By Grigor Tamazyan

A 40-year-old husband killed his 36-year-old ex-wife in their shared apartment at 9 Marks Street in Alaverdi, Armenia.

On July 26, 2015, Samvel Stepanyan, while preparing coffee in the kitchen, heard Serine Konyan’s telephone conversation: “my donkey is preparing coffee for me.” Believing  his wife was speaking with her lover at that moment and angered by such behavior, Stepanyan stabbed her 10 times.

He told police they were married on July 14, 1998.  They had two sons, ages 14 and 10 at the time of the murder.

He said the first years of marriage were mainly peaceful. But as the family's financial situation grew worse, they took loans from banks and borrowed money from other people, which they were unable to pay. They began having lots of quarrels.

The couple separated and reunited several times. On February 26, 2010, they got an official divorce by law. Later they reunited again.

In 2014 Stepanyan went to Russia for work. On July 3, 2015, he got a message from a fake account Aper-Aper on odnoklassniki.ru social media, stating that his wife was cheating  with another man. The account had no picture and was deleted afterwards.

He called his wife and asked if it was true. She said she was in love with another man. She said she did not love him and wanted to divorce, so she could communicate freely with the person she wanted, the victim's mother told police.

Stepanyan chose not to believe his wife. When he returned to Alaverdi on July 16, he didn’t find his wife in their  house. He found her at her mother-in-law's house and asked her to come back. But she said she wanted a free life because she had a lover.

On July 23, Stepanyan together with their young son Zhora begged her not to leave them. She agreed to move back into their apartment with the kids, but only if Stepanyan would live separately with his own parents.

On July 24, Stepanyan saw his wife chatting on the phone. When he asked, she confessed it was her lover, 27-year-old Zorayr Shahverdyan from Alaverdi, and that they had been in a relationship for over a year.

On July 25, Stepanyan and his wife went together to meet Shahverdyan. He tried to say they were just friends. But Konyan again said they had been in a relationship for a year.

On July 26 at 7:30 am, Stepanyan killed his wife. Several minutes later, his mother Lyudmila and brother Simon arrived at the apartment. They later told police that Stepanyan told them that he was going to commit suicide.

“If you see what I did in the bedroom, you will understand me,” he told them. Entering the bedroom, his mother and brother saw the bloody body of Serine Kunyan and called the emergency service.

Stepanyan testified that after killing his wife, he wanted to commit suicide by drinking the mercury in a thermometer. But he went to police at his brother’s recommendation. There was no evidence in his forensic medical examination that he drank any mercury.

Shahverdyan testified that he did have a relationship with the victim. He said he knew that  Kunyan was legally divorced before entering into a relationship with her.

The victim's mother Alvard Kunyan, said Stepanyan had left her with huge debts. “Serine was working at a KATA supermarket as a sales consultant. She couldn’t repay the debts; her wage was very small," she said.

Shushanik Shahnazaryan, the supervisor of the victim’s mother, said she is a street cleaner in Alevardi. "After losing her daughter, now the mother has to earn money to pay back debtors,” he said.

Stepanyan's own mother remembers the tragedy with tears in her eyes: “I was in a very bad situation at that time. Within four months, my daughter-in-law has died, my son got arrested, another son Simon died, and also my daughter's husband. There were gossips and blaming in society. Most importantly, I had to take care of the kids.”

Lyudmila Stepanyan is waiting for her son to get out of prison. “We live in a very bad situation," she said. "I hope that I will live until my son come back from prison. I want him to come back to his kids.”

The kids still live with her, but they do communicate with their other grandmother. The two women do not speak.

On February 12, 2016, the Lori Region Court sentenced Stepanyan to nine years in prison for murder, deliberate deprivation of life.

 Stepanyan admitted his guilt in court, said he understood what he had done, and regretted it. He thinks that instead of killing her, he should have just taken the children and left her. But he couldn't control his anger.

Stepanyan is serving his sentence in Vanadzor penitentiary.

Femicide Victim's Kids Four Years After Tragedy

Four years after the murder of Serine Kunyan, her children with Samvel Stepanyan live with their father's mother, Lyudmila Stepanyan.

Zhora Stepanyan is 15 years old and studying in the ninth grade. Gor Stepanyan, 19, graduated from Alaverdi State College. He had a loading job at a shop, but does not work now . He does not have to serve in the army until his brother is an adult.

They live in very poor conditions in an old apartment. Their only source of income is a monthly government pension 53.000 dram ($110) and a monthly 36,000 dram ($75) salary Lyudmila Stepanyan earns as a cleaner.

"After her death, I was in a very difficult situation," said Lyudmila Stepanyan. "There were rumors and criticisms about my family. My son was in prison, my daughter-in-law was dead, and my other son, Suren, died several months later. All the responsibility to care for the children was  on me."

Gor and Zhora Stepanyan continue to live in the same apartment where the murder of their mother took place. Lyudmila Stepanyan's apartment is in the same building.

Lyudmila Stepanyan says she is not in good health, but has to work as a cleaner to take care of the children.

"We have not received any support from the government: Even this house where we live is not our property. It belongs to the Alaverdi Copper Factory, and they do not want to give ownership to us."

Zhora Stepanyan did not want to talk about the tragedy that occurred in his family, but he shared his interests and dreams:

"I'm interested in power lifting. It’s a sport where you should train yourself and lift as much weight as you can. I have received many awards, become a champion in the country, and I want to continue my career in sports. I'm also very motivated to go to military service in several years."

His teacher Ophelia Ghumashyan says he is very sensitive and is not a very good student. She says school teachers support him in every way: "All students and teachers are very careful and do their best to make Zhora feel good and be like everyone else."

Classmate Seyran Ghumashyan, 15, said Zhora is more interested in sports than in learning. He says Zhora has good relations with students, but is not very communicative.

"I did not know about this tragedy when it happened to  their family," says Armine Alikhanyan, who was one of Gor's college lecturers. "I was trying to push him to learn, but Gor was always unprepared. "Then the my supervisor told me about the tragedy, and after that I was not pushing him anymore, but trying to support him. All lecturers were just giving marks even when he was not prepared, so he could graduate from college."

Zhora and Gor  often visit their mother's mother Alvard Koonyan. She gives them gifts and clothes.

The boys see their future only in sports, and would like to get government support.

"I constantly pray that God give me health, so I stay alive until my son comes out of prison and reaches out to his kids. Now they depend on me," said Lyudmila Stepanyan.  

"My son will still has four years to serve in prison. It was reduced by one year in the last amnesty."