Violence Ends Immigrant’s Saga of Devotion, Dreams

It was a tale so sad that it caused a veteran homicide detective to break into tears as he tried to deliver the news.

For 32 years Nubar and Tagui Chilian could be found together everywhere they went.

The couple were inseparable, whether driving their produce van through the streets of Hollywood, entertaining a wealth of relatives and friends at their Van Nuys home or simply tending to their garden and pet parakeets.

In the end, the Chilians faced death nearly the same way they faced life, side by side.

Just six days after Tagui Chilian succumbed to a three-year battle against cancer, her husband was stabbed and beaten to death--apparently because he was mistaken for someone else.

“They loved each other so much throughout life and they ended up together at death, but it shouldn’t have happened this way,” said Stella Kirakosian, a close friend of the family.

Homicide detectives showed up at the Chilians’ home to notify the family of Nubar’s death just as their son, John, arrived to take his father to the cemetery for a service for his mother.

The detectives were puzzled as to why friends and family in mourning clothes were already gathering at the house when Nubar had just been killed and the family should not have known yet.

“The detective asked what was going on,” Kirakosian said. “When we told him, he started to cry and another detective had to break the news to us.”

Police on Thursday announced the arrest of three suspects in connection with the slaying of Nubar Chilian on Jan. 13. LAPD Det. Steve Fisk said the suspects allegedly mistook Chilian for someone they heard had tried to drag one of their girlfriends into a car.

“They just ran over,” Fisk said. “He was the only guy on the street so they just did him.”

Two of the suspects, Francis McSherry and Jerrell Holland, both 18, of Van Nuys, pleaded not guilty to murder charges Thursday during their arraignment in Van Nuys Municipal Court. A third suspect, described as a 16-year-old Van Nuys youth, has also been charged with murder.

Detectives arrested the youths Tuesday night at their apartments across the street from the Chilians’ home.

Life began for the Chilians much differently than it ended. Born in Greece 57 years ago, Nubar Chilian met his bride, Tagui, who was two years his senior, in Armenia at a time when most Armenian marriages were arranged.

“His brother took him to the village she lived in,” Kirakosian said. “He saw her and fell in love.”

The couple married in 1964 and soon after Tagui gave birth to two children. Nubar Chilian gave up his job as a postal carrier in Soviet Armenia when he moved his family to Hollywood in 1979 in search of freedom and the American dream.

Together, the Chilians began selling produce out of a van they would drive through the streets of Hollywood. “They were by each others’ side 24 hours a day,” Kirakosian said.

They later settled in Van Nuys in a modest home on Ventura Canyon Avenue near the intersection of Sherman Way and Woodman Avenue. They passed their lives raising their children, John and Elizabeth, selling their produce, going on fishing trips and taking time to sing and dance.

“They were always the life of the party,” Kirakosian said.

But tragedy struck three years ago when Tagui was diagnosed with cancer. Her condition worsened last year and her husband quit selling produce so that he could be by her side 24 hours a day. Just before her death, he spent eight nights in an armchair next to her bed.

More than anything, he desperately wanted to nurse her back to health, but Tagui died Jan. 7.

“When she passed away he took it very hard,” John Chilian said. “But she had been suffering for a long time.”

Chilian said that at one point his father told a family friend: “She left me too soon--she shouldn’t have left me this early.”

In the following days, Chilian confided in friends and family that he planned to continue on with his life and was looking forward to spending time with his grandchildren.

Six days after his wife’s death, Nubar Chilian went for a late-night walk. His son believes he must have been unable to sleep because of the ceremony for family and friends scheduled at Tagui’s grave the next day.

Beaten and stabbed as he walked along Sherman Way, he tried to make it back to his house a few blocks away, but collapsed at Cantlay Street and Allot Avenue and died.

So touched were mortuary officials who had handled Tagui Chilian’s service that after learning the fate of her husband they adjusted their regular fees and charged the family less than the normal cost for his burial.

“This was a terrible situation and a total tragedy,” said Christina Klima, vice president of Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. “Forest Lawn was happy to accommodate the family in any way we could to help them through this time.”

Friends and family buried Chilian on Monday with his wife, his blue casket next to her white one.

“Now they are together again,” Kirakosian said.

Times staff writer Efrain Hernandez Jr. contributed to this story.