Man in Santa Suit Kills 8, Himself

[karyn]

from washington post

Ex-Wife, 2 Others Missing After Shootings and Fire Near L.A.



Bruce Jeffrey Pardo is seen in an undated photo provided Thursday, Dec. 25, 2008, by the Covina, Calif. Police Department. Covina Police have identified the 45-year-old Prado as a "person of interest" after a man in a Santa suit opened fire at a Christmas Eve party in a suburban Los Angeles home that subsequently caught fire, leaving three people dead. (AP Photo/Covina Police Department) (AP)

By Christina Hoag
Associated Press
Friday, December 26, 2008; Page A02

COVINA, Calif., Dec. 25 -- Stinging from an acrimonious divorce, a man plotting revenge against his ex-wife dressed up like Santa Claus, went to his former in-laws' Christmas Eve party and slaughtered at least eight people before setting the house ablaze and, hours later, killing himself, police said.

Bruce Pardo's ex-wife and her parents remained missing after the rampage, and it was feared their remains were among the ashes of the house. Pardo allegedly used a bizarre homemade device that sprayed flammable liquid before igniting the fire.

Pardo, 45, had no criminal record and no history of violence, according to police, but he was angry following last week's settlement of his divorce after a marriage that lasted barely a year.

"It was not an amicable divorce," police Lt. Pat Buchanan said Thursday.

The massacre began, police said, when an 8-year-old girl answered Pardo's knock at the door. Pardo, carrying what appeared to be a large present, pulled out a handgun and shot her in the face, then began shooting indiscriminately as about 25 partygoers tried to flee.

A 16-year-old girl was shot in the back, and a 20-year-old woman broke her ankle when she escaped by jumping from a second-story window. Those two, and the 8-year-old, remained hospitalized Thursday. All were expected to recover.

The gift-wrapped box Pardo was carrying contained a pressurized device that sprayed a liquid around the house, police said.

When the fire was extinguished early Thursday, officers found three charred bodies in the living-room area.

[Raza]

People shouldn't kill things that are cuter than they are.

[Ajax Knucklebones]

If there is a Hell, this sick fuck is hangin' there right now.

[Amelia G]

Really tragic. Some people are just pushed too far. How big a haul should his ex-wife have gotten after one year of marriage? If it was enough to make a formerly non-violent man do this, then I hope that judge loses a few nights of sleep too.

[Raza]

I dunno... shooting an 8 year old girl in the face is pretty out there, even by violent men's standards. I imagine that reaching a level of callousness like that gradually would leave some sort of signs for people to pick up on.

Of course, there's no accounting for simple ignorance on the part of law enforcement. They might simply be unaware of his history.


ETA I'm actually wondering now what made this guy tick. Putting on a santa suit and wishing people a merry christmas before going on a relatively effective and well-equiped murdering rampage without sparing kids and such - that seems less like emotive human behaviour and more like a story or movie plot conceived by someone removed from any reality of it.

[Amelia G]

Formerly non-violent men don't become mass murdering scumbags just because they loose out in a divorce case.

The news today would indicate otherwise.

[Amelia G]

I dunno... shooting an 8 year old girl in the face is pretty out there, even by violent men's standards. I imagine that reaching a level of callousness like that gradually would leave some sort of signs for people to pick up on.

You'd certainly hope so.

[ForrestBlack]

He apparently was found to have $17,000 cling-wrapped to his legs and inside a girdle and a plane ticket to Canada in his pocket, but the fuel he used to douse the house went up early, blowing the windows out and ironically melting his Santa suit to his flesh, covering him in third degree burns, so he offed himself.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/12/26/...lan/index.html

[Ajax Knucklebones]

Really tragic. Some people are just pushed too far. How big a haul should his ex-wife have gotten after one year of marriage? If it was enough to make a formerly non-violent man do this, then I hope that judge loses a few nights of sleep too.

Some people are just pushed too far? You almost make it sound like this guy actually had a good reason for shooting an 8 year old point blank in the face.

[Amelia G]

Some people are just pushed too far? You almost make it sound like this guy actually had a good reason for shooting an 8 year old point blank in the face.

Maybe it was a really mean eight-year-old? Just kidding.

Seriously, though, if someone who was not previously violent was so out of his head after a divorce settlement that he would see a child as acceptable collateral damage, then I have to wonder what the settlement was to drive him over the edge.

[OliX]

Those two, and the 8-year-old, remained hospitalized Thursday. All were expected to recover.

How can you survive a point blank shot in the face?
Does this tells you something... think... think.

Btw, Amelia, there's many people out there that never did anything against law and they still have murderous gene in them self and they don't even know it.
On other hand high intelligent people are able to control them self. And may I mention that as higher the IQ is, bigger chance is for person to go kuku at some point in their life.

[ForrestBlack]

There are also people out there that ruin their partners life with acrimonious divorces and really don't expect there to be horrible repercussions. That said, there is no reason on God's green Earth why you should ever shoot an eight year old in the face. It wouldn't matter if they were running at you strapped with C4, there is simply no excuse.

