FAMILY’S SUICIDES DEFY AN ANSWER
By Paloma Esquivel
Los Angeles Times
Jan 23 2009
CA
Two young women, their parents and a grandmother killed themselves
in their stunning San Clemente home last year. No one knows why.
On a clear day, the expanse of blue ocean seen from the living room
of this San Clemente home seems almost endless. Sometimes, as day
gives way to evening, a line of pink stretches like a crayon scrawl
in the sky. When night falls, the sea is an abyss of black.
Twenty years later, the home with the breathtaking view is where
investigators say father, mother, daughters and a grandmother killed
themselves.
Late last year, after a six-month investigation, detectives closed the
case. Some time in early May, the exact date unknown, Margo and Grace,
both 21; Fransuhi Kesisoglu, 72; and Manas, 58, committed suicide
with Vicodin, sleeping pills and antidepressants, they said. Only
Margrit did not have drugs in her system. As Manas lay unconscious
from the overdose, she shot him in the chest. Then she put the gun
into her mouth and fired.
Investigators are at a loss as to why. So are friends and family. There
were no indications of marital troubles or psychological problems. No
one was in financial straits and detectives found no evidence of
bad health.
"There’s just nothing there," said Orange County Sheriff’s Det. Dan
Salcedo, who has been trying to decipher the case since late May. "I’d
like to find something, have something, some possible reason to give
the family some closure.
"If there were any problems," he said, "they certainly kept it to
themselves."
Manas came to the United States in the 1970s from Istanbul, where he
was part of a tight-knit community of Armenians who had migrated from
Zara, a small town in central Turkey.
Everyone knew of one another. They knew Manas’ father, a tailor who
could not find work in the big city, and his brothers. They knew of
Manas’ successes as a student. But they knew little else about him,
said Antranik Zorayan, a leader of a small, well-organized community
of Zara immigrants who now live in Southern California.
Most years, Manas was busy studying. He earned a degree in engineering
before moving to the United States for graduate study. Soon after
completing his studies, he took a job teaching in the engineering
department at Syracuse University.
"He was a very, very calm person," recalled Bruce Pounder, a former
student. "He was very smart and very generous with his time and
willingness to help students like me."
Margrit joined him in Syracuse. She had been raised in Turkey by
Kesisoglu, who family members said was her mother. Margrit told
friends Kesisoglu was actually an older sister who raised her from
a very young age, a claim family members deny.
Margrit was a doctor but couldn’t practice in the United States because
she lacked the proper credentials. In 1986, Margo and Grace were born.
The family bought the hilltop estate in San Clemente, where they
would be near Margrit’s and Manas’ brothers, and settled into their
new lives.
Manas was vivacious; Margrit was quieter. After many years of marriage,
the couple still held hands and wrapped arms around each other, friends
said. They were religious but not deeply so, going to St. Mary Armenian
Church in Costa Mesa only on major holidays, fellow congregants said.
Through Manas’ work as an accident investigator, a lucrative profession
that relied on his engineering background, they became close to
a Laguna Niguel couple, attorney Glenn Rosen and wife, Peggy, but
seemed to have few other acquaintances.
Margrit, especially, seemed to develop a special affinity for the
Rosens. She told them about her trouble getting an expected inheritance
from the estate of a murdered uncle, who had been the head of an
Armenian orthodox church; she blamed the Turkish government for the
holdup. She expressed confusion over why a sister-in-law, a new mother
diagnosed with brain cancer, had decided not to fight the disease. "Why
isn’t she getting whatever treatment she could get?" Peggy recalled
Margrit asking. "Why didn’t she have the will to fight this cancer?"
Margrit’s daughters were her life, the Rosens said. Starting in 1992,
she operated a jewelry shop named Margaux Grace after the girls at
a high-end mall in Newport Beach.
Margo and Grace were inseparable. Through elementary, middle and high
school they dressed identically — in dark-colored turtlenecks with
long sleeves and dark pants. Fellow students at Bernice Ayer Middle
School said they were quiet, polite, sweet, smart — and strange. The
girls told acquaintances they would be together for the rest of
their lives.
Sometimes Manas would join them at school for lunch. In the afternoon,
he often arrived 20 minutes before classes let out and waited to pick
them up, students recalled.
