Police Look Overseas for Clues in Glendale Slaying

While Glendale police are working with law enforcement agencies overseas to reconstruct the events leading up to the Oct. 5 murder of a local travel agent, an attorney for one of the suspects in the case says police should instead be searching for a professional assassin.

Police believe Benita Mikailian was killed by two clients who operated a service specializing in travel arrangements between Armenia and Los Angeles.

While Mikailian was working after-hours at her office, authorities say they believe Garen Zakarian, 30, and his sister Anait, 22, shot her to death and stole vouchers for about 80 one-way airline tickets from Paris to Los Angeles, worth about $100,000.

“The indications are that there was a transaction taking place between (Mikailian) and the two defendants,” said Glendale Police Lt. Ray Edey. “It appears the defendants were without the resources to pay for what they had ordered.”

The Zakarian siblings operated Econo Trans Travel, 1220 S. Central Ave., and also had an affiliated office in Yerevan, Armenia, that recently closed, Edey said. The company arranged charter flights from Yerevan to Los Angeles, purchasing plane tickets in bulk from other travel agents. Edey said Glendale police are consulting authorities overseas to learn more about the Zakarians’ business.

Because of the nature of the murder, police also are investigating whether the pair may have been involved in previous crimes, Edey said.

“The defendants have both been connected through physical evidence to the murder weapon, and all indications are that both were present during the commission of the crime itself,” he said.

The killer used a medium-caliber, semiautomatic pistol equipped with a silencer, Edey said. “You can call that a European- or Middle-Eastern-style professional hit.”

Mikailian’s body was discovered the morning of Oct. 7 inside her agency, Benita’s Travel Town, 1110 N. Brand Blvd. Garen Zakarian was arrested that day at the Glendale home he shares with his wife and sister. Anait Zakarian was arrested Oct. 11 during a traffic stop in Glendale, police said.

A resident who lives near Mountain Street and Maryland Avenue, just one block away from the victim’s office, found a bag containing two guns Oct. 8 on his property. Police said they recovered a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol, which is believed to be the murder weapon, and a .45-caliber semiautomatic assault rifle that had been modified to be fully automatic.

Malcolm Guleserian, an attorney representing Garen Zakarian, said his client is innocent.

“This would be way out of character for him to do something like this,” Guleserian said. “The police theory is that he was under tremendous financial strain and he flipped out and went and got a gun and killed her, but that’s not consistent with this case.”

Guleserian said his client went to Mikailian’s office on the day of the killing to pick up the airline tickets he had ordered. But because he did not have enough money to pay for the tickets, Mikailian gave him only the ticket vouchers, agreeing to give him the tickets when the bill was paid later in the week.

He said Mikailian and his client had a long business history and this transaction was not unusual. The type of weapons discovered in the case “smack of a professional hit,” he said.

Edey said the investigation is continuing and police have not ruled out the possibility of more suspects in the case, although they are not actively searching for another person.

Both defendants have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and robbery and are being held without bail. A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled Nov. 17 in Pasadena Superior Court.