Man awaiting trial in slaying Armenian family is also accused of sniper-style killing of a prostitute

A man awaiting trial in the killing of an Armenian woman in March was charged Tuesday with the 2008 slaying of the woman's husband and 8-year-old daughter, as well as the fatal sniper-style attack on a prostitute on Sunset Boulevard earlier this year, reports Los Angeles Times.

The three additional murder charges against Alberd Tersargyan, 60, on Tuesday, brought together two seemingly separate investigations that had confounded police for months, adding more drama to a case that has shaken Los Angeles' Little Armenia neighborhood.

Tersargyan, who came to the U.S. nearly a decade ago, once served in the Armenian army and fancied himself "a professional killer," said detectives, who marveled at the deception and plotting they say he used in carrying out the slayings.

"Talk about betrayal. What he put in motion — it was a pretty incredible plan," said Los Angeles Police Det. Danny Myers, an investigator in the case.

Tersargyan was arrested in April, a few weeks after 38-year-old Karine Hakobyan was shot at close range and was discovered by her teenage daughter slumped in the front seat of her car. Police could find no witnesses who had seen or heard the shooting, and Tersargyan became a suspect only after police received a tip from his employer.

Hakobyan's killing was a brutal coda for a family that had immigrated to the United States from Armenia in 2003. Fifteen months earlier, in December 2008, the same daughter had come home to her apartment on Tamarind Avenue to find the bodies of her father, Khachik Safaryan, and younger sister. They, too, had been shot and, again, detectives could find no one who had heard or seen the attack.