Teen’s Lawyer Offers Account of 2 Killings

In the most detailed account yet of the events leading up to the deaths of two La Crescenta boys in a schoolyard playground, the defense attorney for the sole suspect in the murder case said the tragedy followed a long round of drinking and drug use.

Charles T. Mathews, counsel for 15-year-old Michael Demirdjian, proclaimed his client’s innocence but said the boy had witnessed the killings, which the teen claimed were committed by an adult male acquaintance.

“It happened very quickly,” Mathews said in an interview at his Pasadena law office.

The bodies of the two victims, Blaine Talmo Jr., 14, and Christopher McCulloch, 13, were found July 23 on a secluded playground at Valley View Elementary School.

Mathews said the victims were attacked after consuming hard liquor and smoking marijuana, which had made them drowsy.

“Strangulation was the incapacitating factor; the instrument of death was something else,” Mathews said. “My client says they were choked out and then clubbed with a rock.”

Demirdjian, his senses dulled by marijuana and alcohol, was confounded and paralyzed by the brutality of the attack, Mathews said. Mathews did not identify the alleged killer by name.

“He feared to do anything for fear the guy would do the same thing to him,” Mathews said.

Mathews conceded that police may have physical evidence linking his client to the scene, including a bloody shoe. He said Demirdjian checked one of the boys bleeding on the ground thinking he might be alive, and then fled to his home a few hundred feet down the street.

The Glendale Police Department has imposed a news blackout on the case, citing the continuing investigation, and department spokesmen did not return calls for comment on Mathews’ remarks.

In addition to Demirdjian, Glendale police have arrested six people in connection with the case, according to the district attorney’s office. But prosecutors have declined to file charges related to the deaths against any of the others.

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None of those arrested remain in custody except for one man who has been charged with burglary in an unrelated case.

Demirdjian pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges of murder with special circumstances and robbery in the deaths of Blaine and Christopher.

Mathews faxed a letter to Glendale police Wednesday requesting that Demirdjian undergo a polygraph test to prove his innocence. Police had not responded by Wednesday night, Mathews said.

Mathews said Demirdjian, the two victims and the adult acquaintance were the only people at the Valley View school playground at the time of the attack.

The lawyer described Demirdjian as a somewhat troubled only child who was adopted by his Armenian parents as an infant and struggled with his ethnic identity.

He is of mixed white and African American ancestry, and speaks fluent Armenian, Mathews said.

Demirdjian lives in a racially mixed neighborhood where his neighbors are mostly white, Armenian or Korean.

“He experienced some difficulty in that neighborhood,” Mathews said. “He doesn’t appear to be black or white, and sometimes had trouble fitting in.”

Mathews said Demirdjian was a student at Voyager Charter School for at-risk students, where he played youth football and was named rookie of the year for his league.

Mathews also acknowledged that Demirdjian sometimes used drugs.

In the hours preceding their deaths July 23, Blaine and Christopher walked with Demirdjian from New York Park in La Crescenta to Foothill Boulevard, where they went to a Subway restaurant, Mathews said.

After stopping at a Vons supermarket, they returned to New York Park to meet a friend, who Mathews said did not show up. As night fell, they walked to the playground in back of Valley View Elementary.

“On the way, they acquired alcohol,” said Mathews, although he would not say how.

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The adult acquaintance joined them sometime later and brought hard liquor. Mathews said he did not know who supplied the marijuana that all four of them smoked.

When Blaine fell asleep and Demirdjian fell into a drug-induced stupor, Mathews said, an argument broke out between Christopher and the adult.

“The perpetrator choked Chris out and as Chris was incapacitated, Blaine woke up and attempted to intervene,” Mathews said.

He said the man dropped a concrete bench on Christopher, and struck him with a rock. “Then, he finished off Blaine,” Mathews said.