On December 24, 2008, the Ortega family invited all five of their grown children and their families to their home in Covina, California, a quiet, low-crime community about 15 miles (25 km) east of Los Angeles.
The Ortega couple, Joseph and Alice, loved Christmas, it was the time of the year they liked best to spend with their two eldest sons, James and Charles, and daughters Leticia, Alicia and Sylvia.
On Christmas Eve, the family played poker, and the party was in full swing. But in the middle of the Christmas celebration, the doorbell rang, and what happened next was horrifying.
Shortly after the doorbell rang, police received an emergency call from the Ortega family’s neighbor. The caller yelled, “Come right away! They’re burning down someone’s house.”
The fire department was sent to the house, but the calls continued to come in. Some even reported hearing gunfire from the house, and when the police arrived, it was total chaos.
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– When I arrived, it would be correct to describe it as apocalyptic, says a police officer.
Watch video: Language-confused Santa Claus made a huge mistake
Burnt beyond recognition
The only member of the Ortega family that the police could locate was Leticia, who had managed to escape the fire with her husband and her eight-year-old daughter and made it to a neighboring house. However, Leticia’s daughter had been shot, so the family was already on their way to the hospital.
The police were shocked when they were told what had happened. A person dressed as Santa Claus had unexpectedly arrived and started shooting, writes Oxygen.
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In the middle of the investigation into the chaotic situation, the police received a tip from a neighbour. She and her husband had seen a car leave their cul-de-sac around 23.45. After searching the car, police began searching the Ortegas’ burnt-out home.
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There they found bodies burned beyond recognition, which were later identified as the missing Ortega family members. A total of nine people were killed.
While police were busy investigating the Christmas Eve massacre, investigators in the neighboring town of Sylmar, California, were called to the home of Brad Parda, who returned home from a Christmas party to find his brother Bruce dead in a pool of blood.
When police arrived at the scene, they found a single shot from a 9mm handgun in Bruce’s head. A gun was in Bruce’s lap, and another gun was on the floor. The police also found another bullet hole in the ceiling, and believed that there could have been another shooter at the scene.
When investigators investigated Bruce, they discovered he had an ex-wife named Sylvia Ortiz, who divorced Bruce on December 18, 2008, just a few days before Christmas Eve.
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Fire crews remove items from a burned house in Covina, California, Friday, December 26, 2008. Foto: Nick Ut / AP Photo / NTB
Minelagt bil
The police dug deeper into the divorce to see if it had anything to do with Bruce’s death, and they discovered that Sylvia’s maiden name was Ortega, which meant she was one of the Ortega siblings killed on that fateful Christmas Eve.
Police did not believe the deaths were a coincidence and believed the suspect was still at large. And when they autopsied the bodies from the Ortega house, it turned out that all the victims had been shot at least once with a handgun.
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On Christmas Day, police also questioned Leticia, who said that despite her Santa suit, beard and hat, she could identify the shooter: her sister’s ex-husband, Bruce Pardo.
Santa killer Bruce Jeffrey Pardo took his own life and was found at his brother Brad’s home. Photo: Covina Police Department
Investigators then went back to Brad Bardo’s house where Bruce was found dead and searched his car, which turned out to be the same car that Ortega’s neighbors had described seeing in the street after the murders.
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Inside the car, the police found a Santa suit and thousands of cartridges. The car was also mined so that it exploded when the Santa suit was removed, and although the car exploded, no one was hurt.
When the autopsy on Bruce was completed, investigators were able to conclude that he had committed suicide and that there was no other shooter.
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A Santa suit in a 2008 Dodge Caliber driven by Bruce Jeffrey Pardo is seen in this photo released on December 26, 2008. Foto: Patrick Buchanan / Covina Police Department / Reuters / NTB
Melted solid
The autopsy also showed that he had “terrible third-degree burns” on his hands and arms, and that parts of his pixie pants had fused to his body. The police do not believe that he had plans to kill himself, as he did not leave any letter.
Around the same time, another man reported a mysterious car parked in front of his Pasadena home. The police checked the registration number and found that the car was rented by none other than Bruce Pardo.
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Although the car was not rigged with explosives, it was full of equipment, including a computer, clothes, water, food and maps of the United States and Mexico. Police believe that Bruce had planned to flee to Mexico after the murders.
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Bruce’s getaway car was also parked about 500 meters from the house of Scott Nord, Sylvia’s divorce lawyer. The police believed that Bruce may have planned to kill Scott, since he had been involved in the divorce.
In June 2008, Bruce Pardo was ordered to pay $1,785 a month in spousal support. When the divorce was finalized just before the holidays, spousal support was waived because he had lost his job at the time.
In July 2008, the employer discovered that Bruce had been billing clients for hours he had not worked, and he was fired.
– The divorce crushed Bruce Pardo. It became his obsession. Bruce began planning how to get revenge on Sylvia. I believe that he decided that he was not only going to kill her, but that he was going to kill everything she loved and remove it from the face of the earth, says a journalist with knowledge of the case.
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2008 Dodge Caliber driven by Bruce Pardo after a homemade incendiary bomb placed in the car exploded. Foto: Patrick Buchanan / Covina Police Department / Reuters / NTB
– Enough
During the Christmas Eve killing spree, Bruce took out a home-made flamethrower and sprayed 18 liters of petrol into the house when he ran out of bullets.
Bruce was unaware that there was an open flame somewhere inside the house, leading to the explosion that left him with horrific burns.
Instead of driving to kill Sylvia’s lawyer, Bruce went to his brother’s, where he reportedly killed himself due to the severe burns.
– I still wonder how the story would have ended if the suit hadn’t been set on fire. It could have ended in a completely different way, says Pardo’s neighbor.
– I cannot do anything to change what happened. I can only focus on the future. This is what he has done. Enough. I will not allow you to continue to consume us with your evil. You don’t want that anger to live in you every day and grow, like it did with this monster, Leticia says in an interview with Oprah.
2023-12-24 18:51:16
#Christmas #celebration #massacre
