A Trial Filled With Intrigue : Attention Focuses on Case of Slain Glendale Travel Agent

When Garen Zakarian goes on trial for his life in the murder of a Glendale travel agent, the case could turn on a missing witness and cutthroat business rivalries involving desperate refugees.

Those unusual elements in a case that has riveted the attention of the area’s burgeoning Armenian immigrant community promise an uncommon trial, with a pair of gloves shaping up as key evidence for the prosecution and a defense suggesting a dark conspiracy.

Benita Mikailian, 42, who fled the Iranian revolution to build a successful business in Southern California, was found shot to death in her north Glendale office on Oct. 6, 1994.

Police say Zakarian’s fingerprint was found on a gun they recovered and determined to be the murder weapon. Authorities say there was a motive: Zakarian and his sister Anait needed $42,000 to pay for airline tickets they had ordered through Mikailian. She was holding the tickets until payment was made.

Anait Zakarian was also charged with capital murder, but she was released from jail by mistake and has vanished, leaving her brother to defend himself without the star witness who could exonerate him, according to the defense attorney.

“We kind of needed her testimony, but now she’s not around,” said Malcolm Guleserian, Garen Zakarian’s lawyer. “She would have been a great defense witness--she could have explained her own actions and cleared up a lot of things. The prosecution is going to make allegations now that she cannot respond to.”

Now Zakarian faces murder and robbery charges alone in a Pasadena courtroom beginning Wednesday.

Police and prosecutors say the case is solid. The sister’s absence will not affect the outcome, said Glendale Police Detective Will Currie.

“The case against each of them was equally as strong. It’s just unfortunate that she isn’t here to be tried too,” said Currie. “The evidence tied both of them together into the case, and certainly there may be things we can’t introduce now because she’s not on trial. But we don’t think it will be a problem.”

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Mikailian was a hard-working, independent, single businesswoman who often kept late hours at Benita’s Travel Town, the agency she opened in 1989. Two days before her body was found, police say the Zakarians had arranged to have two $21,000 checks delivered to Mikailian to pay for 80 plane tickets from Paris to Los Angeles.

The Zakarians operated the Econo Trans travel agency at 1220 S. Central Ave. in Glendale, but because they were not authorized by the Airline Reporting Corp. to print certain airline tickets, they often bought them in bulk from Travel Town.

But the checks were not honored, and Mikailian kept the tickets locked in a wooden cabinet under her desk. After Mikailian closed her office for the day on Oct. 5, police allege Zakarian visited her to discuss the matter. But once inside, according to police, he shot her five times, one bullet fatally piercing her heart.

In his haste to leave, police say, Zakarian grabbed a stack of 80 airline vouchers, which look like plane tickets, from Mikailian’s desk.

The vouchers were recovered from an associate of the Zakarians in Paris, where the tickets were to be delivered to passengers arriving from Armenia en route to Los Angeles, authorities said.

The actual tickets were still in the box under Benita Mikailian’s desk, said Currie.

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The Zakarians “specialized in flying groups of people from Armenia to the U.S.,” he said. “We looked into their business and found they were having a lot of financial problems. Obviously they were not able to pay for these tickets, and we’ve also talked to several parties they owed money to, including private citizens and an air charter company they had hired.”

After interviewing Travel Town employees and other witnesses and learning about the bad checks, police arrested Zakarian at the Glendale apartment he and his sister shared, one day after the killing.

The next day, a man living three blocks from the murder scene found a .380 Beretta semiautomatic handgun with a silencer that police later determined to be the murder weapon, and a .45-caliber handgun with a silencer. Both guns were in a black sports bag in the bushes in front of the man’s home. The serial numbers had been removed from each gun.

Two days later, police arrested Anait Zakarian after they watched her search through those same bushes, allegedly looking for the guns, with her car door open and the engine idling.

Also in the bag with the guns were a pair of black pants, a pair of red gloves, and a single blue-and-red ski glove that police believe was worn by the gunman. The matching ski glove was found later in a bag of clothes under a bed in the Zakarian siblings’ apartment, police said.

Guleserian contends that Zakarian had “absolutely no motive” to kill Mikailian, and that police have failed to investigate the possibility that he was framed by members of a “secret syndicate” that allegedly controls plane flights in and out of Armenia, charging high rates to poor immigrants.

“When he [Zakarian] got into the business a few years ago, there was a monopoly that was charging outrageous fares for flights out of Armenia,” Guleserian said. “But he didn’t do that. He offered tickets at a reasonable price, and there were people willing to go to great lengths to force him out of the airline business.”

In the days before Mikailian’s death, Zakarian was at risk of stranding 80 customers in Europe due to a problem with a ticketing agent overseas, and he went to Mikailian for help, according to Guleserian. He asked her to book 80 Northwest Airlines tickets from Paris to Los Angeles, and planned to have the tickets flown to France and delivered to passengers arriving there from Armenia, Guleserian said.

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But because he had already paid for another flight that had been canceled, Zakarian did not have the cash to pay Mikailian immediately. The attorney contends that Mikailian agreed to front his client the tickets, despite mysterious phone calls from a man named “Sako” and others warning her that Zakarian was going bankrupt and would not be able to pay her.

Guleserian acknowledged Mikailian and his client met on the evening of Oct. 6 at her office, and he contends that it was then that she told Zakarian about the mysterious phone calls. But, he said, Mikailian “trusted Garen, because they had a long and satisfactory business relationship,” and fronted him the airline tickets. For that, he speculates, she may have been killed by the alleged syndicate.

He is at a loss, however, to explain why she gave Zakarian the worthless vouchers instead of the tickets.

“It could have been a mistake,” he said. “It’s also reasonable to believe she did it on purpose, since she had been told Garen was going bankrupt. The point is, he had those tickets two hours before she died.”

He says Zakarian returned to his own office shortly after 6 p.m. that night, and that several witnesses will give him an alibi between 8 and 8:30 p.m., the believed time of the killing.

The sister, who was being represented by the public defender’s office, was an active co-conspirator in the crime, according to police. But Guleserian believes she was “a pawn” used by the killers to retrieve the weapons.

But police and prosecutors dismiss Guleserian’s scenario, and say they will show during the trial that Zakarian was desperate because his company was in financial straits. They said Zakarian’s bank account records will be introduced and his creditors may be called to the witness stand to show Zakarian was not capable, as Guleserian claims, of paying Mikailian.

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As for the mysterious calls from “Sako,” Currie said: “He is not mysterious, he is not from the Mafia. He is someone who was ripped off by [the Zakarians], and he was trying to warn [Mikailian] not to do business with them.”

Mikailian, a native of Iran, immigrated to the U.S. with her brother, Seroj Mikailian, in 1983, after both spent several years living in Europe following the Iranian revolution. Mikailian had worked for Air France as a ticketing agent both in Iran and Paris, and she worked for several travel agents in California before opening her own business in 1989, her brother said.

“We really miss her,” Seroj Mikailian, 40, said of his sister. “No one can explain the loss when it’s due to a crime like this.”

In the year since his sister’s murder, Seroj Mikailian, an industrial engineer, said he has been unable to concentrate on work and has devoted nearly all his time to following the case. He said he hopes Anait Zakarian will eventually be brought to justice, but for now he is awaiting the trial at hand.

“I believe they have the trigger man in custody, and that’s the most important thing. His sister cannot hide forever, and someday she will have to answer these charges also.”