YEREVAN. - The oldest Armenian thief in law Karlen Tovmasyan, also known as Guizh (Crazy) Karlen among the criminal circles, died at the age of 87 today. According to “Prime Crime,” due to sharp breakdown in health, Karlen was taken to one of hospitals in Yerevan, where he died this morning.

Despite his criminal lifestyle, which Karlen tried to remain loyal to even in his advanced years, he failed to become a criminal world icon in his homeland Armenia and abroad.  In people’s memory he has first of all stayed vivid by his inadequate actions, which earned him his nickname. They say, back in the Soviet period, Karlen threw at the policemen “grenades” made during his own experiments. He also appeared in a thief convention in a company of two light conduct ladies.  

Besides these absolutely harmless eccentricities, Karlen was also reproached for speculating his title and intriguing against his co-brothers, specifically Dzeto and Aso,without any good reasons for that. For one of such pretensions, which Karlen couldn’t justify anyhow, his fellows left him alone in a field after a thief convention, thus showing their attitude to him.

But ordinary people, who knew Karlen personally, say he was a good man, who was attentive and careful to others and never did wrong to anyone.