As Murder Trial Winds Down, Mysteries Linger

What became known as the “Carole Little murders” stretched over 18 months and left three dead--two executives of the chic women’s clothing company and one of its top sewing contractors. There were two bombings, as well, along with a freeway shooting and an ambush outside a sewing plant that left a husband and wife wounded. The string of violence shocked Southern California’s $20-billion garment industry and created a gnawing mystery for area law enforcement.

But much of it still remains a mystery after testimony in the one criminal trial stemming from the bloodshed began, and ended, with stunning swiftness last week.

On Friday, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury began deliberating charges that an alleged hit man, Karapet Demirdzhyan, was responsible for the first murder--the Nov. 2, 1993 shooting of Glendale sewing contractor Hakop “Jack” Antonyan.

During a mere five days of testimony and argument, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ellen Aragon presented the theory that has guided investigators from the start: that the violence was retaliation for a campaign by the Carole Little firm to trim the number of sewing shops it used. But there was no evidence of who might have orchestrated the initial acts of violence.

“We can’t tell you . . . who is behind all of this,” Aragon acknowledged to jurors in her closing statements.

The prosecution was based largely on physical evidence such as gunshot residue on the hands of the 35-year-old Demirdzhyan. Prosecutors also alleged that he owned a Chevy used in the fatal shooting of the sewing contractor--it was found abandoned nearby with spent shells inside--and that a Ford found at his Hollywood home matched one videotaped by a security camera hours later during the firebombing at the Long Beach house of Carole Little Vice President Karin Holzinger.

Though Demirdzhyan does not face formal charges in the bombing, the prosecution was allowed to introduce evidence about the incident as additional proof of a terror campaign against the clothing firm.

But the centerpiece testimony was an emotional eyewitness account of the Glendale shooting by the victim’s brother, Garnik “Gary” Antonyan. He told jurors how the pair moved from Soviet Armenia and struggled to make a living here, eventually growing to be Carole Little’s second largest contractor--and drawing the ire of others who “wanted that business,” the prosecution argued.

The night of the shooting, Garnik Antonyan testified, he and his brother were outside their factory when a gunman emerged from a white sedan and began firing. Garnik managed to run away, but his brother, 39, was fatally shot.

But the prosecution’s star witness also provided the guts of the defense case--through his failure to identify Demirdzhyan as the killer when first given the chance.

Demirdzhyan, also an Armenian immigrant, was arrested within hours, based on his links to the alleged murder vehicle. But when his picture was included in a “photo lineup” of suspects, the surviving Antonyan brother picked him out only as a man he once saw watching his home--not as the killer. Weeks later, at a live lineup, Antonyan picked him as the killer.

In explaining the delayed identification, Antonyan testified that he was initially reluctant to help police because of his experience in Soviet Armenia, where someone who cooperates is looked at “like a traitor or like a coward.”

So he pondered another route to justice, he said--revenge. “Person who can’t finish his job. . . . Even your relatives will not respect you anymore,” Antonyan testified.

But he said he changed his mind in part “because I realize he is not alone, behind of him there are many other powerful people,” Antonyan explained. “Maybe I can’t defeat all of them.”

Police have speculated that an “Armenian Mafia” may be behind the violence.

During cross-examination, Antonyan was pressed on his explanation for why he did not immediately identify the killer.

“What were you going to do?” defense attorney James N. Sussman asked.

“I don’t want to sound rude, sir,” Antonyan replied. “[But] maybe I would hire hit man like your defendant is and kill him.”

Demirdzhyan did not testify and the defense presented only a few witnesses, including an expert on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony.

And in his closing statement Friday, Sussman hammered at the one witness placing Demirdzhyan at the murder scene.

“I understand that Mr. [Garnik] Antonyan is a very sympathetic man,” the defense lawyer told jurors. “[But] his testimony is . . . pure and unadulterated hogwash.”

In her own closing to the jury, prosecutor Aragon pointed beyond the contested ID to “all of this evidence” from the night in 1993.

But jurors, who will resume deliberations Tuesday, were not told about much of the violence believed tied to Carole Little.

While Demirdzhyan was in jail, Garnik Antonyan and his wife were shot and wounded as they left the sewing plant a year after Hakop Antonyan’s murder. Weeks later, another Carole Little vice president, Ken Martin, was shot dead at a stoplight. Then in May 1995, Rolando Ramirez, the company’s comptroller, was ambushed and killed.