Ramy Fahim had already admitted killing Griffin Cuomo and Jonathan Bahm before jurors decided his legal sanity.
SANTA ANA, Calif. — A jury’s sanity finding against an Irvine man cleared the way for a judge to sentence him to life without parole for a 2022 double murder inside an Anaheim apartment.
The unusual final question in Ramy Hany Mounir Fahim’s case was not whether he killed 23-year-old Griffin Robert Cuomo and 23-year-old Jonathan Andrew Bahm. Fahim had pleaded guilty April 7 to two counts of first-degree murder. The question left for jurors was whether he was legally insane when he carried out the attack. After the jury found he was sane, Orange County Superior Court Judge Gary Paer imposed two consecutive life without parole sentences May 13, plus two years for weapon enhancements.
The sanity issue came from Fahim’s earlier plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Under that posture, jurors had to decide whether his mental condition met the legal standard that would bar full criminal punishment. Prosecutors argued that the evidence showed planning, awareness and purpose. District Attorney Todd Spitzer said Fahim’s conduct was calculated, not insane. He said Fahim gained access to the victims’ apartment building, waited on the roof for hours and then carried out an ambush designed to kill Cuomo and silence Bahm as a witness.
Defense attorney Marlin Stapleton Jr. did not dispute that Fahim had a long history of mental illness. At sentencing, Stapleton asked for 52 years to life or for the life without parole terms to run concurrently. The defense argument focused on Fahim’s mental deterioration and the claim that his illness should reduce the punishment. Paer rejected the request. The judge said the law required the harshest sentence for the facts before him and said there was “no discount for killing two.”
Fahim, 30, worked with Cuomo at Pence Wealth Management, an Orange County wealth management firm. Prosecutors said Fahim had grown upset with Cuomo over work assignments and believed Cuomo was micromanaging him. The conflict, they said, was not a sudden argument inside the apartment. They presented the killings as the result of a plan that began before dawn, after Fahim went to the Stadium House apartment complex in Anaheim and waited for access to the victims.
The apartment complex sat in the 2100 block of Katella Avenue, near State College Boulevard. A building security guard encountered Fahim on the roof around midnight on April 18, 2022. He was later seen on the same floor as Cuomo and Bahm’s apartment on April 19. Prosecutors said Fahim waited until Cuomo was leaving for work, then attacked with a hunting dagger. The first assault moved back into the apartment as Cuomo tried to survive. Bahm, who was home, retreated to a bathroom and called 911.
The 911 call became central to the case because it placed Bahm in the role of both victim and witness. Prosecutors said Bahm was still on the phone with a dispatcher when Fahim pushed through the bathroom door and stabbed him. Anaheim police responded around 6:50 a.m. to a report of an assault in progress. Officers found Cuomo and Bahm dead at the scene. Fahim was still inside the apartment. He was taken to a hospital for minor injuries and then arrested.
The guilty plea included special circumstance allegations of lying in wait, multiple murders and murder to avoid arrest related to Bahm’s death. Fahim also admitted personally using a deadly weapon. Those admissions narrowed the remaining issue to sanity and left the sentence largely fixed after the jury ruled against him. The court record showed that prosecutors viewed Bahm’s killing as a step Fahim took because Bahm was seeking help and could identify him. That finding was part of why the sentence became two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutors also described physical and digital evidence that they said pointed to preparation. They said police found a tarp and shovel in Fahim’s car. They said Fahim had considered cutting off Cuomo’s head and burying it, while leaving the rest of the body to be taken away with trash. They also cited computer writings and searches about serial killers and killing methods. The defense argued mental illness shaped Fahim’s thinking, but the jury’s verdict showed jurors accepted the prosecution’s position that he still knew what he was doing under the law.
Outside the legal arguments, the hearing returned attention to Cuomo and Bahm. Both men were 23. They had been friends since Chapman University and remained roommates after graduation. Cuomo worked in marketing and media and had built a professional life that overlapped with Fahim’s. Bahm was described in tributes as unusually kind and generous. Family statements and memorials presented the men not as names in a criminal file, but as young adults whose friendships, careers and families were cut off in one morning.
Fahim spoke only briefly before the court pronounced sentence. He said he felt bad about what he did and wished he could change it. The apology came after years of proceedings and after the guilty plea that ended the murder trial before it began. It did not alter the judge’s ruling. Paer imposed the consecutive terms, ending the penalty phase of a case that had moved from murder charges to an insanity dispute and finally to a life without parole judgment.
The case is closed at the trial court level with Fahim sentenced to prison for life. The sanity finding remains the key legal marker because it separated mental illness evidence from legal insanity. Any further movement would come through post-conviction filings or appeal proceedings, not through a new sentencing hearing currently on the calendar.
Author note: Last updated June 2, 2026.