Hovannes Amirian
Eastern Daily Press
December 16, 2004
A 23-year-old Yarmouth woman is due to appear at court today in connection with the death of a man whose body was found burning in a field near Peterborough almost exactly two years ago.
Arpine Karapetian has been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice in relation to the death of Armenian Hovannes Amirian and will appear at Norwich Magistrates Court.
On Tuesday Nishan Bakunts, 27, also of Yarmouth, appeared at court accused of murdering Mr Amirian, 42, in King's Lynn on December 20 2002.
He was remanded in custody and is due at Norwich Crown Court for a plea and directions hearing in February.
As reported in the EDP, Mr Amirian's burning body was discovered by a cyclist. He had been shot and stabbed before being set on fire.
Officers spent months trying to identify Mr Amirian's body.
He was finally identified after Cambridgeshire police and Interpol in Belgium traced his widow and four-year-old son.
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EMPLOYEE 'HAD VITAL EVIDENCE' Nicki Walker
Norfolk Eastern Daily Press, UK Oct 12 2005
A factory employee told a jury at Norwich Crown Court yesterday how she gave detectives the vital breakthrough in their bid to identify a dead man and track down his killers.
Vanessa Armstrong, who works at Cooper Roller Bearings in King's Lynn, recognised a scorched piece of memo, found next to the dead man's burning body, dumped in a field at Upton, near Peterborough.
The man had been shot and stabbed before being doused in petrol and set alight on December 21, 2002.
David Farrell, prosecuting, told the court that detectives spent almost a year trying to identify the body. But once they found the source of the memo, it helped them find the murder scene - Cooper Roller Bearings' medical room. This led them to the alleged killers - Armenians Nishan Bakunts, 28, and his father-in-law Misha Chatsjatrjan, 44 - and helped them identify the murdered man as 42-year-old fellow countryman Hovanhannes Amirian.
The court heard that after finding the partly-burned memo - bearing the names Talbot and Armstrong - detectives wrote to everyone with those surnames in the eastern region. More than 2000 letters were sent, asking recipients if they recognised the memo.
Ms Armstrong told the court yesterday that she contacted the police on September 4, 2003, after receiving a letter from the force and a copy of the burned memo.
She told the court: "I recognised it instantly, because it is something I do fortnightly. It was quite clearly my writing and my memo."
>>From the memo and with Mrs Armstrong's extra information, police were able to establish it had been sent to an employee, Paul Talbot, regarding a routine medical check at the factory.
Mr Talbot realised the last time he had the memo was in the factory's medical room.
After searching the room, forensic officers discovered traces of the dead man's blood on the couch and walls.
Bakunts, it emerged, was working as a security guard at the factory on the weekend of the murder.
In a statement read to the court, Det Insp Bert Deane, who led the murder investigation, said of the call from Mrs Armstrong: "It was a major breakthrough in the investigation."
Bakunts, of Lichfield Road, Yarmouth, and Chatsjatrjan, who was living in Holland, deny murdering Mr Amirian.
Home Office pathologist Dr Nat Cary said his examinations showed the man had died from gunshots to the face and multiple stabbing to his body.
Mr Cary said it was likely that two people carried out the attack.
He said it was unusual for a murderer to use one method of killing such as a gun and then change and use a knife.
The man would have been dead when the killers set his body alight, he added.
The trial continues.
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HUNT FOR 'BURNING BODY' KILLER Nicki Walker
Norfolk Eastern Daily Press, UK Oct 27 2005
It was almost the perfect murder. All the killer left behind was a burning body, a scrap of paper and little else. But a combination of determined police work and modern science brought the culprit to justice. Nicki Walker reports.
Cycling through the countryside on a clear December morning, an off-duty fireman smelt burning flesh.
In the distance, he could see a body smoldering in a field.
So began one of the most complex murder investigations ever carried out in Cambridgeshire.
The first hurdle was a major one; police did not even know the victim's identity or where he came from.
His body charred beyond recognition, all they knew is that he had died a brutal death, his killer having stabbed him several times in the body, then shot him four times in the head.
But stab wounds on his arms revealed he had not died instantly, but had tried desperately to fight off his killers.
When media and missing person appeals failed to identify the victim, scientists were called in to recreate a computer image of the mystery man's face in the hope someone would recognise him.
When this also failed, detectives turned their attentions to the two names written on a charred scrap of paper found near the body - Talbot and Armstrong.
They sent letters to more than 2000 people living in East Anglia with the surnames Talbot and Armstrong.
And then came the crucial breakthrough.
Vanessa Armstrong, a secretary at Cooper Roller Bearings in King's Lynn, recognised the scrap of paper. It was a memo she had sent out to Paul Talbot - an employee at the factory - three days before the body was found.
Mr Talbot had dropped the note in the bin in the factory medical room, following his appointment.
Police searched the room and found a box of latex gloves bearing the same serial number as gloves found near where the body had been found. They also found traces of blood matching that of the mystery man.
Security guard Nishan Bakunts, 28, had failed to show up for work again after the weekend of the murder.
After looking into his background, detectives discovered he had bought a gun prior to the killing and on the day the body was discovered, he had bought petrol and a can.
Bakunts was in the frame and police - having travelled to the continent and worked with Belgian police and Interpol - now knew the dead man was Hovannes Amirian 42, a fellow Armenian known as Sako.
He was the godfather of Bakunts and he had arrived in England a few months earlier
Checks revealed Sako was wanted for questioning about a murder in Belgium and was known to police forces across Europe as a gangster.
He had been staying with Bakunts at his home at Litchfield Road, Yarmouth.
Detectives established that Sako had a long-running family dispute with Bakunts' father-in-law Misha Chatsjatrjan, 44. He had travelled to Britain a few days before the body was found and left almost immediately afterwards.
The police net was finally closing in.
Bakunts was arrested in October 2003, but was not judged psychologically fit for interview until later in 2004.
And in January 2005 more than two years after the detectives began their investigation they travelled to Holland and working with the Dutch authorities extradited Chatsjatrjan to Britain for his trial alongside his son-in-law Bakunts.
It was the end of an extraordinary police investigation, and one, which Det Insp Bert Deane had always vowed to finish no matter how long it took him and his team.
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