The Region - News from Aug. 27, 1985

A 37-year-old Los Angeles man has been convicted of first-degree murder in the 1983 shotgun slaying of Antranig Seyissian. Robert Edward Harris was convicted by a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury largely on the testimony of Seyissian’s widow and their 11-year-old son, both of whom witnessed the shooting in their Hollywood apartment. Although Harris “was clearly a hit man in the way the killing occurred,” Deputy Dist. Atty. John Asari said, no direct evidence was introduced during the trial to show “how he was hired or by whom.” Seyissian, 48, was the brother-in-law of Hagop Basteguian, who was arrested but never charged in the July, 1983, machine-gun ambush of four members of the Aga-Sarkisian family, also of Hollywood. Police believe that attack, in which one person died, was in retaliation for a November, 1982, shoot-out in a Hollywood parking lot that left one dead and nine wounded. Harris will be sentenced Oct. 3.