Man Convicted of Charges in Slaying Case

A federal court jury convicted former Glendale travel agent Garen Zakarian on Tuesday of two firearms charges, but deadlocked on four other counts stemming from the 1994 killing and robbery of another travel agent.

Zakarian was convicted of possessing a gun and a silencer with obliterated serial numbers, and faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison on each charge, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

U.S. District Judge Steven Wilson ordered the jury, which had been deliberating for three days, to resume deliberations today on the remaining counts--robbery, conspiracy and interstate commerce violations.

In a two-week trial that concluded last Wednesday, federal prosecutors charged that on Oct. 5, 1994, Zakarian, 31, killed Benita Mikailian, owner of the Travel Town agency in Glendale, in order to steal $42,000 worth of airline tickets that he needed to avoid stranding 80 clients in Paris and to keep afloat his struggling business, Econo Trans of Glendale.

Prosecutors said Mikailian had refused to sell Zakarian the 80 tickets after learning he did not have the money to pay for them. They said her killing was part of a botched robbery in which, in his haste, Zakarian mistakenly stole a stack of receipts for the 80 tickets instead of the tickets themselves.

Last December, Zakarian was acquitted of murdering Mikailian in a state court trial in Pasadena. He then moved to the Victorville area, where he was rearrested by federal agents in February and indicted on the federal charges.

Zakarian’s attorney, Malcolm Guleserian, has maintained that the federal case violates the constitutional protection against double jeopardy. Federal prosecutors have countered that separate state and federal prosecutions do not violate the double jeopardy provision. Heidi Fleiss, Charles Keating Jr. and former LAPD officers Laurence Powell and Stacey Koon all faced both federal and state trials, they said.