DAY-TO-DAY POLICE WORK LEADS TO LIKELY SUSPECT.

Byline: Jason Kandel Staff Writer

Mike Coffey was about to sing ``Happy Birthday'' to his wife's cousin at her 50th during a surprise party when his pager went off. He had just walked into her Camarillo home May 25 and was looking forward to a relaxing Memorial Day weekend.

But those plans would be changed. Garbis and Mayda Tarakjian had been shot to death in their North Hollywood jewelry store 45 miles away. Coffey, a veteran LAPD homicide detective, would have to find the killer.

At the LAPD's North Hollywood station, the 54-year-old with a brushy white mustache strapped on his 9 mm blue-steel Beretta, his badge and handcuffs. He grabbed a notepad, then headed to Lankershim Boulevard.

He tried to wrap his mind around the couple's murder, even before he arrived. What did the crime scene look like? Was it a robbery? If it was, why are these people dead?

``Robberies occur every day in L.A.,'' Coffey said. ``Few end in killings.''

Down on Lankershim, yellow police tape surrounded ``Elegant Creations,'' a hole-in-the-wall store with large windows reinforced with wrought iron. Behind open blinds, two bodies were lying on the linoleum floor near the shattered glass door. A passer-by had spotted the bodies and called authorities at 5:25 p.m.

Lines of witnesses ought to be milling at the scene or rolling into the station by now, Coffey thought - a good sign that the case would be solvable. A blatant daytime shooting at a corner store off a busy street - someone must have heard or seen something.

But it was Memorial Day weekend. The nearby stores were shuttered. The only two cars in the parking lot belonged to the dead couple.

Most of the people milling at the scene were in uniform - Los Angeles Police Department patrol officers, sergeants, lieutenants. North Hollywood Division's two captains were in street clothes, also called in from home.

Inside the store, the woman lay with her eyes open. Capt. Ronald Marbrey, who heads LAPD's North Hollywood detectives, wondered if the eyes offered any clues.

``Do the open eyes tell us anything?'' he asked Coffey.

``No,'' Coffey said. Then he added, ``But I wish we could develop the last picture she saw. Maybe they'll come up with technology that can do that.''

Camera gave no clues

Early on, it appeared that detectives would soon be chalking up the jewelry store case as another unsolved murder.

Not even a camera mounted on the store's wall would reveal the killer. It was a dummy. A $30 plastic decoy.

``The cable didn't go to a VCR,'' said Detective Robert Morales, a rookie homicide detective. ``We followed the cable three times. When I didn't see the VCR, my hopes went down.''

Detectives walked the edges of the crime scene, while teams of uniformed cops went door to door, interviewing nearby residents.

Detectives combed the parking lot first, racing a setting sun.

They tried to reconstruct the last hours of Garbis and Mayda Tarakjian, who from all appearances died while fighting to escape a hail of bullets shot out of a 9 mm pistol.

Morales, 34, who had broken away from his 9-year-old son's birthday party, walked through the parking lot, his head down, documenting what he found. He saw a tiny red stone lying in the parking lot near the store. Further away, near the alley, he found an earring display holder - two clues suggesting the most likely escape route of the killer. In that alley, police spotted a surveillance camera recording the alley.

While he worked, Morales wondered what happened and why. The store was littered with cheap aluminum shell casings and drying blood. Display cases were empty. The safe was open. Jewelry lay scattered on the floor. A broken chair suggested a struggle.

At one end of the room, family photos hanging on the walls attested to happier times. On the other end, the Tarakjians' bullet-riddled bodies lay on the floor, shot in the chest, shot in the head.

This was something personal, Morales thought. The suspect knew the victims. The shooter wanted them dead.

``Most robbers don't do any harm to anybody,'' he said. ``This suspect probably thought that if he left them alive, they would be able to identify him.''

The pieces of the puzzle would not begin to come together all at once. Detectives studied store receipts, checkbooks, personal phone books, a ledger. After that, they spoke with family, friends, customers.

Fingerprints galore

Technicians would have to collect fingerprint smudges. Firearms specialists would have to sketch the scene. The coroner would have to examine the bodies and collect fingernail clippings, hair. They would have to measure every inch of the store, marking the spot where every piece of evidence lay.

LAPD forensics specialist Wendy Cleveland lifted 17 clear, whole fingerprint markings, most of which came off the smooth glass display cases. She could not get one clear, whole print off the rough surface of the metal door handle - the most likely surface touched by anyone going in or out that store.

