A six-day-old baby girl, a two-year-old boy, and their father never saw it coming — and the person investigators believe pulled the trigger was the one person in the world sworn to protect them.
Story Snapshot
- Los Angeles police investigators believe 30-year-old Marine Basmajian shot her husband Khajag, 31, and their two young children before dying by a self-inflicted gunshot wound in their North Hills home.
- The victims include two-year-old Alec Basmajian and six-day-old Ella Basmajian — a newborn who had been home from the hospital less than a week.
- Family members have come forward describing the chilling final hours before the killings, adding a deeply personal dimension to what police are treating as a murder-suicide.
- The Los Angeles County medical examiner classified the husband’s and children’s deaths as homicides and the mother’s death as a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
What Police Found at the North Hills Scene
Officers responded to the family’s North Hills home at approximately 7:50 p.m. and found all four members of the Basmajian family dead from gunshot wounds. [1] Los Angeles Police Department homicide detectives publicly stated they were investigating the case as a murder-suicide, with evidence gathered at the scene suggesting Marine Basmajian was the shooter. [1] No outside suspects were sought. The house was locked to the world, and the horror inside was entirely contained within the family unit.
Family of killer California mom who slaughtered husband and 6-day-old reveals chilling final hours before bloodbath
By Daniel Farr
Published June 6, 2026, 10:52 p.m. ETA California family’s joyful gathering just hours after welcoming a newborn turned into a horrifying… pic.twitter.com/8R6p2YuXHC
— Carolyn Rockey (@CarolynWRockey) June 7, 2026
The medical examiner’s findings gave the provisional police framing its hardest edge. The Los Angeles County medical examiner identified Marine Basmajian as having died from a gunshot wound to the head, while the deaths of her husband and two children were classified as homicides. [4] That distinction — homicide versus suicide — is the forensic line that separates victim from perpetrator in cases like this, and here the examiner drew it clearly. The full investigative file has not been made public, but the evidentiary direction has not wavered since the first night.
A Six-Day-Old Baby and the Weight of That Detail
Ella Basmajian was six days old. [4] That single fact has stopped people cold since this story broke, and for good reason. A newborn represents the most helpless form of human life imaginable — a child who had experienced almost nothing of the world. Her two-year-old brother Alec and their father Khajag, 31, were equally defenseless against what investigators believe unfolded inside that home. [4] The family had just expanded. By all outward appearances, life was beginning, not ending.
Family members who have spoken publicly described the final hours before the shooting as deeply unsettling in hindsight. [7] The details they shared paint a picture of a woman whose inner world had apparently collapsed in ways those around her either did not fully recognize or did not know how to stop. Whether postpartum crisis, relationship breakdown, or something else entirely drove Marine Basmajian to this point remains an open question that investigators have not yet answered publicly. What the family’s account does is remind everyone that warning signs, even visible ones, do not always translate into intervention in time.
How These Cases Lock Into a Public Narrative Before the Full Picture Emerges
Family annihilation cases follow a predictable media arc. Police arrive, issue a preliminary statement using words like “apparent” or “investigators believe,” and local outlets repeat that framing within hours. [2] [3] By the time the full forensic reconstruction is complete, the public has already absorbed the early version as settled fact. That is not necessarily wrong — in this case, the physical evidence, the medical examiner’s classification, and the absence of any alternative suspect all point in the same direction — but it is worth understanding how the narrative hardens before the investigation formally closes.
The North Hills case carries all the markers that typically confirm the early framing: a closed household, deaths limited to family members, a medical examiner distinguishing homicide from suicide, and no evidence of a third party. [1] [3] Law enforcement’s public confidence in the murder-suicide conclusion appears grounded, not speculative. The harder questions — what broke inside this family, who knew, and whether anything could have interrupted the trajectory — are the ones that linger long after the crime scene tape comes down. Those questions have no clean forensic answer, and they never do.
Sources:
[1] Web – Family of killer California mom who slaughtered husband and 6-day-old …
[2] Web – Evidence suggests L.A. mom pulled trigger in murder-suicide that …
[3] Web – Identities released in North Hills murder-suicide – Los Angeles Times
[4] Web – North Hills murder-suicide: Mother identified after allegedly shooting …
[7] YouTube – Mother kills her 2 children in North Hills



