard when I see my mom’s name and it’s just a sketch of this person who’s not her,” he said, as quoted by Law&Crime. He added that she had been “so full of inspiration and optimism” and that he wished he had finished a website to showcase her while she was alive.
Those comments highlight a gap that often exists between the formal language of case files and the private memories of those who have lost someone. In public documents, Papoli is a 58-year-old woman, a missing person report, an unidentified body in an embankment, and eventually a homicide victim. To her son, she was a parent who had survived political upheaval, built a life in a new country, and was still creating and planning at the time of her death.
The Larger Context of Reclassified Deaths
Cases like Papoli’s occupy a specific corner of violent crime statistics. The California Department of Justice publishes annual homicide data, but those tables do not separately quantify how many deaths are first treated as accidental and later reclassified as homicides. The process of reclassification happens largely in the background, in autopsy rooms, detective interviews, and internal case reviews.
What is clear from the available record is that two determinations in this case changed. First, the medical examiner shifted the manner of death from accident to homicide. Second, investigators moved from having no identified suspect to publicly announcing the arrest of the victim’s estranged husband. Each change carried consequences for investigative resources, for Papoli’s family, and for Goodarzi, who now faces a murder accusation and detention without bond.
As of the latest public reporting, authorities have not laid out their full theory of what happened between the time Papoli disappeared from Newport Beach and the moment her body was found down the San Bernardino County embankment. That unanswered stretch of time is now the focus of a homicide case that has shifted quietly but significantly from an apparent fall to an alleged killing.
