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Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

Bonus: Business Wars & The Zankou Chicken Murders

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

iHeartPodcasts and CrimeOnline

News, True Crime

4.28.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2018

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Business is war. Sometimes the prize is your wallet, or your attention. Sometimes, it’s just the fun of beating the other guy. The outcome of these battles shapes what we buy and how we live. In the Zankou Chicken Murders, host David Brown dives into this popular California restaurant chain, and the family dynamics that catapulted the successful business into the headlines-- for murder. Subscribe to Business Wars today at wondery.fm/crimestories

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

There's no doubt about it. Business is war and wonder he drops you right in the thick of the battle with business wars.

0:09.6

From Pepsi vs Coke, Netflix vs Blutbuster and Marvel vs DC, there have been major, huge corporate battles.

0:18.8

The full stories I bet you've never heard. In Business Wars, the host David Brown brings you the brutal,

0:26.2

the unbornest truth behind some of history's greatest corporate wars.

0:31.9

And in the latest episode, David tells a story of a legendary LA restaurant chain,

0:37.3

Zonku Chicken, which became the source of shocking and untimely, deadly family conflict that threatened to

0:46.0

derail the business for good. And I mean deadly. If you're a fan of true crime, the Zonku

0:52.4

Chicken Murders episodes are for you. Whoever thought there'd be a Zonku Chicken Murder case, but there is.

1:00.4

You're about to hear a preview of Business Wars where you get to meet the family behind

1:05.5

Zonku Chicken Murders. And here how the family feud turned deadly. But while you're listening,

1:12.7

subscribe to Business Wars on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening right now.

1:22.7

January 14, 2003, a white stucco mansion high in the hills above Glendale, California,

1:31.2

LA's Armenian enclave. 56-year-old Margarose Iscundarian closes his bedroom door. He inches

1:40.0

down the stairs, step by painful step. He is the founder of the family-owned chain of

1:46.2

rotisserie restaurants Zonku Chicken, an LA institution. He's wearing a white silk suit that

1:52.7

hasn't fit him for decades. Several years battling cancer, if whittled him down from a burly,

1:58.5

middle-aged restaurant mogul to a frail, though dapper, invalid. He walks into the kitchen where his

2:05.4

wife Rita sits at the table sipping a cup of mulberry tea. Rita fell in love with Margarose in

2:11.7

Lebanon when she was just 12. Seeing him now, she can't believe how handsome he looks for a man so sick,

2:20.0

so near death. Ah, Margarose, you look like a movie star. But where do you think you're going in

2:27.0

that fancy suit? You're too weak. You haven't been out of that house on your own in months.

2:33.2

Margarose fiddles with the cuffs of his stiffly-starched dress shirt. He looks anywhere but into his wife's

...

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