Arthur Davodian's roommate arrived home to discover a gruesome scene at his Tujunga condominium.
Davodian's headless body was stretched out on the living room floor, punctured with stab wounds up to six inches deep.
A trail of blood led through the apartment's hallway to a bedroom where the door had been kicked open. Inside, Kimberly Crayton, Davodian's girlfriend, lay covered in blood. She had been stabbed 19 times during a fierce fight for her life.
Davodian's head was found beside a parking lot a short walk from the condominium complex.
Police focused on the last man seen with the victims alive: Neil Revill, a small-time drug dealer and friend of Davodian. Nearly a decade later, jurors are weighing the fate of the 38-year-old British national after a six-week murder trial.
The case has been marked by the rare courtroom appearance of a jailhouse informant, who testified that Revill confessed to him about the October 2001 killings in grisly detail years later, while they were housed together in an L.A. County jail.
The use of jailhouse informants has sparked controversy for more than two decades, after revelations of perjured testimony resulting in wrongful convictions.
In the aftermath of a scandal in the late 1980s, the L.A. County district attorney's office adopted guidelines requiring strong corroboration before prosecutors could use a jailhouse informant. Since 2006, the office says, it has approved the use of such informants in six cases, though not all of those witnesses have testified at trial.
In Revill's case, prosecutors say, DNA and other evidence help confirm the testimony of the informant, Benjamin Chloupek. He and Revill grew so close in jail that other inmates referred to them as the "Neil and Pek show," Modder told jurors.
But defense attorneys have attacked Chloupek's credibility and argued that investigators were sloppy and overlooked evidence pointing to someone else as the killer.
"They have … built their case around this liar," attorney Michael M. Crain said in closing arguments last week. "Don't let this sociopathic con man con you."
