School Bans Pair Police Link to Slayings

Two Crescenta Valley High School seniors were banned from the campus Tuesday after Glendale police confirmed for school administrators that they remain suspects in a drug-related double homicide last year.

Damian Kim and Marian Kim, who are not related, were also barred from all school activities, including graduation next month, Glendale Unified School District officials said.

The two 18-year-olds were not expelled or suspended, and will receive independent study materials to be completed at home. They are expected to communicate with their teachers only over the phone, school officials said.

“We believed [this action] was in the interest of the students and their families,” said district spokesman Vic Pallos, after school officials met separately Tuesday morning with Marian Kim and her parents and Damian Kim and his father.

The decision to ban the pair was made in accordance with “standards for keeping our campus safe,” said co-principal Gary Talbert.

Neither student has ever been charged in the case, involving the slayings of two younger teens last July, and deny any connection with the killings.

School officials Tuesday said police had failed to notify them about the presence of suspects on campus. The school officials said last week that they were unaware that the pair had been named as suspects in court. Glendale police said Tuesday that school administrators should have known that the pair were suspects by monitoring court proceedings.

The two were first identified by prosecutors as suspects in court papers filed in March, and their names were repeatedly mentioned during the murder trial of 16-year-old Michael Demirdjian, the only person charged in the slayings. Demirdjian’s trial ended last month in a hung jury.

“I wish I had known this sooner,” said Supt. James R. Brown. He said he assumed that police routinely inform school officials about students who are suspects, whether they have been charged or not.

Immediately after the slayings last July of 13-year-old Christopher McCulloch and 14-year-old Blaine Talmo Jr., whose bodies were found on a La Crescenta elementary school playground, police held daily briefings for district officials, Brown said. But about 1 1/2 weeks into their investigation, police stopped giving out information, citing the need for confidentiality for their investigation, Brown said.

“We had asked the police early on that if there was anyone involved at our school, we’d appreciate any information about that,” Brown said.

Sgt. Rick Young, spokesman for the Glendale Police Department, said that police advised district officials three months ago to monitor the case, attend Demirdjian’s trial and “to pay attention.”

Police were still investigating and, by law, according to Young, the additional suspects’ names could not be disclosed at the time because they had not been charged.

“We did the only thing we could do, which was to alert them,” Young said. “They attended the court sessions, they should have figured it out, that’s our feeling.”

District officials said that a representative attended some, but not all, of the court sessions.

“Somebody might have heard [the names] and not referenced the fact that they were in school,” Brown said. “We didn’t know they were students.”

The two students’ names were first publicly disclosed in court papers filed by prosecutors in March naming them and two other teenage friends as “suspects in this double homicide.” None of the four has been charged. In police interviews, all said they were together en route to Palm Springs at the approximate time of the deaths.

During Demirdjian’s trial, prosecutors referred repeatedly to Damian Kim and Marian Kim and presented evidence connecting them to the murders, but did not call either as a witness. Prosecutors alleged that Demirdjian, Damian Kim and several others conspired to attack 19-year-old Adam Walker after Walker allegedly took money from Demirdjian and Kim without giving them drugs in return. Prosecutors said the victims--one of whom allegedly had introduced Demirdjian to Walker--were killed during another plot to ambush Walker. Walker is not a suspect, authorities said.

Demirdjian testified that he is innocent and that Walker killed the boys in a fit of rage. Demirdjian did not implicate any of the four in his testimony. He faces a retrial next month.

In a recent interview at his home with his parents nearby, Damian Kim denied any involvement with the killings and said he had never seen the victims.

Neither of the students or their families could be reached Tuesday for comment.

But Linda Evans, co-principal at Crescenta Valley High, who attended the meetings, said, “I think, more than anything else, these parents wished this issue would close for their children and the fact that it hadn’t closed for them was very difficult for them.”