On Tape, Man Describes Setting Fatal Fire

The night before Jorjik Avanesian set his family’s Glendale apartment ablaze, he pleaded with God to send him a dream to keep him from becoming a murderer, he said Friday in videotaped testimony.

But when he awoke before dawn on Feb. 6, 1996, with no reply from God, Avanesian said, he went ahead with plans to kill his wife and six children.

On the second day of Avanesian’s murder and arson trial, jurors in a courtroom in Pasadena Superior Court viewed the two-hour police interview while the defendant sat calmly beside his attorney.

Avanesian’s wife, Turan, 37, and their six children, ages 4 to 17, died of smoke inhalation in the fire.

Avanesian, 43, has been described by his defense attorney as “delusional,” a man who imagined his wife and children were tainted by drugs. But prosecutors have raised another motive: Avanesian’s wife refused to divorce him.

On the tape, Avanesian described how the day before the fire, he bought a $2.50 ax and a 69-cent knife at a local store. He then filled a water container with gasoline at a gas station across the street. He hid the gasoline and weapons at his apartment.

Rising at 4 a.m. the next day, he said, he poured gasoline onto a towel, lit it and tossed it into the room where his children and wife slept.

“I wanted us all to die,” Avanesian told police calmly on the tape.

As flames began to spread through the room, his youngest son began to scream, he recalled.