Friday, Nov. 21, 2003 | 8:31 a.m.
The man charged in a downtown Las Vegas jewelry store robbery admitted that he killed an elderly woman and tried to kill her daughter, one of his jail cellmates testified Thursday.
Rodney Lauderdale, who is awaiting sentencing on robbery charges, said 45-year-old Avetis Archanian told him that he'd intended to rob World Merchants-Importers "by any means necessary."
"He said he beat one of the women partially," Lauderdale said. "He thought she was dead. The mother came back and he beat her to death."
Police had previously accused Archanian of beating 86-year-old Juana Maria Quiroga to death with a jeweler's hammer. Archanian also allegedly beat Quiroga's 65-year-old daughter, Elisa Del Prado, so severely that she suffered massive brain damage.
Lauderdale testified that Archanian told him that after attacking the women he left the store through the back door, delivered "the goods" to a relative, and then went around the front of the store to pretend that he was just arriving for work.
When Archanian called police from the front of the store, Lauderdale said, he believed both women were dead.
"He was left to believe that he was leaving no witnesses," Lauderdale said. "He believed he had gotten away with it."
After hearing from Lauderdale and police, Justice of the Peace William Jansen determined Thursday that there was enough evidence to bind over Archanian for trial on charges of murder, attempted murder and robbery.
"The state has met their burden overwhelmingly as far as I'm concerned," Jansen said.
A Metro Police detective had testified that a grainy videotape from a store surveillance camera shows a man who looked "very similar" to Archanian was putting jewelry into a briefcase after the attack.
Archanian, a former jewelry repairman at the store, speaks English but listened to the testimony with the assistance of an Armenian-speaking interpreter to be sure he completely understood everything that was being said. His relatives and members of the Del Prado family packed the courtroom.
Del Prado's son, John, said his mother was recently taken off life support at University Medical Center, but that doctors are not optimistic that she will ever recover.
His mother has undergone several brain and reconstructive surgeries, he said.
"She's fighting for her life every day," he said. "But the neurosurgeons have said that the beating was too long and too hard and there's not much left of her."
Metro Detective Jim Rosgen said he was not positive that the man depicted on the surveillance tape was Archanian, but that Archanian had the same "clothes, hairline, glasses and features" as the man on the tape.
Two plastic Ziplock bags full of jewelry were found in Archanian's Toyota truck, and blood was also found on the front door panel, though that blood has not yet been tested, Rosgen said.
Lauderdale claimed Archanian told him that he'd been planning the heist since he was hired at the store only weeks prior to the killing.
"His intentions were to send the goods back to Glendale, California," Lauderdale said.
Lauderdale said Archanian expressed concern that he could have been captured on the store's surveillance tape. Archanian was also worried when he found out that Del Prado was alive, Lauderdale said.
Lauderdale said he did not expect leniency from prosecutors as a result of his testimony and that he felt obligated to tell authorities what he knew.
"I couldn't live with this," he said. "I couldn't sleep at night."
The videotape from the store shows a man dressed in dark clothing and carrying a briefcase walk into the store at Fourth Street and Carson Avenue the morning of Sept. 2.
The two women inside the store let the man in and they talked with him briefly at the jewelry counter.
The man then went into a back repair room, which was out of the camera's view. Moments later, Rosgen said, it appears that Del Prado is called into the repair room. She never returns.
Quiroga then appears to hear something coming from the direction of the repair room, Rosgen said. She can be seen going into the repair room for a few seconds.
"Then you can see her moving quickly, nearly running out of the repair room," Rosgen said.
Rosgen said Quiroga got only a step or two away when "someone grabs her and pulls her back into the repair room."
At that point, only the bottom of Quiroga's legs and feet were visible on the videotape.
"You see (her feet) kicking for a while and then they stop," Rosgen said.
The tape shows the man come out of the repair room, go out of the camera's view near a back office, and then try to open the safe, Rosgen said. The man was unsuccessful.
Rosgen said the man then walked over to the jewelry counter near the front of the store.
"You can see this person taking jewelry, putting stuff in the bag."
The robber used a fire extinguisher to smash another jewelry case, took jewelry from that case and stuffed it in the bag as well, Rosgen said.
The man eventually left the store and walked north on Fourth Street and turned west on Carson, Rosgen said.
"About 10 minutes later the same subject is seen walking east on Carson than appears at the doorway and rings the bell and knocks on the door," Rosgen said.
It was at that time that Archanian dialed 911 and reported that there appeared to be an injured woman inside the store.
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