Robert “Bob” Boyajian, a 74-year-old White/Caucasian male, disappeared from his Bass Lake, California home on Saturday, July 12, 2025. When he missed a Monday appointment two days later, an employee requested a welfare check. Deputies found his truck, briefcase, and the Apple Watch he was known to wear inside the residence, but his phone, wallet, and bedding were gone—small absences that felt ominous in a house otherwise undisturbed. His death date and age were later confirmed in a funeral notice, even as the search shifted swiftly from missing-person to homicide.
Detectives trying to review home surveillance learned the system was offline; the DVR that should have held recent footage was missing. Their attention turned to 21-year-old Audrik Matevosian of Clovis, a young IT worker who had serviced Boyajian’s cameras and who, during questioning, repeatedly spoke of Boyajian in the past tense.
Bank records showed a $1,000 withdrawal from Boyajian’s account the night after the killing, and ATM images identified Matevosian at the machine; a search of his room turned up two handguns—one reported stolen and another registered to Boyajian. After first claiming suicide and then assisted suicide, Matevosian confessed, telling investigators he killed Boyajian in the night, resentful over perceived slights to his family and seeking financial gain.
What emerged was a picture of planning. At least a week before the crime, Matevosian bought a body bag online and rented a car. He called to make sure Boyajian was home, spent the night as he had done before, then killed him around midnight on July 12. He said he wrapped the body in the stripped bedding, sealed it in the body bag, and drove south to a cave in the Mojave Desert—an off-road spot he and Boyajian had visited earlier—where he buried the remains. Following his directions, deputies recovered the body; they also found Boyajian’s phone discarded near Fresno’s Woodward Park, his wallet hidden in Matevosian’s gym locker, and the shovel used in the burial.
Matevosian was arrested and booked without bail on charges including first-degree murder with special-circumstance allegations and grand theft; prosecutors also filed a firearm enhancement. He pleaded not guilty at an initial court appearance as San Bernardino County assumed coroner jurisdiction because the body was found there. The sheriff emphasized that investigators had identified only one suspect in the case. Though beloved in the Bass Lake and Fresno communities, Boyajian’s final days became the scaffolding for a methodical investigation—one that moved from a quiet lakeside home to a desert cave and back into a courtroom, where the confession and trail of evidence now anchor the prosecution’s narrative.