Firearms specialist Bill Moore discovered a copper-jacketed 9 mm slug that had pierced the wooden leg of a lazy Susan display case. The slug suggested that the killer stood between the back workroom and the showroom while firing at Mayda as she was making a frenzied rush for the door.

Eventually, a time line began to develop. Investigators found a witness who heard eight gunshots about 5 p.m. - consistent with the numbers of shell casings they found.

Through the night, a steady stream of family members and friends gathered outside. They hugged. They cried. Mayda's brother was stone-faced.

Coffey searched for answers.

``Nobody tried to break in? They had no problems?'' Coffey asked the brother, looking into his eyes.

``No,'' said the brother.

``Did he owe anybody money?''

``No.''

``If you had to put a price on how much he made in one year, how much would you? ...''

``I don't know. I never asked.''

``Is he a rich man?''

``No.''

``Does he make a million dollars in a year?''

``Nooo, not that much. If he made a million dollars, he would go to Beverly Hills and open a store.''

``Any other employees or anyone that cleans?''

``No, I don't think so.''

Coffey asked the brother if Garbis had been married before.

He had, for 18 years.

``Was it a bad marriage? Any fights? Any problems?'' Coffey asked.

``No,'' the brother said.

``How did they deal with customers?''

By appointment only. The store's door was usually locked during business hours. Garbis and Mayda had to buzz in customers.

Coffey wondered aloud whether the Tarakjians had been victims of organized crime.

The word on the street

``Call everyone you know in the Armenian community to find out who did this,'' Coffey said. ``Someone out there knows who did this. We need your help.''

More than seven hours would pass before detectives would get a break that would lead them to their suspect - a family acquaintance who went by the name Fred, and who lived out of a yellow 1977 Pontiac Firebird.

Witnesses described someone resembling the man, 6 feet tall, wearing a blue shirt and jeans. Witnesses saw him hanging around the store between 3:30 and 4 p.m.

Within a week, a composite sketch would be drawn. An LAPD traffic database would turn up a name and an age - Fereydun Shahidzaeh, 55. There would be a photo. Witnesses picked Shahidzaeh out of a photo array.

A wanted flier was put out, and police were briefed in roll calls.

On June 6, police caught Shahidzaeh standing in a parking lot at the Beverly Garland Hotel, about a mile away from the jewelry store. He stood with a coat hangar in his hand, trying to jimmy the lock on his Pontiac Firebird. All his personal belongings were inside.

``It was a bonafide shopping cart with wheels and an engine,'' Coffey said.

Coffey told Shahidzaeh why he was being arrested.

``I want to talk about the deaths of Garbis and Mayda Tarakjian,'' Coffey said.

``When I said that,'' Coffey said later, ``he took a deep swallow.''

Gun, jewelry found

In the trunk of his car, police found the weapon they say was used in the killings, a 9 mm pistol. They also found jewelry.

Back at the station, Coffey took the suspect into the interrogation room and asked him about his background. He was from Iran. He was an unemployed handyman. He lived out of his car. He got the gun from a shop in Las Vegas six years ago.

Coffey read him his rights. The suspect asked for a lawyer. The questioning ended.

In a Los Angeles County Superior Court on June 24, Shahidzaeh pleaded not guilty to the murders.

While the suspect sits in a Los Angeles County jail awaiting his next court appearance, expected on July 30, Coffey reflects on a case that began with few leads and few witnesses.

``It was good work,'' said Coffey, who keeps a book in his desk drawer, a log of the 332 cases he's worked over his 20-year homicide career.

Each entry is marked with the date, time, location, suspect, victim, who his partner was, and the status of the case. He can still remember his first one: In 1982, two brothers had been playing with guns; one shot the other.

Even as he marks the jewelry store case in his book, he knows another case is looming.

``Another case is going to come. We'll start from day one again.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Los Angeles Police Department homicide Detective Mike Coffey scans the scene of a double murder in a jewelry store.

(2) Detective Mike Coffey points out bullet holes in a jewelry store where the husband-and-wife owners were gunned down. The numbers on the floor mark where bullet casings fell.

(3) While officers check out the scene of a North Hollywood jewelry store robbery and double murder, forensic print specialist Wendy Cleveland dusts a door for signs of fingerprints.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer