Ex-Guard Found Guilty of Murder : Courts: Verdict could send him to the gas chamber for the attempted rape and slaying of girl, 18. She was killed on the eve of her high school graduation.

On its third day of deliberations, a jury in Santa Monica on Friday found former security guard Rodney Garmanian guilty of the murder and attempted rape of a Pacific Palisades teen-ager two years ago.

Family and friends who crammed into the small seaside courtroom burst into tears as the clerk read the verdict--guilty of first-degree murder with special circumstances, a finding that makes the 34-year-old Reseda man a candidate for the gas chamber.

“He’s away forever, Rod,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Lauren Weis said through tears, as she was embraced by the victim’s father, noted graphic artist Rod Dyer.

“The emotion is relief to some degree and a little bit of satisfaction that justice does work,” Dyer said. “But it took 2 1/2 years to get here, that’s the agony.”

The victim’s mother, Jackie Dyer, said she was “totally numb. I’m glad it’s over.”

Santa Monica Superior Court Judge J. L. Weisberg ordered the six-man, six-woman panel to return Tuesday afternoon to begin the penalty phase of the trial. After hearing additional testimony, jurors will recommend either that Garmanian be given life in state prison without possibility of parole or the death penalty, the only sentences allowed by law.

Garmanian, a slight, pale man who had shown no emotion throughout the monthlong trial, looked shaken as he was led away.

The former MacGuard Security employee had been arrested the same day he reported having “stumbled upon” the bloody, battered body of Teak Dyer, 18, sprawled on the tile bathroom floor of a deserted office building. She had been shot three times.

The teen-ager was to have graduated from high school the next day. She was attending a round of graduation parties and was last seen in a parked car outside a friend’s house on Swarthmore Avenue.

The area was one patrolled by Garmanian, a six-month employee of the private security firm. He was linked to the crime through myriad pieces of evidence: a bullet from his handgun was found under her body, her palm prints were found on the passenger side of his patrol car and a pubic hair from Garmanian was found on her body. Until last week, he had maintained his innocence.

Defense attorneys shocked jurors and spectators, when they conceded that Garmanian was the young woman’s killer, but argued that he did not kill her in the course of an attempted rape.

“I believe that the defendant is guilty of murder and you should so find,” lawyer Paul Takakjian told jurors during final arguments. But he urged them to convict Garmanian of second-degree murder and sexual battery at most, rather than first-degree murder and attempted rape. He could have been eligible for parole in seven years on the lesser charge.

The prosecutor, meanwhile, said the case touched off strong emotions because “I think she was a really innocent victim, even though that night she might have seemed to engage in frivolous behavior.”

Weis was referring to testimony that showed that the girl had been drinking and had taken cocaine hours before her death, behavior that could have impaired her judgment and made her an easy victim.

Despite a strong case against the guard, Weis said: “In a circumstantial evidence case, you never know what a jury might do. They might have fallen for the defense ploy, the argument they advanced basically to save his life.”

At the penalty proceedings, Weis said she will present evidence that Garmanian attempted to rape a cleaning woman in a Chicago suburb four years ago under circumstances similar to those in the Dyer case--in a deserted office building, wearing a security guard’s uniform. No charges were filed.

Charges that he tried to contract for the murders of a prosecutor, a police investigator and a judge while in custody here are expected to be dropped.