Mass Murders Los Angeles

To the large Armenian community here, the arson slayings of a mother and her six children--allegedly by the family's father--raises a disturbing question. Was this an isolated instance of one man's madness--or a sign that traditional Armenian family values are breaking down under the stresses faced by recent immigrants? Armenian Americans pointed to the incident as a possible harbinger of worse to come, as the latest wave of Armenian immigrants arrive from Iran.

There was really nothing special to mark the beginning of the day for any of the four, just another workday at "Piper Tech" for Tony Gain and Neil Carpenter, James Walton and Marty Wakefield. They all made their separate ways Wednesday to the huge, nondescript brick building in a gritty section of the city just east of Downtown.

A city electrician--angered over a poor performance evaluation and fearing that he might be fired--hunted down and shot to death four of his supervisors at the city's Downtown technical center Wednesday before he was disarmed and arrested, police said. Willie Woods, 42, "felt he was being picked on and singled out" by the supervisors and "it seemed he was on the brink of violent action," according to Robert Sipe, a business representative of the union to which Woods has been paying dues.

A barrage of gunfire that claimed the lives of three men and wounded six others in a South-Central Los Angeles front yard was carried out by gang members seeking to scare "nickel and dime" drug dealers encroaching on their turf, authorities said Monday. Witnesses to the attack, which occurred at 10:15 p.m. Sunday in the heart of one of the city's most crime-scarred sectors, said it was terrifying even for their neighborhood--where the staccato pop of gunfire is a nightly occurrence.

Hoping to stimulate new leads in a 1991 multiple murder case, the Los Angeles City Council renewed Tuesday a $25,000 reward for information that would solve the murder of a Korean-American family in Granada Hills. On a unanimous vote, the council approved the reward in hopes of generating information that would lead to the conviction of those who killed four members of the Yoo family in their home in November, 1991.

A fourth reputed gang member sought in the Halloween slayings of three teen-agers on a Pasadena sidewalk turned himself in Tuesday morning shortly before three other suspects pleaded not guilty in the case. Solomon Bowen, 18, visited his mother's apartment before giving himself up shortly after 10 a.m. to Pasadena police officers waiting nearby, Lt. Denis Petersen said.

Two men accused of pouring gasoline through a family's mail chute and setting a fire that killed three young children, their mother and great-grandmother were convicted of murder and arson Thursday. Harold Mangram, 48, and Victor Spencer, 39, did not show any signs of emotion as a court clerk read the jury's verdicts. The courtroom was filled with spectators, including relatives of the victims and defendants, and an entire unit of police officers who worked on the case.

With police desperate for leads in the Halloween night ambush killing of three schoolchildren, the Pasadena City Council--with unexpected difficulty--voted Tuesday to create a $25,000 reward fund. The city's ruling body had to make an end run around controversial Councilman Isaac Richard, a longtime critic of Pasadena's politics, who opposed the fund. Council members waited for him to leave the chambers, then quickly approved the reward fund on a 4-0 vote.

Members of a Lake View Terrace-based crime ring have been able to penetrate key law enforcement agencies and obtain confidential information, which they have used to threaten people who might testify against them, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said Saturday.

The district attorney's office filed an appeal Friday to overturn a Superior Court judge's ruling that prosecutors could not pursue drug conspiracy charges against seven people in connection with their trial for a quadruple murder.