Las Vegas Review-Journal (Nevada)
December 8, 2004 Wednesday FINAL EDITION
Jurors convict man of slayings
by Carri Geer Thevenot
Jurors deliberated less than an hour Tuesday before convicting a
man of first-degree murder and robbery charges in the beating deaths
of two elderly women at a downtown Las Vegas jewelry store.
The panel is scheduled to return to court this afternoon to start
hearing evidence in the trial’s penalty phase. Prosecutors are
seeking a death sentence for the defendant, 46-year-old Avetis
Archanian.
‘We’re pleased that a guilty verdict came back,’ said John Del Prado,
whose mother and grandmother died in the attack. ‘The evidence was
very strong against him, and the detectives were positive that he was
the one who committed this horrible crime.’
Del Prado said he plans to testify during the penalty phase in
District Judge Donald Mosley’s courtroom.
As for the sentence Del Prado would like Archanian to receive, he
said only, ‘It’s in the jury’s hands.’
‘As brutal as he was with my mother and my grandmother — he showed
them no mercy, and he deserves whatever he gets,’ he said.
The Del Prado family has operated the World Merchants-Importers store
in downtown Las Vegas since 1975. Archanian had been hired as a
part-time jewelry repairman several weeks before the killings.
District Attorney David Roger argued that Archanian was the man
captured on a surveillance video in the store on the morning of the
crimes.
Roger said Archanian used a hammer and ring sizer to bludgeon Juana
Quiroga, 86, and her 68-year-old daughter, Elisa Del Prado, before
the store opened on Sept. 2, 2003. Quiroga died at the scene, and her
daughter died from her injuries in March.
During his closing argument Tuesday, Deputy District Attorney Greg
Knapp placed all of the physical evidence in a line before the jury.
‘This trail leads to one place: right to this man here,’ the
prosecutor said, pointing to Archanian.
Roger said the evidence indicated that the victims knew their killer.
The surveillance video showed Elisa Del Prado allowing a man to enter
the store and walk into the jewelry repair room.
A short time later, Quiroga is observed on the video rushing to the
room, then trying to scurry back out. The assailant then drags her
down from behind.
Roger said the killer showed knowledge of the store’s merchandise as
he went through the jewelry cases and chose the most expensive items
to steal.
Las Vegas homicide detectives interviewed Archanian at the scene and
allowed him to leave. Archanian told the detectives he arrived at the
store at 10 a.m., when it was scheduled to open, and saw the bodies.
Knapp said the killer removed a videotape from a surveillance system
in the store, assuming he was removing the video evidence.
‘But he was wrong because they had a secret recording device that
worked off of a hard drive that he didn’t know about,’ Knapp told the
jury.
Roger said it was no coincidence that the man on the video was the
same size as Archanian, had his receding hairline and was wearing
similar shoes and clothing.
The prosecutor said Elisa Del Prado’s blood was found on Archanian’s
shirt and in his vehicle, and Quiroga’s blood was found on a pair of
pants hidden in Archanian’s residence. Some $250,000 in jewelry
stolen from the store was recovered from Archanian’s vehicle.
‘Ladies and gentleman, this is not a difficult case,’ Roger told the
jury.
Defense attorney Mace Yampolsky said his client is Armenian and moved
to the United States from the former Soviet Union in 1977. The
attorney described Archanian as a helping and caring person who had
no prior criminal record.
Archanian wore headphones Tuesday as he listened to closing arguments
with the aid of an Armenian interpreter.
Yampolsky, wearing an American flag tie, offered jurors little to
refute the physical evidence against his client.
‘DNA is not infallible,’ he argued.
The attorney questioned why Archanian had spots of blood on the tops
of his shoes but none on the bottoms. Authorities determined that the
blood on Archanian’s shoes came from a woman, but they did not have a
large enough sample to determine her identity.
Yampolsky said the defendant’s wife, sister and brother attended
Tuesday’s proceedings. The attorney said he plans to present
testimony during the penalty phase from Archanian’s relatives ‘to
really say what he means to them.’
Grethel Jerbic, Elisa Del Prado’s daughter, said members of her
family want to thank those who stood beside them in their time of
need.
‘We thank them for their love, prayers and support,’ she said.