by Anna Hakobyan

Liana Manukyan, 28, was killed by 14 knife wounds from her husband Grigor Grigoryan, 33, in their home. Their 6-year old son was at home when it happened.

The tragedy took place in the kitchen of the couple’s domik (shelter since the earthquake of 1988) at 41/6 Khrimyan Hayrik street, Gyumri, Armenia on February 26, 2014 at about 10 p.m. According to the court decision, Grigoryan was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for deliberate deprivation of life according to Article 104 (1).

According to court documents, a simple quarrel between wife and husband started when he asked her to prepare the bed as he wanted to sleep. She refused and said she was busy.

Tehmina Manukyan, a mutual cousin of both, was at their home. She and the victim were sitting in front of Tehmina Manukyan’s computer, which made the husband angry. The quarrel continued in the kitchen, where the victim blamed her husband for treating her badly all the time and for overusing alcohol.

She took the kitchen knife first and asked him to kill her, but her husband snatched it, cutting his own fingers. She continued insulting him and spoke about a divorce. Grigoryan became furious and attacked her with the same knife. It broke and he took another small one and continued. An exam showed that there were 14 cuts on her body. He stopped only after seeing blood.

In the meanwhile, Tehmina Manukyan took the couple’s 6-year-old child out of the house. She called the victim’s relatives and they called the ambulance. On the way to the hospital she died. Grigoryan voluntarily went to the police.

Defense lawyer Ishkhan Vanoyan said the victim had been in touch with two men via Odnoklassniki.ru social network as well as via phone calls, and that Grigoryan had known it. “He even had talked to one of the men and asked him to stay away from his wife,” Vanoyan said. According to a court document, a request by Vanoyan for expert examination of computer and phone conversations was denied by Judge Harutyun Movsesyan.

Both Vanoyan and the mother of the victim Karine Manukyan said that there was no serious reason for a quarrel. Karine Manukyan said Grigoryan was alcohol addicted and used to systematically beat her daughter, but the latter tolerated everything for the sake of her brother as Grigoryan had threatened to kill him if she decided to leave.

They used to live in capital city of Yerevan, and Grigoryan worked there in construction. Then they moved to Gyumri in the northern Shirak region and lived in the domik which was bought by her mother, instead of paying rent in Yerevan. After regular violence by Grigoryan, Manukyan moved to her mother’s place and stayed there for six months. Then she decided to go back to her husband.

“I kept her for six months. I made a big mistake to let her go. If I kept her here, it would never have happened. I feel myself guilty,” Karine Manukyan said.

But Grigoryan was incorrigible. “He even used to sell his wife’s jewelry for drinking,” she said. “His father also was sentenced for committing a murder; he is imprisoned in Russia for some 25 years.”

The victim’s mother does not agree that preparing the bed was the reason for the quarrel. She mentioned content published by the Armenian news site Shamshyan.com right after the murder. The photos showed that the bed was ready, and there was also a sofa covered to be used as a bed. “How can he ask about preparing a bad, when photos show that the bed is ready?" she asks. "Who would (make a bed) after that tragedy?”

She says her grandchild saw everything. The lawyer Vanoyan disagrees, saying he wasn't in the kitchen so he did not see how the murder happened.

“He is mostly silent, but sometimes very aggressive,” his grandmother said. “We took him to psychologists, but no result. Now he takes chess classes and is interested in sports. He will grow up, and he can decide whether he forgives his father.”

Psychologist Ruzanna Baloyan said that in such cases aggression accumulates and may burst out at some point. “The child needs to go to psychologist for a very long period of time,” she said.

He now lives under the guardianship of his grandmother. Grigoryan never recognized paternity, and they hadn’t even registered their marriage in order to be eligible for the state pension provided for single mothers, according to Vanoyan. Grigoryan recognized paternity after he was sentenced but the child still has his mother’s last name.

Vanoyan said that after the first conviction, they applied to appellate court but the application was denied. He wanted to apply again but the husband stopped him.

Vanoyan also sent an application to prosecutor Raffi Aslanyan with an inquiry to requalify the charges from article 104 to article 105 to reduce the sentence, based on the perpetrator’s state of upmost excitement.

Vanoyan said it could not be a deliberate murder because Grigoryan stabbed her several times in different parts of her body. “If it was intentional, he would stab somewhere which would immediately kill her," the lawyer argued. "He was in a state of insanity, and the amount of alcohol he used that evening was 10 times less than the level for which a crime is considered alcohol-caused.”

He listed other mitigating factors including having a child under 14, that he went to police voluntarily, and that jealousy led to severe mental insanity at the time of the crime. He also said that living in his mother-in-law’s house is considered to be dishonorable for an Armenian man, which could also make him oppressed and irritated.

According to the psychologist Baloyan, not having a permanent job and somehow being dependent on the wife’s family, living in hard social conditions -- and moreover suspecting his wife was committing adultery -- might have created a complicated psychological and mental state which could drive the perpetrator to the point of committing the crime, using a simple quarrel as a pretext.

The victim’s mother denies any adultery. She said her daughter always tolerated him.

“My daughter didn’t have a job, but she used to make compositions from napkins, tissues and decorative stuff.," she said. "She would stay awake late at night and do that work. The husband would take them to market and sell them, then he would spend that money on alcohol. My daughter would complain: 'Mom, I don’t sleep at night and work, and he wastes that money on drinking.' ”

Two or three hours before the murder, Manukyan went to her mother’s house to take a shower because they did not have one in her domik. Then she went home.

 Her mother is not at all satisfied with the term of imprisonment. “My daughter is gone forever, but he will be set free in only five years,” she said.