Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Zankou Chicken Murders

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

The Zankou Chicken murders occurred in 2003 when Mardiros Iskenderian, heir to the popular Zankou Chicken restaurant chain, shot and killed his mother, Marguerite, and sister, Dzovig, before taking his own life. Suffering from terminal cancer and reportedly struggling with family tensions over the business.

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So there's a locally famous restaurant in Los Angeles. Angeles called Zanku Chicken. You may have heard of it. Did you know that one of the founders unalived his own family? And it all starts with this guy who will just call dad and his wife who will just call mom. And one day it's 1962 in Lebanon and mom and dad start up a restaurant called Zanku where they serve chicken. And this restaurant does really well. A lot of locals love it. But then 20 years go by and it's now the 80s and every Everything changes because Lebanon falls into a civil war. And mom, dad, and the rest of the family, they're like, fuck all this.

And they flee the country and they move from Beirut all the way over to Los Angeles. And so they're in LA and they're trying to make the American dream work and they open a couple of different family businesses like a dry cleaning business. And they all kind of fail. But one day, mom and dad's son, his name is Mardiros, so Mordero starts noticing there's a lot of fast food places around Los Angeles. but there's not a lot of Middle Eastern options. And so he's like, let's get back into the restaurant business and open a Zanku here.

And so that's what they do. In 1983, mom, dad, Mardiros, and the family open a Zanku chicken in East Hollywood. And this is actually a picture of it right here. And within about a year, it catches on. Word of mouth starts to spread, it gets some good reviews from food critics, and suddenly this little hole in the wall

is bringing in $2 million a year. year, which is really good for this immigrant family. But Mardiros, he sees this and he loves this success, but he thinks it can do better, and he starts thinking about expanding and opening more Zanku chicken restaurants. And so he goes to mom and dad, and he's like, yeah, we should open more locations. And they're like, nah. Because see, mom and dad, they're happy with what they have, they're getting older, they don't want the headache of running a bunch of new restaurants, but Mardiros keeps insisting that this is such a a good opportunity for them. And then finally, in 1991, mom and dad give in, and they agreed to

expand. However, they work out a deal, and this deal becomes very important later. Any new Zanku restaurants Mar Deiros opens are 100% his, while the original restaurant in East Hollywood belongs to mom, dad, and their other daughters, Margaro's sisters. And it's the same kind of restaurants, same name, same menu, but they don't share profit. He owns his, he owns his and they own theirs. And so they agree. And then boom, Mardiros gets to work. And he opens four new locations in the Los Angeles area.

And they're all doing great, bringing in a ton of profit. But then, suddenly, everything changes again. Because tragedy strikes. Dad, unfortunately, passes away. And now, suddenly, Mardiros, he's the patriarch. And he's sort of now the head of this small business empire. But whatever, he's doing great. He's running all his stores, him and his family are getting along good, everything is going smoothly.

Until. One day, Mardiros, he gets a little pain in his abdomen. No big deal, it'll probably go away. But it doesn't go away. And he keeps working on his business and putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. And finally, he can't take it anymore. And he schedules an appointment and goes to the doctor. And of course, the doctor has some terrible news for him.

him. He has bladder cancer. Not only that, he waited too long to get it looked at, and now it has spread. And it really sucks because he's not going to make it much longer, a few years maybe, at best. And so he has to go home and break the news to his family, and of course everyone is upset. Everyone except for mom. For some reason, she seems almost angry about this news, angry at Mardiros. And maybe she's angry because she knows he's going to die soon, or maybe she's angry because she knows that when he does die, all of his Zanku restaurants will be passed on to his sons. It isn't entirely clear, but she's really mad. And so she starts giving him the silent treatment, ignoring him. And they live together, like she lives in his house.

But it doesn't matter to her. She doesn't ask, how are you? How's the treatment going? Nothing. Not a word. And over time, his cancer progresses. and it gets worse. He loses a bunch of weight, over 60 pounds, his hair starts falling out, but mom still doesn't seem to notice. She doesn't say anything to him. And he's a stubborn guy,

too, so he doesn't say anything to her. And so they're kind of in a standoff. And a year goes by, and they're still living together, and they still haven't spoken. And this all really bothers Mardiros. And then, out of nowhere, boom, their house catches on fire. And it's not clear what causes the fire, but while the house is being refurbished, this becomes mom's excuse to finally move out and get away from her son that she's apparently so upset with. And so then mom moves in with her daughter, Mardiros's sister, this woman, Zovig. And over the next year, allegedly, Mardiros's bladder cancer spreads to his brain, which can affect your personality. And I'm not sure that detail matters, because at this point, he's barely holding it together. He gets massive

headaches, he's almost too weak to even drive himself anywhere, he can barely stand up, plus he's going crazy. He often goes into these somewhat paranoid rants about how his mother and his sisters are all plotting against him. But then one day in 2003, shit gets really insane. See, Mardiros knows at this point that he isn't going to be around much longer, and he has decided that he's had enough of everything. And so he wakes up one morning and he's in pain and he's saw. He's so, suffering like normal, but on this day he puts on a white silk suit, a formal suit, like one he hadn't worn in years. Then he calls his sister Zovig at work, and he asks to meet her and his mom at Zovig's house because he has some Zanku chicken business to discuss with them,

and they agree to meet. Then he grabs his pew-poo. In fact, he grabs two of them. Then he gets in his car and he drives over to Zovig's house. And he gets there and he goes in and he has a nice chat with Zovig while they wait for Mom to get home from work. About 30 minutes later, Mom arrives. And now they're all in the dining room, the three of them, sitting across from each other. And they chat for about five minutes and then suddenly out of nowhere, Maduro pulls out one of those pupoos and he points it right at his sister. And blam, he unalives her. And mom sees this and she freaks out and she tries to run away, but blam, Mardiro shoots her too, and she falls to the floor. Then Mardiro stands over her and he shoots her seven more times until she's unalived.

And when he's done, he walks into the living room and he doesn't shoot his nephew who's there. He doesn't shoot the housekeeper who's also there. He just walks over to the couch, he sits down and blam, he unalives himself. Oh, but the story doesn't end there. Because remember how I said the Zanku chicken restaurant was split into two factions? Mom and Dad's side, which owns the original, and Mardurus's side, which owns the expansions. So now that all of these parties are unalived, their ownership is now controlled by their wives or their descendants or what have you.

And at this point, each side of the family wants the rights to the Zanku name. So Mardiros' side of the family actually files a lawsuit and suit. mom and dad's side of the family, as each side is trying to get control of the Zanku Chicken trademark. But unfortunately for all of them, in the end, both sides lose in court, as the court rules that both parties own the Zanku Chicken name and they all have to share it. And so each side of the family continues on, with one side operating their stores and the other side operating their Zanku Chicken stores. Even to this day, Zanku Chicken has two different websites. Zankoochicken.com and Zankoochicken.L.A.

One for each side of the family. It's the same name, same menu, same recipe, but each side doesn't list the other side stores. Like this side of the family only lists their stores on their site, and the other side of the family only lists their stores on their site. That is wild. Their food's really good, though.