A 22-year-old man was charged Thursday with killing an “American Idol” music supervisor and her musician husband who walked into their Encino home during a burglary.
Raymond Boodarian is accused of fatally shooting Robin Kaye and her husband Tom DeLuca on July 10, though their bodies were not found by Los Angeles Police until four days later after police were sent to the home for a welfare check.
Boodarian is charged with two counts of murder with enhancements for allegedly killing the couple during the commission of a robbery, intentionally using a firearm, and committing multiple murders. He is also charged with burglary.
During an initial court appearance in Van Nuys Thursday afternoon, Boodarian was ordered to remain in jail. His arraignment was delayed until Aug. 20.
If convicted, Boodarian would face either life without parole or being sentenced to death if prosecutors seek the death penalty.
According to police, officers visited the Encino home around the time Boodarian was believed to be inside.
LAPD responded to a report of a possible break-in at 4 p.m. July 10 and determined that nothing appeared out of place at the couple’s residence, LAPD Lt. Guy Golan said.
Officers on foot reported that the property was locked and no one responded inside, while a police helicopter from overhead reported not seeing anything suspicious.
Kaye and DeLuca’s bodies were discovered Monday when officers responded to a welfare check at the couple’s homes in the 4700 block of White Oak Avenue. The following day, officers with a joint LAPD/FBI task force arrested Boodarian.
According to police, Kaye, an “American Idol” music supervisor and her rock musician husband, DeLuca, were returning to their $4.5-million Encino home when they came upon Booderian already inside.
Booderian allegedly shot Kaye and DeLuca multiple times then ran off, locking the door behind him. Though the couple’s house was well fortified, police said, the suspect had managed to get in through an unlocked door.
According to Golan, the department received a call at 4 p.m. the day the couple was killed and the caller described seeing a person climbing over a fence into the property. Golan said officers went to the home, but did not get any response and saw nothing out of place, and a helicopter was flown over the property because it was difficult to access.
By then, the couple had already been killed, LAPD officials said. Boodarian left after about half an hour, police said.
The delay in finding Kaye and DeLuca’s bodies bore similarities to two other homicides in the Valley where police were called the location and did not immediately find a victim and left the scene.
Menashe Hidra’s body was found April 26 inside his fifth-floor Valley Village apartment after an assailant broke into a neighboring unit, jumped from the balcony to his unit and attacked him, investigators said.
Three days before, neighbors had called 911 and reported hearing shouting and a struggle coming from the apartment. Officers responded to those calls, knocked on the door and left without finding anything. Erick Escamilla, 27, was eventually charged with the killing, along with an unrelated homicide from 2022.
The same day that Hidra’s body was discovered, police found the body of Aleksandre Modebadze, who was beaten to death inside his Woodland Hills home. In that case, a woman inside the home called LAPD about 12:30 a.m. and reported three people had broken into her home and were beating her significant other before the call suddenly cut out, according to law enforcement sources. The 911 operator tried to call back multiple times without success. Shortly before 1 a.m., officers arrived at the home but no one answered the door, there was no noise coming from inside the home and the blinds were down, the sources told The Times.
Modebadze was later found by officers badly beaten with a traumatic head injury and eventually died of his injuries. Authorities found Modebadze’s suspected killers hours after the incident.
In this Encino case, Golan said the department would investigate why the couple, who were both 70, were not found earlier and whether the officers involved acted appropriately. LAPD officials said the front door of the home was not visible from the outside during the initial response.
According to court records, Boodarian was charged in three instances of misdemeanor battery last year. Those charges were ultimately dropped a series of hearings related to his mental competency and a conservatorship investigation.
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