Firebombing linked to Gypsy feud

The hairstylist was sweeping the floor when he heard the guttural screams.

“These were not normal screams,” the man said. “They were the screams of someone being killed.”

He ran out onto a darkening Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and saw the woman -- his neighbor, a psychic reader -- lying on the sidewalk, her clothes burned off, her hair ablaze, her skin peeling off.

“She was enveloped in smoke and flames,” the man said, asking that his name not be used. “She said something about someone throwing liquor on her and setting her on fire.”

It was Sept. 3, 2007, just before 9 p.m. L.A. firefighters put the building fire out in about 11 minutes. Rose Marco, 57, a fortune-teller with a penchant for doing readings into the early mornings, died six days later.

LAPD detectives Wednesday said that Marco was burned by a Molotov cocktail thrown into her business because of an ongoing feud between two Gypsy families.

Det. Mike Oppelt of the Robbery-Homicide Division said that Frank Shano Siganoff, a 24-year-old with a long rap sheet, was the man who stood outside Marco’s storefront, lighted the incendiary device and threw it in.

“He threw it through the open sliding glass door,” Oppelt said.

Siganoff allegedly punished Marco after her family went outside the insular Gypsy community and reported a 2005 burglary to police. In a society where disputes include fighting over bridal dowries and competition over fortune-telling, problems are expected to be settled in a communal tribune known as a kris.

But law enforcement experts say the price of eschewing tradition is rarely murder.

“Disputes are common. In terms of violence, there are some cases of it,” said San Francisco Police Inspector Greg Ovanessian, a fraud investigator regarded as a national expert on crimes committed by ethnic Gypsies. “But killing each other?”

The dispute between the two families began with an act of disrespect, Oppelt said. He declined to be more specific. Then in April 2005, a Reseda home belonging to a relative of Marco was burglarized.

Instead of going before a kris, relatives of Marco decided to go to the LAPD. Then forensic investigators found a fingerprint at the burglary scene. They found a match for the print: Frank Siganoff, Oppelt said. He was arrested and charged with burglary in December 2006.

But according to records, he didn’t appear in court. Instead, last September, he allegedly went to Marco’s fortune-telling business on West Sunset Boulevard.

L.A. City Fire Battalion Chief Mark Stormes said the flames were limited to a small area, not even large enough to park a car, but they burned intensely.

Normal fires don’t go from not being noticed to suddenly raging.

“You wondered, how did it get going this good?” Stormes asked.

Police are searching for Siganoff, who has a substantial criminal record, with arrests for burglary and assault with a deadly weapon. He stands at 6 feet 3, has brown hair and blue eyes, and weighs about 200 pounds.

Oppelt said Siganoff’s face is heavily scarred by acne. He frequents carwashes to earn money, Oppelt said.

Ovanessian said it is frowned upon in the traditional Gypsy community to go to authorities to settle arguments -- though he said it is highly likely that such a violent act as Siganoff is accused of is being roundly condemned.

“Vandalism is very common. You throw a brick through a window at night, and you do that five times in a row to really irritate . . . someone,” Ovanessian said. “You vandalize cars. But even firebombing is not that common.”

The tribunals, often made up of elders, deal with all manner of disputes between individuals and families.

A young man runs off with a young woman without a traditional agreement or satisfactory bridal price being paid -- that could go before a kris.

Many disputes occur when someone opens a fortune-telling business too close to someone else’s business.

“The most common rule of thumb is no closer than three blocks in any direction,” Ovanessian said. “The three-block rule is pretty standard. Fortune-telling is probably the main income-generating function within the Gypsy community.”

In Newport Beach, two families have taken the rare step of going to court to settle a clash over control of the fortune-telling trade in Southern California. That dispute is not related to the Marco case.

The hairstylist said he still remembers Marco’s screams, and the desperate look on her face, as she lay smoldering. He said a passing motorist threw a towel over Marco to try to put out the flames. The hairstylist ran into his salon and came out with a smock to cover the older woman’s nude body.

He said Marco, who lived in an apartment unit connected to the storefront, could be affable, and seemed very bright. She twice told him that she had high blood pressure. Often, her large family would show up.

When they first met, Marco asked if he wanted his fortune read. He said he declined.

“She said if I wanted, she would read the cards for me,” the man said. “I told her no, that I didn’t believe in that. She said, ‘That’s OK. I respect that.’ ”

Sometimes Marco would show up at his business if a Latino customer spoke only Spanish. The hairstylist would translate, telling the fortune-teller what the men and women wanted.

“They usually had some kind of necessity, or they wanted help with a boyfriend or a girlfriend,” the man recalled. “Or they wanted to know whether infidelity was taking place.”

The hairstylist said he remembered thinking how fortunate it was that the woman’s nephew, a young boy, was not with her that day, like he usually was.

“He wasn’t there that night,” he said. “Otherwise maybe he would have been burned too.”

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hector.becerra@latimes.com

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richard.winton@latimes.com