When the twins graduated from high school and enrolled at UC San
Diego, Manas and Margrit followed, renting a house where they all
lived together for much of the time during the years the girls were
in school. Margrit told friends she wanted to tutor the girls as they
prepared for medical school.
The girls distinguished themselves as pre-med students. They continued
doing everything together; they took the same classes, wore the same
kind of clothing — dark shirts and pants, large gold crosses around
their necks — worked as teaching assistants in the same class and
interned together at a psychiatric center.
Dr. Kai MacDonald compared them to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
the indistinguishable characters in William Shakespeare’s "Hamlet."
"It’s funny that certain people are so conjoined," MacDonald said. "I
guess I would consider them as something of a unit."
Professors and mentors assumed that Margo and Grace would attend
medical school together to study psychiatry. But there are no records
showing they applied, said Salcedo, the head detective. Even a biology
professor who considered himself something of a mentor said he wrote
no letters of recommendation, though he assumed others had.
Margo and Grace finished their degrees in biology a year ago, one
semester ahead of schedule. In mid-April, the family, accompanied by
Kesisoglu, went on a short cruise to Mexico. After they returned,
the girls went back to their internship at the psychiatric center
and Manas returned to work.
On Saturday, May 3, someone used the family’s transponder to access
their community vehicle gate. That was the last sign of them. If anyone
from the household left the neighborhood after that, it was by foot,
but no one recalls seeing them.
The home provides no clues to what happened in their final hours. There
was no food on the table, no dishes in the sink. Everything was clean
and put away. The girls and Kesisoglu apparently washed the pills
down with water — half-empty glasses were found nearby. The twins
lay side by side on a bed in the master bedroom; Kesisoglu was next
to them, on a chaise.
Investigators believe Margo, Grace and their grandmother were dead by
the time Margrit, using a gun she bought years ago, shot Manas. Then
she turned the gun on herself. His death was ruled a homicide,
but investigators believe he took so much Vicodin he would have
died anyway.
It was weeks before anyone found them. The girls’ failure to show
up at the psychiatric center didn’t raise alarm because they didn’t
have a regular work schedule. Margrit’s and Manas’ brothers, who live
within an hour’s drive, called the home, to no avail.
They assumed the family was on vacation.
On May 25, after trying repeatedly to reach the family, the brothers
arrived at the house. It was Margrit’s birthday. By then, the five
bodies were badly decomposed. Detectives say the family had been dead
three weeks.
When news broke about five found dead, dressed all in black, rumors
flew. The story became fodder for curiosity-seekers who tried to
visit the house and for bloggers, who tried to piece together the
family’s history. There was talk of a cult; of a strange, insular
ethnic community; one neighbor told investigators that Manas was
angry because the girls were not accepted by a medical school.
Relatives dismissed the significance of similar clothing.
"That’s the first thing everybody picked up on," said one close
relative who asked not to be identified, saying the family has been
bombarded by inquiries since the deaths. "It was said over and over
again that they always wore black. . . . I have photographs. They
didn’t always wear black.
"It’s just an inexplicable, horrific tragedy that we’re still dealing
with. They were a very loving and warm and beautiful family."
For now, the house Margrit once prized stands empty. And in his
cubicle in downtown Santa Ana, Salcedo sits with a foot-tall stack of
transcripts, coroner’s reports and financial documents about the Ucar
family. The family’s computers have been analyzed. Nothing supplies
an answer.
Manas’ and Margrit’s will was not updated, although they often are in
cases of suicide. There was no paperwork indicating the couple was
heading toward divorce. There were no unusual phone calls or notes,
"no indication that somebody was going to do something," Salcedo said.
"Everybody seemed to be content with their lives."
Salcedo hopes that someday, someone comes forward with information
that will help people understand.
"The investigation is closed as far as causes and motives," he said. "A
reason why is something I’m always going to keep open."
ion/front/la-me-suicides23-2009jan23,0,5545509,ful l.story
Margrit Ucar fell instantly for the panorama. Even before her husband,
Manas, had a chance to see the house, she knew it was where they
would raise their two young daughters, twins Margo and Grace.
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