Gunman Convicted in Clothing Firm Slaying

The only prosecution to date stemming from the series of murders tied to the Carole Little clothing company ended in a conviction Tuesday when a 36-year-old Hollywood man was found guilty in the 1993 ambush slaying of Glendale sewing contractor Hakop “Jack” Antonyan.

Law enforcement officials immediately said they would try to use the conviction of reputed hit man Karapet Demirdzhyan to generate new leads in the mysterious shooting and in bombings that targeted top executives of the chic women’s clothing company and one of its leading sewing shops.

“We’re not finished yet. It could be the beginning of the end,” said Sgt. Jon Perkins of the Glendale Police Department, part of a multi-agency task force trying to uncover who masterminded the murders of Antonyan and two others, the last in May 1995.

Although Demirdzhyan was a suspect only in the first killing, authorities believe he may know others in the conspiracy who terrorized the Carole Little firm after it began cutting back on sewing contractors. And with Demirdzhyan facing 30 years to life in prison for first-degree murder, detectives are expected to pressure him to talk--and other potential witness to break their silence.

“It certainly has happened in the past,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Ellen Aragon, “that once one of the dominoes falls other people feel more vulnerable, or more bold about coming forward.”

Officials also called Tuesday’s conviction a tribute to the courage of the victim’s brother, Garnik “Gary” Antonyan, who provided key testimony for the prosecution.

Garnik Antonyan witnessed the murder as the brothers left their Glendale sewing factory the evening of Nov. 2, 1993. A year later, he was wounded, along with his wife, in another ambush that authorities said was intended to silence him. While police warned that the Armenian Mafia might be responsible, he not only testified but attended every court session, sitting with other relatives in the front row.

“Now I appreciate [the] justice system,” Antonyan said after the verdict, a reference to his admission during the trial that his first instinct had been not to cooperate with police, but seek his own revenge against “that animal” who killed his 39-year-old brother.

The prosecution was partially based on physical evidence showing gunpowder residue on Demirdzhyan’s hands after police discovered the gunman’s car abandoned near the murder site. In addition, a second car--found outside his Hollywood home--matched one videotaped by a security camera at the Long Beach home of a Carole Little vice president when it was bombed that same evening.

Garnik Antonyan, however, was the only witness placing the defendant at the murder scene. His credibility became the central issue in the case, the debate centering on his failure to immediately name Demirdzhyan as the killer during a photo lineup of suspects.

Antonyan testified that he was reluctant to help authorities because of his experience in Soviet Armenia, where someone who cooperates is looked at “like a traitor or like a coward.” But he soon decided that seeking personal revenge against Demirdzhyan would be futile--because “behind him there are many other powerful people”--and then helped police by picking Demirdzhyan out of a suspect lineup weeks after the killing.

Demirdzhyan’s attorney, James N. Sussman, called that explanation “hogwash” and told jurors that Antonyan “lied from the witness stand to cover his failure to make an identification.”

But jurors reached their verdict early in their first full day of deliberations. Later, they said they believed Antonyan’s explanation for his delayed identification “because of where he came from,” one juror explained. “There is no justice over there.”

During the one-week trial, the jurors were told only of the first phase of the Carole Little crimes--the murder of Hakop Antonyan and the bombing of the home of the Carole Little vice president who hired sewing contractors, Karin Holzinger.

Although Demirdzhyan did not face formal charges in the bombing, the prosecution was allowed to introduce evidence about the incident as additional proof of the terror campaign against the clothing company and the Antonyan brothers’ firm, which the prosecutor said drew the anger of competitors who “wanted [their] business.”

Only after the trial did jurors get a briefing on the rest of the crimes as they gathered around Aragon outside court. The prosecutor then told them how another Carole Little vice president, Ken Martin, was shot to death at a stoplight in December 1994 and the company’s comptroller, Rolando Ramirez, was ambushed and killed in his Mercedes last May.

They also were told for the first time why the star witness, Garnik Antonyan, had a scar on his cheek: he was shot in November 1994 as he left the Glendale sewing shop with his wife, who was wounded in the shoulder and arm.

“No wonder he was so afraid,” one juror exclaimed as the surviving Antonyan brother shook hands with other jurors, a bodyguard standing nearby.

“I don’t feel myself safe even now,” Antonyan said in heavily accented English.

But he said the verdict had restored his confidence that authorities eventually may find out who ordered his shooting, his brother’s murder and the rest of the crimes that stunned Southern California’s $20-billion garment industry.

“People are trying to do their best to [solve] in general [the] Carole Little murder case,” he said. “It must be solved. It can’t stop here.”

Superior Court Judge Jacqueline A. Connor scheduled a March 8 sentencing for Demirdzhyan.

Defense attorney Sussman said he would move for a new trial based in part on the judge’s decision to allow testimony about the Long Beach bombing, even though Demirdzhyan was not formally charged with the attack.

He is not a suspect in any of the later crimes because he was in jail at the time.