ARSON UPDATE: By Friday, the Armenian Relief...

ARSON UPDATE: By Friday, the Armenian Relief Society in Glendale had raised $310 for the funerals of six Glendale residents killed in an arson fire Tuesday, far short of the $17,000 goal. “I’m sure we’re not going to get enough,” Louisa Gourjian said. . . . A Forest Lawn spokesman said the mortuary is negotiating with the group and private donors but that nothing is finalized. . . . INS officials, meanwhile, said the accused killer, Jorjik Avanesian, apparently entered the U. S. by claiming that he’d been persecuted in his native Iran (B1).

TO TELL THE TRUTH: It happened Friday during the Menendez brothers’ murder trial in Van Nuys. Prosecution rebuttal witness Park Elliott Dietz testified that he wasn’t entirely sure why defense attorney Leslie Abramson called him in 1994. And when she asked him, “You really didn’t think I was going to hire you, did you?” he replied: “I find it hard to tell when you’re telling the truth and when you’re not.” . . . Closing arguments will begin Feb. 20, the judge said.

SURVIVORS: “It was very, very traumatic,” Gloria Muetzel recalled Friday. “It was horrible.” Muetzel was at work as a nurse’s aide in Sylmar on Feb. 9, 1971, when the San Fernando earthquake brought Olive View Hospital down around her, killing three people. . . . Sixteen years later, the facility was rebuilt as Olive View Medical Center. . . . Hospital staffers looked back at the tragedy Friday in a day devoted to quake preparedness (B4).