Trial Opens in Case of Family Killed by Fire

Jorjik Avanesian killed his wife and six children and intended to end his own life because his prayers told him he should, the man’s lawyer told a jury Thursday at the start of his trial.

Deputy Public Defender Stanley Perlo described Avanesian, who is on trial for torching his Glendale apartment in the early morning hours while his family slept, as delusional. Avanesian believed his wife was a drug addict, adulteress and porn actress who had brought their eldest daughters into the same lifestyle, Perlo said.

“There is no evidence that his wife and children [were] involved in drugs or sex,” Perlo said.

After he set the house on fire, intending to die with his family, Avanesian was startled by one of his young children, panicked and fled, Perlo said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter gave another reason for the 1996 killings: Avanesian wanted a divorce, and his wife wouldn’t give it to him.

She said he bought an ax and knife intending to spare the youngest children the misery of death by fire.

“He didn’t want them to suffer in the fire, so he was going to hack them up,” Hunter said.

Avanesian’s wife, Turan, 37, and their children, ages 4 to 17, all died of smoke inhalation, authorities said.

During the first day of trial, which is expected to last less than two weeks, Hunter called Avanesian’s neighbors and a car repossessor who was in the neighborhood at the time of the blaze. Steven David Wilcox, the car repossessor, described the family’s heart-wrenching screams, the earth-shattering blast and his fruitless attempts to save the victims.

Wilcox cried after telling the jury how he tried repeatedly to get into the burning apartment on Harvard Street as he heard from inside “shrilly shrieks of terror.”

As Wilcox tried to get in, Avanesian walked down the stairs of the apartment house, up to the door where Wilcox stood, then turned and walked into the garage, leaving his family to perish, Wilcox said.

When asked to identify the man who wouldn’t let him into the burning building, Wilcox pointed at the defendant and said: “That gentleman--well, you can’t call him a gentleman, but that man over there.”

Firefighters told jurors the smoke was too thick to see anything inside the building. They had to feel around walls as they searched for victims. They found them in the bedroom and bathroom of the one-bedroom apartment.

Glendale Firefighter George Gemind told the jurors he was feeling around when he came across the body of a small child on a pile of clothes. Returning after taking the 4-year-old outside, he discovered that what the darkness had led him to believe was clothing was two of the child’s siblings.

“They were on top of each other, huddled in the corner,” he said. “Because they were face down, it looked like clothes to me.”

Another three bodies were discovered huddled in the bathtub. Their dead mother was found nearby.

Avanesian, 43, wearing a full salt-and-pepper beard and mustache and dressed in a white, long-sleeved dress shirt and green sweater vest, sat with crossed arms through much of the proceedings, as an Armenian interpreter quietly translated for him.

Setting the stage for a mental-illness defense, Perlo’s witness list includes the defendant’s sister and two psychiatrists who have examined Avanesian.

Avanesian is charged with seven counts of murder and one count of arson. If convicted, the jury will be asked to decide whether he should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison.