TEEN MURDER CASE IN JURY'S HANDS.

Byline: Holly Edwards Staff Writer

PASADENA - After hearing more than five hours of closing arguments Wednesday, a jury will begin deciding today whether teen murder suspect Michael Demirdjian is a calculating, vindictive killer or an innocent witness to a brutal crime that left two boys dead.

Demirdjian, 16, is charged with the murder, torture and robbery of Christopher McCulloch, 13, and Blaine Talmo Jr., 14, whose bludgeoned bodies were found July 23, 2000 at the Valley View Elementary School playground in Glendale.

Calling the La Crescenta teen a ``pathological liar,'' Deputy District Attorney Steve Barshop told jurors Wednesday that Demirdjian had lied so many times to police, to victims' family members and to the jurors themselves that he has lost all credibility.

``His story doesn't hold up and it is patently a lie,'' Barshop told the Pasadena Superior Court jury. ``He is, in fact, involved in these two very ugly murders.''

Prosecutors say Demirdjian and other unidentified suspects killed the boys after they were cheated out of $660 in a marijuana deal gone awry.

However, defense attorney Charles Mathews argued that Demirdjian witnessed a 19-year-old Glendale drug dealer named Adam Walker kill the boys in a ``psychotic rage'' after the foursome had smoked marijuana and drank wine together.

Walker was arrested after the killings but ultimately released for lack of evidence.

Calling the trial ``a pathetic prosecution of the wrong man,'' Mathews further argued that Demirdjian was linked to the crime by evidence manufactured by overzealous investigators who were swayed by racial prejudice.

While investigating the crime, Mathews said, detectives treated Demirdjian - whose father is African-American and whose mother is white - much differently than they treated Walker and his friends, who are white.

``The police blamed the Koreans, they blamed the blacks, they blamed anybody but the guys who were selling drugs to our kids,'' Mathews said.

For example, Mathews said, multiple search warrants were executed at Demirdjian's house, while none were executed at Walker's home, and just one was executed at the home of one of Walker's friends - where police found blood stains on the bathroom floor and recently washed clothing in a trash bin.

Mathews also said that the perfectly round shape and odd location of drops of Demirdjian's blood found at the death scene suggested they may have been planted by police.

However, prosecutors insisted that physical evidence found at the crime scene and in Demirdjian's home prove that he killed the boys. Demirdjian's bloody footprints were found at the killing scene, a bloodhound matched Demirdjian's scent with one found on the rock used as a murder weapon, and investigators found blood-stained clothes and shoes, as well as Talmo's wallet and alarm clock, at the teen's house, Barshop said.

Deputy District Attorney Truc Do told the jury that the killings fit Demirdjian's pattern of ``violence and rage.''

``At the age of 13, he attacked his own father with a shard of glass,'' she said. ``And Michael Demirdjian was at Valley View, up close and personal, committing these murders.''

Demirdjian would face life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of the slayings.

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Defendant Michael Demirdjian, 16, sits with his attorneys Wednesday at Pasadena Superior Court while the prosecution gives final arguments in his trial on charges he murdered two youths over a drug deal gone sour.

John McCoy/Staff Photographer