The Zankou Chicken murders occurred in 2003 when Mardiros Iskenderian, heir to the popular Zankou Chicken restaurant chain, shot and killed his mother, Marguerite, and sister, Dzovig, before taking his own life. Suffering from terminal cancer and reportedly struggling with family tensions over the business.
Full Episode
So there's a locally famous restaurant in Los Angeles called Zancou Chicken. You may have heard of it. Did you know that one of the founders unalived his own family? And it all starts with this guy, who we'll just call Dad, and his wife, who we'll just call Mom. And one day, it's 1962 in Lebanon, and Mom and Dad start up a restaurant called Zancou, where they serve chicken.
And this restaurant does really well. A lot of locals love it. But then, 20 years go by. And it's now the 80s and everything changes because Lebanon falls into a civil war. And mom, dad and the rest of the family, they're like, fuck all this. And they flee the country and they move from Beirut all the way over to Los Angeles. And so they're in L.A.
and they're trying to make the American dream work. And they open a couple of different family businesses like a dry cleaning business. And they all kind of fail. But one day, mom and dad's son, his name is Marderos, so Marderos starts noticing there's a lot of fast food places around Los Angeles, but there's not a lot of Middle Eastern options.
And so he's like, let's get back into the restaurant business and open a Zancou here. And so that's what they do. In 1983, mom, dad, Marderos, and the family open a Zancou Chicken in East Hollywood. This is actually a picture of it right here. And within about a year, it catches on.
Word of mouth starts to spread, it gets some good reviews from food critics, and suddenly this little hole in the wall is bringing in two million dollars a year, which is really good for this immigrant family. But Marderos, he sees this and he loves this success, but he thinks it can do better, and he starts thinking about expanding and opening more Zancou Chicken restaurants.
And so he goes to mom and dad and he's like, yeah, we should open more locations. And they're like... Nah. Cause see, mom and dad, they're happy with what they have, they're getting older, they don't want the headache of running a bunch of new restaurants. But Marderos keeps insisting that this is such a good opportunity for them.
And then finally, in 1991, mom and dad give in, and they agree to expand. However, they work out a deal, and this deal becomes very important later. Any new Zancou restaurants Marderos opens are 100% his. while the original restaurant in East Hollywood belongs to mom, dad, and their other daughters, Marderos sisters.
And it's the same kind of restaurant, same name, same menu, but they don't share profit. He owns his, and they own theirs. And so they agree, and then boom, Marderos gets to work, and he opens four new locations in the Los Angeles area, and they're all doing great, bringing in a ton of profit. But then, suddenly, everything changes again, because tragedy strikes. Dad, unfortunately, passes away.
And now, suddenly, Marderos, he's the patriarch, and he's sort of now the head of this small business empire. But whatever, he's doing great. He's running all his stores, him and his family are getting along good, everything is going smoothly. Until... One day, Marderos, he gets a little pain in his abdomen. No big deal, it'll probably go away. But it doesn't go away.
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