[ForrestBlack]

I think if for whatever reason I thought it was a good idea to dress up as Santa and pay a murderous visit to my ex-inlaws Holiday party and an eight year old girl answered the door for Santa, I would just lose heart. I'd just be like Merry Christmas and leave. Maybe come back and pop them all at midnight on New Years or something less likely to involve the youngsters.

[Buster Friendly]

I try to shoot an 8 year old in the face every morning before breakfast.

There's no excuse, it just makes me smile.

...and apparently they just found a 9th body. Way to go Santa! You fucked christmas gooooood.

[OliX]

There's just something about his face. His eyes. Every murderer I saw in news had that something that I can't explain. I can't say that I haven't seen it too in other people I know.

Funny that they misspelled Pardo. Prado sounds even more cruel to me. I guess I associated it with Prada. And that I associated Prada with Devil somehow. God knows why.

True about shooting children. But there are just situation where it's you or them (ask Buster). About women. Why should they get privilege when it comes to surviving?
Why is there a code that says "no children and women", and not only "no children"?

[Raza]

You'd certainly hope so.

I think so. In my own amateur psychological terms, for someone to gradually reach a state so unaffected by pretty much unanimously accepted public morality, it'd really need to fortify itself as part of his identity, his self image - and aspects of your identity that aren't expressed and receive some feedback on a social level don't generally thrive to any noteworthy extremes. Maybe the guy could have had violent urges or a bully-like tendency to assert himself forcefully over others - even kids - but that'd be one of those things people can just introvertedly fester over endlessly, believing that it's already the extreme of something socially unaccepted that therefore needs to be kept from view, while in fact its fairly common and won't grow into its real inhuman potential without some source of external validation (such as parenthood, lol).

Sheer selfish urges conflicting with such standards can overcome them for a moment, but without some very autoconvincing rationalization won't last. Most socially excluded pedosexuals still loathe themselves. Even in our own culture with a stigma as relatively compromised as that against drugs, you often see it 'catching up' with people previously apparently convinced that it was OK and desirable to do them, but where a comfortable existence going against the largest public consensus is apparently not sustainable indefinitely without constant social filtering to control feedback.

This guy would have zero means to such filtering, zero means even to the less demanding kinds of validation that more confident and socially disaffected people like myself can get out of barely positive or rationalizable negative feedback, not without being detectable.

So yes, I think his mental state must have been a very temporary thing. But that too is odd, since the scenario very much seems intelligently (if not very creatively) designed.

[Dusk]

How can you survive a point blank shot in the face?
Does this tells you something... think... think.

Maybe the bullet didnt cause enough damage to the brain/spine, he might have hit her on an angle.

There are cases where people have been shot in the head and survived

[Ajax Knucklebones]

Maybe it was a really mean eight-year-old? Just kidding.

Seriously, though, if someone who was not previously violent was so out of his head after a divorce settlement that he would see a child as acceptable collateral damage, then I have to wonder what the settlement was to drive him over the edge.

Actually in the end, from what I read, is she got his dog and he owed her $10,000.00 and then that would be the end of it. He had $17,000.00 when they found him so it's not like he didn't have it. He did really love his dog and that was her way of "getting" him, but if losing you're dog makes you go out and shoot people and kill 9, then maybe nobody should own dogs.

The other part of it was, just because he was never "arrested" for a violent crime and just because people that knew him didn't think he was violent, doesn't mean that he didn't have violent tendencies. What you see on the outside of the house is always different than what you see inside the house.

People have a superego for a reason. So, everytime someone fucks us over, we don't go haywire and starting killing those involved. I'm sure all of us on this forum have been good and fucked over at least once in our lives. To the point we really want some violent revenge. Then our superego takes over and we think better of the whole thing and don't snap and go batshit crazy. Apparently this guy's superego was on Christmas vacation.

[Ajax Knucklebones]

How can you survive a point blank shot in the face?
Does this tells you something... think... think.

Btw, Amelia, there's many people out there that never did anything against law and they still have murderous gene in them self and they don't even know it.
On other hand high intelligent people are able to control them self. And may I mention that as higher the IQ is, bigger chance is for person to go kuku at some point in their life.

Think...think? I think he could have easily kicked or pushed her aside if he didn't want to really inflict damage on her. He still shot her. If he was doing it as a "Hey! Everybody! I'm here! Let's get this killing started!" kind of welcome, he could have just as easily shot the gun in the air. Also, let's not forget he DID kill a 16 year old. Not a child, but not an adult either. To me that's also just as fucked up.

[Ajax Knucklebones]

I think so. In my own amateur psychological terms, for someone to gradually reach a state so unaffected by pretty much unanimously accepted public morality, it'd really need to fortify itself as part of his identity, his self image - and aspects of your identity that aren't expressed and receive some feedback on a social level don't generally thrive to any noteworthy extremes. Maybe the guy could have had violent urges or a bully-like tendency to assert himself forcefully over others - even kids - but that'd be one of those things people can just introvertedly fester over endlessly, believing that it's already the extreme of something socially unaccepted that therefore needs to be kept from view, while in fact its fairly common and won't grow into its real inhuman potential without some source of external validation (such as parenthood, lol).

