Armenians hoped Yanigian's trial would provide a vehicle for proving the massacres in a court of law, while there were still surviving witnesses. Yanigian took the Armenian Genocide witness stand, accompanied by his friend and interpreter, Santa Barbaran Aram Saroyan, the uncle of famous author William Saroyan. Yanigian told of his 26 family members killed in the massacres, and how he watched in hiding as marauding Turks slit his brother's throat. Finally, he said that he killed the Turkish