Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Bonus: Business Wars & The Zankou Chicken Murders

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

Business is war. Sometimes the prize is your wallet, or your attention. Sometimes, it’s just the fun of beating the other guy. The outcome of these battles shapes what we buy and how we live. In the Zankou Chicken Murders, host David Brown dives into this popular California restaurant chain, and the family dynamics that catapulted the successful business into the headlines-- for murder. Subscribe to Business Wars today at wondery.fm/crimestories Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. There's no doubt about it. Business is war and Wondery drops you right in the thick of the battle with business wars. From Pepsi vs. Coke, Netflix vs. Blockbuster, and Marvel vs. DC, there have been major, huge corporate battles. The full stories, I bet you've never heard. In Business Wars, the host, David Brown, brings you the brutal, which became the source of shocking and untimely deadly family conflict that threatened to derail the business for good. And I mean deadly. If you're

a fan of true crime, the Zonku Chicken Murders episodes are for you. Whoever thought there'd be a Zonku Chicken Murder case, but there is. You're about to hear a preview of Business Wars, where you get to meet the family behind Zonku chicken murders, and hear how the family feud turned deadly. But while you're listening, subscribe to Business Wars on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening right now. January 14, 2003. A white stucco mansion high in the hills above Glendale, California, L.A.'s Armenian enclave.

56-year-old Martyrus Iskandarian closes his bedroom door. He inches down the stairs, step by painful step. He is the founder of the family-owned chain of rotisserie restaurants Zanku Chicken, an L.A. institution. He's wearing a white silk suit that hasn't fit him for decades. Several years battling cancer have whittled him down from a burly, middle-aged restaurant mogul to a frail, though dapper, invalid. He walks into the kitchen where his wife Rita sits at the table sipping a cup of mulberry tea. Rita fell in love with Marderis in Lebanon when she was just 12. Seeing him now, she can't believe how handsome he looks.

For a man so sick, so near death. Ah, Marderos, you look like a movie star. But where do you think you're going in that fancy suit? You're too weak. You haven't been out of the house on your own in months. Marderos fiddles with the cuffs of his stiffly starched dress shirt. He looks anywhere but into his wife's eyes. He knows she can usually see right through him. Don't worry about me. I feel so much better today.

I'm going to meet Garo at the restaurant. I haven't seen him in, well, forever. Rita doesn't believe him. Marderos hasn't met up with any friends since his last round of treatments began. He doesn't want them to see him like this. But even in his weakened state, her husband is not a man she can easily control. Marderos kisses the top of her head, picks up the keys to the Mercedes from the hook by the door, and hobbles past the koi pond

in front of the house to the driveway. This is the last time his wife will ever see him alive. By the end of this day, the business the family started 40 years ago in Beirut, Lebanon, re-established from scratch in Los Angeles, and made into a California legend, will be shattered, perhaps beyond repair. The restaurant entrepreneur, respected philanthropist, and family man is on a bloody mission. And one of the great success stories of the Armenian diaspora will be forever marked by a terrible triple asterisk, encompassing some of the worst acts anyone, above all any Armenian, could commit. Because just a few hours after Marderos Iskandarian gently kisses his wife goodbye,

he will kill his sister, his mother, and then himself. From Wondery, this is Business Wars. I'm David Brown. While it's a cliché that the history of every family empire includes scenes of Shakespearean drama, rarely does a legit enterprise involving something as innocent as take-out pita wraps engender the kind of violence that has run through three generations of this family of entrepreneurs who fled war on two continents only to see their business erupt in a bloody climax. This is Episode 1 of Zonku Chicken, Out of Beirut. To understand what happened on that one fatal day in Glendale, California, 2003, you have to travel a long way across continents and far back in time to 1962 and a one-room storefront in Beirut, Lebanon.

It's another searing summer day in the Armenian quarter of Beirut, Lebanon. It's another searing summer day in the Armenian quarter of Beirut. One-room storefronts line a dusty side street. Between a bakery and a cobbler, there's a narrow glass-fronted business with a bright blue awning. The sign on it reads, Zankou Restaurant, in white Arabic script.

A white-finned Cadillac pulls up and a man jumps out of the driver's side and darts into the store. He calls out a greeting to a plump woman in an apron, cleaning a pile of garlic cloves at a table by the front window. Hello, my cousin and his family dropped by and all they can talk about is your chicken and garlic paste. Margaret Iskandarian looks up, smiles briefly, and returns to her garlic. She spends hours a day whipping up tum, a paste of raw garlic that will eventually lure customers from all over Beirut. Margaret's recipe will eventually draw not just their Armenian neighbors, but Arabs,

Christians, and many other people who make up this cosmopolitan city known as the Paris of the Middle East. The customer, Samir, rushes over to the two rotisserie ovens that take up nearly the entire store. There are no tables, no chairs, there isn't even a cash register. The owner, Margaret's husband, Varkas, turns the golden chickens on their spits and welcomes his regular customer with a smile. Samir, good to see you. How many do you need? Three, please. An extra two. My cousin eats it up with a spoon. In just moments, the chickens are in a paper bag and Vartka stuffs a few more bills into the wad of cash in his left shirt pocket.

Samir maneuvers his oversized American car down the narrow alley and heads home from his second visit that week to Zonku's. But in his haste, he didn't check his order. If he had, he would have noticed that Vartkus had forgotten the extra dollops of garlic sauce. That often happens when Vartkus is drinking. And Vartkus is often drinking. When he's sober, well, he's as smart and generous as they come. In fact, the idea for the restaurant came to him during one of his longer experiments with abstinence. He was visiting a

friend back in Armenia and took a walk along the Zanku River. A family was barbecuing chicken over a wood fire on the riverbank. The smell of roasting meat and the laughter of the children made Bartkis smile. He decided right then and there to open a rotisserie chicken restaurant back in his home in Beirut, the haven where his parents settled after fleeing the Turks during the genocide of 1915. That was before his thirst got the better of him. Now he sometimes disappears on a bender for days. If it weren't for Margaret's excellent cooking and her almost maniacal capacity for working 15-hour days, Zankou would have folded in its first weeks. But thanks to her, the store is thriving. It supports them, their three children and Margaret's mother, another genocide survivor. It's hard punishing

work these early years of the business, and Vartke's love of ogi, Armenian vodka, only makes it harder. And when the family does take time to gather and have a meal, Margaret's mother often chooses those moments to tell vivid stories about the genocide, the forced march through the Syrian desert, the starvation, random violence, mass executions, all of the horrors she witnessed in 1915 during her flight to Lebanon, reminding the family, never forget. The Iskandarians hardly need the admonition. In fact, these stories will come to haunt them in unique ways for generations. That was just a preview of the latest from Business Wars.

To hear the rest of the Zonku family's story, subscribe today on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.