- AGBU NEWS : Jack Torosian remembers the shock, "A man who had been in church at the time of the stabbing came that day to tell us about it."
Dobkin's family lived a few blocks away and her father, who was a doctor, rushed to the church to find the Archbishop, a friend of his, already dead. When her horror subsided, the reality of what happened set in, "The incident split the community into two distinct political factions."
New York's Daily News ran "Murder in a Holy Place" as a headline and reported, "...two men leaped from the pews as the Archbishop passed them both with knives, very large knives as were used to skin cattle, knives suitable for a man as big as Tourian. Disemboweled on the spot, he fell wordlessly to his knees and gasped for just an instant...enraged parishioners flung themselves upon the pair and beat them senseless with canes and umbrellas, eight other men fled to the street. There had been a whole squad of slayers come this day with blood hatreds festering in their hearts."
The New York Times allotted the story front page coverage and followed its developments closely. On December 26, 1933 they published what they saw as the murder's motivations, "The Archbishop's clashes with anti-Soviet sympathizers in this country, at Chicago, in this city and near Worcester, Mass., had been largely over the question whether the Soviet banner, bearing the hammer and sickle, should be displayed at Armenian functions."
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