Man Convicted in Travel Agent Killing

A former Glendale travel agent who had twice beaten charges that he robbed and murdered a business associate face 85 years in prison after his third trial ended in conviction Friday.

After deliberating 1 1/2 days, a federal jury found Garen Zakarian, 32, guilty of robbery, obstruction of interstate commerce and using a gun with a silencer in the robbery-slaying of Benita Mikailian, another Glendale travel agent, on Oct. 5, 1994.

“They just kept punching away until they won,” attorney Malcolm Guleserian, who defended Zakarian in all three trials, said after the verdict. “They had the resources to try this case as many times as they wanted.”

As the verdicts were read in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Steven V. Wilson, Zakarian’s wife, Mari, burst into tears and was comforted by friends and family.

The verdict was hailed by two federal prosecutors who delayed retirement to retry Zakarian after the second trial ended inconclusively in July.

“We’re very gratified with the outcome today,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Warrington Parker, who along with prosecutor Christopher Tayback pursued Zakarian. “I’ve felt all along that the evidence against [Zakarian] was very strong and very conclusive, but it is a complicated case and there was much for the jury to sift through.”

The case was complicated by the disappearance of Zakarian’s sister, a co-defendant mistakenly released after a jail paperwork error. The defense claimed subsequent prosecutions violated constitutional guarantees against double jeopardy, then argued effectively at the first two trials that Zakarian was framed by the Armenian mafia.

But in their largely circumstantial cases, prosecutors presented evidence of Zakarian’s fingerprints on documents taken during the crime and on a silencer recovered along with the murder weapon.

Within days of Mikailian’s slaying, Zakarian and his sister and business partner, Anait Zakarian, were charged with the crime. But Anait, mistakenly freed, remains at large. Prosecutors were barred from discussing the sister’s alleged role in the crime, a factor that they said contributed to Zakarian’s acquittal in state court in December.

Federal agents, who had also been investigating Zakarian on related charges, arrested Zakarian two months after he was acquitted by a jury on a state capital-murder charge. In June, a jury convicted him on two federal weapons offenses, but deadlocked on charges related to the killing. Despite that mistrial, Tayback and Parker said they were so convinced of Zakarian’s guilt, they postponed their departure from the government to enter private practice in order to retry the case.

Both Zakarian and the victim were travel agents with clientele that included Armenian refugees.

Prosecutors contended that on the day Mikailian was killed, Zakarian was in danger of stranding 80 Armenian customers--en route to Los Angeles--in a Paris airport due to an airline scheduling change.

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They say Zakarian called Mikailian, who owned the Travel Town agency in Glendale, and ordered 80 Northwest Airlines tickets from Paris to Los Angeles, and that he planned to ship the tickets to Paris on an 11 p.m. flight so they would arrive there the next day, in time for the passengers.

Zakarian sent two $21,000 checks to Mikailian, but after learning he had insufficient funds in the bank, Mikailian refused to give Zakarian the tickets.

The prosecutors argued that at about 8:30 p.m. that day, Zakarian went to Mikailian’s office carrying a silencer-equipped .38-caliber Beretta and a machine gun in an athletic bag. Once inside, they contended, Zakarian shot Mikailian five times in the chest, then took a stack of documents from her desk that he believed to be the plane tickets.

Mikailian’s body was found slumped in a chair at her office the next morning by an arriving employee. Police recovered the documents stolen from her desk, which turned out to be worthless bookkeeping receipts called “agency coupons,” and found Zakarian’s fingerprint on them.

An athletic bag containing the murder weapon and a machine gun not used in the crime was found in the front yard of a home three blocks from the site of the slaying, and Anait Zakarian was arrested several days later, when she was caught as she apparently searched through the bushes for the bag.

Police also found in the bag a ski glove that matched one seized from under a bed in the Zakarians’ home.

At each of the three trials, Guleserian claimed Zakarian had been framed by a former employee named Sisak Minukian, who was secretly working on behalf of an Armenian criminal syndicate attempting to elbow Zakarian out of the international travel business. Zakarian’s Econo Trans travel agency, which specialized in flights between Yerevan, Armenia, and Los Angeles, was offering air fares below market rates and infuriating a mafia-run travel monopoly in Armenia, Guleserian said.

Guleserian said Zakarian ran a successful “multimillion-dollar business” and had no motivation to rob or kill Mikailian. He charged that Glendale police let the real suspect--Minukian, who left the United States shortly after the killing--slip through their hands.

“We checked [Minukian] out after the murder,” said Will Currie, a homicide investigator with the Glendale Police Department. “There was never any evidence indicating he was a suspect. The suspects have always been Garen and Anait Zakarian.”

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Guleserian insisted Friday that his client is innocent and promised to appeal the case.

But Seroj Mikailian of Glendale, older brother of the 42-year-old slaying victim, said the verdicts will at long last bring him some peace.

“I knew from the beginning he was guilty, I could just feel it,” said the brother, adding he could hardly sleep for days after Zakarian’s acquittal last year.

“But I knew we would see justice sometime. I really believed that.”

Zakarian faces a maximum of 85 years in prison for the charges, including his earlier weapons convictions. He is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court Jan. 6.