THE FACTS

Posted: MARCH 22, 2026 

Soghomon would spend just over 10 weeks in jail awaiting trial. He turned 25 on April 2, without even a mention in his Prison Diary. A month later, on Sunday, May 1st, Soghomon would be visited by the prison Chaplain. He spoke almost no German, and the Chaplain even less Armenian, but they both had a bit of conversational French in their repertoire, Soghomon having spent over a year as a cobblers apprentice in Paris. He listens dutifully to the minister’s

homily and seems appreciative for the visit. Most significantly, the Chaplain would see to it that Soghomon received an Armenian language Bible. The grandson of a Protestant preacher, and a son of the first Christian nation, it was a welcome familiar tome. He plunged in immediately and even ponders that the Beast of St. John’s Revelation might have been the very man he felled.

Three days later (May 4) he receives another Holy man in the prison visiting room, a “Vartabed” (Armenian Apostolic Priest), who gifts him a Jerusalem Cross. In the Vartabed’s own memoir he claims to have written a poem while in “Tehlirian’s very prison cell.” Perhaps he mistook the visiting room for the cell, but the subject of the poem seems to confirm sentiments Soghomon would testify to in the trial. The poem, titled “The Armenian Mother Speaks to Her Son” concludes with the line “You will not be my son, nor a hero, if you do not spill the blood of this executioner.” A month later, Tehlirian would testify that his mother’s ghost appeared to him and had guided him to this fate. Indeed, in his memoir, Soghomon recounts with regularity a number of encounters with those “beyond the grave” including his mother, his brother, and even former comrades from his military unit. It would fall to clinical experts to testify to the reasonableness of such claims. The following excerpt from the trial testimony likely held some sway over the ultimate verdict.

June 2, 1921, Berlin

PROFESSOR DR. LIEPMANN:

“I found the defendant to be a man of rare sincerity. He did not resort to any histrionics. On the contrary, he was very reserved. There is a certain resignation about him, such that, no matter what happens, he no longer has any interest in living. It is perfectly clear that we are not dealing here with the act of an insane person. It is also clear that the act was not committed while the defendant was in a confused state of mind, such as during an epileptic attack. On the contrary, we have to delve into an area we are not too well acquainted with — the pathology of the human mind.

I believe him when he says that those recollections took physical form; he could see them and smell the stench of the corpses. In my opinion, these attacks are the expression of severe psychic shock. No matter what we asked Tehlirian — Did he consider himself competent to commit the killing? Did he consider himself competent to play the role of judge? — his answers were always the same, i.e., that his mother had obligated him to perform the act of killing and hence there was no further question as far as he was concerned. I asked him whether or not being a Christian presented an obstacle to him. He told me he was well aware that Christianity prohibits killing but after seeing a vision of his mother he knew that he was on the right track. His vision of his mother was an all-powerful force, thus making any further argument pointless.”