Meltdown: Indian in US kills family, self

Police say loss of fortune is the cause

LOS ANGELES: The global financial turmoil reduced him from millionaire to pauper. On Saturday, Karthick Rajaram, an MBA who used to work for
PricewaterhouseCoopers and Sony Pictures, shot dead his three sons, his wife and mother-in-law before turning the gun on himself in suburban Los Angeles.

Police on Monday said Rajaram ,45, left two suicide notes  — one for police and one for friends and relatives — and a will. “The source of it appears to be a financial state, a crisis if you will, that this man became embroiled in that has unfolded over the past weeks,” police said.

The man wrote in his suicide letter that he felt he had two options — to just kill himself or to kill himself and his family — and decided the second option was more honourable.
Officers found the mother-in-law, Indra Ramasesham, 69, dead in bed on the first floor. Upstairs, they found a 19-year-old son, Krishna Rajaram, dead in bed in the master bedroom.

The gunman’s 39-year-old wife, Subasri, was found in another room, also apparently shot while sleeping.

In an adjoining room, a 12-year-old son, Ganesha, was dead on the floor, and his 7-year-old brother, Arjuna, was dead in bed. Their father’s body also was found there with a handgun “in his grasp”. Police said the weapon had been bought on September 16.

Rajaram had been unemployed for several months. PricewaterhouseCoopers spokesman Steven Silber said Karthik Rajaram last worked for the company in 1999, but declined to offer any further information about him, given the time that passed since Rajaram’s employement there. Sony Pictures Entertainment spokesman Steve Elzer did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Investigators have determined that Rajaram was at least the part owner of a financial holding company.

He is listed as a co-manager of a corporation called SKGL LLC, which is incorporated in Nevada, according to state records. He formed the corporation for his family’s assets, said Las Vegas attorney Christopher R Grobl.

He did not know what sort of business SKGL was or why Rajaram incorporated it in Nevada.

The business was incorporated in 1999 and renewed its annual license in December 2007.

Krishna Rajaram was enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, as a junior majoring in business economics.

 The gated community, called Sorrento Pointe, is among several developments along curving lanes and cul de sacs set on the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains in Porter Ranch, about 37 kilometres northwest of downtown.

“It’s very quiet here,” said Ryan Ransdell, who lives across the street. «That’s what’s so shocking about this. ... You’d think someone would have heard it. You can hear a car door shut at night.”

The Los Angeles Times quoted a neighbour as saying “He loved those kids more than any man I’ve seen love his sons.”

The daily said Rajaram, who held an MBA from UCLA, was a hard-driving businessman involved in several financial ventures.

A 2001 article in The Daily Telegraph of London, under the headline “Bust, but big bucks for the big boys,” called Rajaram a “winner” in a deal for NanoUniverse, a Los Angeles- and London-based venture fund taken public on the London Stock Exchange.
For a 12,500-pound investment, Rajaram, one of the company’s founders, received 875,000 pounds — or about $1.2 million in 2001 dollars — after a voluntary liquidation, the newspaper reported.

He also sold his house in 2006, a calculated decision even though his wife, a bookkeeper at a pharmacy, did not want to move, their former neighbours said. He sold the house for $750,000, making a sizable profit on a home the couple purchased in 1997 for $274,000, LA Times said.