Glendale News: The death of Zankou Chicken founder

[HamovikAngel]

Killings that took place in Glendale. I really wonder what causes a person to just kill someone in a state of anger.

Apparent murder-suicide investigated in Glendale
By Nicholas Grudin and Ryan Oliver, Staff Writers

GLENDALE -- Authorities today identified the victims of Tuesday's double-murder suicide in an upscale Glendale neighborhood, where a man killed his sister and mother during an argument, then turned the gun on himself.

Mardiros Iskenderian, 56, founder of the popular Zankou Chicken restaurant chain, shot and killed his sister, Dzovig Marjik, 45, and his mother Marjarit Iskenderian, 75, during a heated argument at the family home about 2:15 p.m. Tuesday.

"This was a culmination of family tensions. We have been unable to find any other motive," Glendale police Sgt. Kirk Palmer said today.

Dzovig Marjik and her husband owned the home in the 3400 block of Ayars Canyon Way, near the Oakmont Country Club, where the shootings took place. Marjarit Iskenderian lived there, too.

According to community leaders, the Marjiks were very successful. Vartan Marjik, Dzovig's husband, runs an auto body shop with his brother George, and Dzovig Marjik's family owns the popular Zankou Chicken chain, friends and neighbors said. Hours after the slayings, police were searching a house in 100 block of Aspen Oak Lane in Glendale, the home of Mardiros Iskenderian, founder of Zankou Chicken, a popular Southern California chicken chain with five restaurants, including in Glendale, Van Nuys and Pasadena.

Sevag Konyalion, 23, identified himself as a friend and co-worker of the household's youngest son, Vako Marjik.

"I've known them for two years. There's no way this could happen," Konyalion said from the shooting scene. "Their father is a hard-core Christian. No one could have had a problem with them."

One news report said witnesses heard about six shots before a man ran from the home, screaming that his grandmother and uncle were dead.

Next door neighbor Elvis Tadevosyan, 17, said he and the family's youngest son, Vako, walked their dogs together.

"They were really nice and religious people," he said. "They would go to church often."

The father, he said, owned a body shop and traveled to Armenia last year through his church.

A priest at Armenian Cilicia Congregation Church in Altadena confirmed that family members attended the church.

Bystanders identified a husband of one of the dead women as he arrived on the scene, hysterical, before he was sequestered by police.

[oohlala]

Glendale murder-suicide

I would think that the presence of "mental illness" has something to do with it, of course; killing your mother and sister--it's horrific. To argue, to yell...that's one thing. But, to pick up a gun and kill your loved ones is unbelievable. How angry can an individual be to reach that point...that level of "seeing red" and "turning psychotic"? Then I began to wonder about his wife and two children...(sigh) it's unfortunate.

(Also, not to sound cliche, but, money won't solve all your problems; in this case, he had millions...but running Zankou Chicken was apparently the least of his worries/problems.)

[HamovikAngel]

I agree with you, but I guess I was naive in thinking that in our culture we don't have people who have the mental capabilities of killing their own loved once. In a way I wonder what would have triggered him to a point of that kind of rage, I am not trying to justify his actions but to understand the reasons for his actions. I don't consider him a cold-blooded killer, since he also shot himself. I believe after killing them his anger faded away and he came to a realization of what degree his action amounted to, therefore not being able to bear with the knowledge he killed himself. I do also believe money doesn't solve all your problems, in reality it creates more. I also feel sad for the children of the both families if they have any. Not only did he ruined his own family but also those who are his close relatives. Another concept I guess I wondered about the story is that, we exclude people who go to church of doing anything wrong, even killings.

[Anonymouse]

You both have provided good inputs. So in the end whatever obstacles that some people can't dust off, eventually it envelopes to be something bigger and gradually consumes them as is the case. The said man who pulled the trigger must have really been taken to the breaking point, and was obviously a sick man at that. And as you said already, money never truly brings happiness, as happiness is a spiritual thing, and no amount of material objects can capture its essence. And mental illnesses are not bound by race or culture or any sort of boundaries, as long as we live on this semi-green globe we will all be susceptible to the billowy roads that lie ahead.

Cheers.

[Armenia]

Shooting Deaths

City News Service
January 16, 2003 Thursday

GLENDALE -- Family tensions and the late stages of cancer may
have led the 56-year-old Glendale operator of a popular Armenian
restaurant chain to kill his mother and sister before taking
his own life, it was reported today.

Police, family and friends told the Daily News and The Los Angeles
Times that Mardiros Iskenderian was suffering from cancer of the
colon and brain cancer, which may have affected his mental state.

Iskenderian, operator of Zankou Chicken, drove to his sister
Dzovig Marjik's posh five-bedroom, five-bathroom home at
3412 Ayars Canyon Way Tuesday afternoon, and the two got
into a loud fight, Glendale police Sgt. Kirk Palmer told the
newspapers. Mardiros drew a gun and shot the 45-year-old woman in
the face about 2:15 p.m., killing her, Palmer said. As she lay
dying, their 75-year-old mother, Margarit Iskenderian, ran for
the door, but Iskenderian shot her in the back, and the woman
collapsed in the in the entryway, Palmer said.

He then turned the gun on himself, he said.

One of Marjik's two sons and housekeeper heard the gunfire and
called police, Palmer said. Within hours of the the shooting,
investigators searched Iskenderian's home in the 100 block of
Aspen Oak Lane, where police found clues that the family was
not getting along, but no specific motive, Palmer said.

Family and friends were shocked at news of the shooting.

"These are kind-hearted and gentle people who loved to help others
-- they have strong Christian convictions," Pastor George Terian
of Celicia Evangelical told the Daily News. Marjik's husband
and younger son attended the church regularly.

Former Glendale Mayor Larry Zarian, who knew Mardiros Iskenderian,
told the Daily News that he was a successful, soft-spoken
businessman.

"You would never know if he had any anger in him," Zarian
said. "As a matter of fact, if you wanted to hear what he was
saying, you had to get close to him. That's how quiet of a
man he was. He never boasted, never told people who he donated
charity to."