Sheer selfish urges conflicting with such standards can overcome them for a moment, but without some very autoconvincing rationalization won't last. Most socially excluded pedosexuals still loathe themselves. Even in our own culture with a stigma as relatively compromised as that against drugs, you often see it 'catching up' with people previously apparently convinced that it was OK and desirable to do them, but where a comfortable existence going against the largest public consensus is apparently not sustainable indefinitely without constant social filtering to control feedback.

This guy would have zero means to such filtering, zero means even to the less demanding kinds of validation that more confident and socially disaffected people like myself can get out of barely positive or rationalizable negative feedback, not without being detectable.

So yes, I think his mental state must have been a very temporary thing. But that too is odd, since the scenario very much seems intelligently (if not very creatively) designed.

****So yes, I think his mental state must have been a very temporary thing. But that too is odd, since the scenario very much seems intelligently (if not very creatively) designed.****

Anger and violence doesn't have to come with a "stupid" label. This whole thing was premediated and this guy did have a Bachelor's and a Master's degree, so he was intelligent. Most serial killers are intelligent. They would have to be, in order to kill and kill again, without getting caught. In fact alot of them, like the Zodiac killer, almost do it as a cat and mouse game where they leave a few clues on purpose to give the police something to go on.

[OliX]

Think...think? I think he could have easily kicked or pushed her aside if he didn't want to really inflict damage on her. He still shot her. If he was doing it as a "Hey! Everybody! I'm here! Let's get this killing started!" kind of welcome, he could have just as easily shot the gun in the air. Also, let's not forget he DID kill a 16 year old. Not a child, but not an adult either. To me that's also just as fucked up.

What if he already thought whole scenario trough.
It would be something like:

-"What if her 8 year old cousin opens the door?
Oh shit, I can't kill a child.
But then again, if I'm going to kill rest, why should I leave a kid to suffer in trauma all her life, and then maybe come and hunt me one day and torture me by most cruel things that I could imagine. No one wants that, what I can imagine because my mind is fucked up."-

Use your imagination for other various scenarios.

They tend to "trip away" in their thoughts, and that can easily happen to anyone of us. But for this scenario it's not only "tripping out" that's needed. There's many other factors.In this case it could be just a combination of love and tripping out. On the end love and hate is the same emotion.

Ever got stoned and started being all paranoid or what not and then all of those crazy thoughts come to your mind like, "he's thinking that and that about me", when there's nothing going on actually. That "tripping out" is similar to stoned state.

When you learn to control the ston'ess for fun then you've got somewhere. Then you have potential to either be a good stand up comedian ( that hates his jokes and finds them stupid like Dave Chapelle ) or a bored serial killer. Or something in between.

May I remind you to never touch my cat. lol

[Mr Karl]

marriage should be illegal.............look at the problems it causes

[Amelia G]

I sincerely doubt that this is merely the story of a ‘man pushed too far’ and I’m not sure why you would choose to firstly exhibit some sort of sympathy for the guy with the gun instead of the actual victims. Do you express similar condolences to the perpetrators of every school shooting and murder rampage on the grounds that these were all people pushed too far?

Are you seriously proposing this as something akin to a crime of passion (which at the very least would be more appetible if he’d only killed his wife)? That line of defence doesn’t hold up: the attack was premeditated and he had an escape plan.

I’m not saying these things are never tragic; there’s been a incline in instances where a parent kills their entire immediate family over here. But from what I can tell, these people all suffered from outrageously foul depressions which led them to believe that their whole family would be better off dead rather than live in the cruel dark world they saw before them. That’s tragic; not some fuckwit who gets pissed off because his wife doesn’t love him anymore and he lost his dog.

Actually, yes, I do feel a lot of sympathy for many of the school shooters. Depends on the situation, but children pushed too far and not protected by adults definitely fall into my sympathy category. Not the Virginia Tech guy, for example, but certainly the Columbine kids.

It absolutely would be more acceptable if he just killed his wife. It is awful that this man killed so many people besides his ex-wife. No matter what she did, what did a random eight-year-old greeting Santa have to do with it? Unless I guess she was his ex-stepdaughter or something. Even so, it seems grotesquely unfair.

So does anyone know if the dog was his before the marriage? Every chick I know always tries to take the man's dog when they break up. I don't have a dog right now, but, if I did, I think trying to take my dog would be pretty evil.

[Mindgames]

It absolutely would be more acceptable if he just killed his wife.

Not to him it didn't. In most cases of familial homicide like this, the motivation is complex to the perpetrator and often includes the idea that killing children spares them from the trauma of being left behind. We won't know his level of premeditation or if he expected particular people to be in the house, but clearly he arrived with an idea in his head and followed it as best he could, and was still working to some kind of plan after he left, given the booby-trapped rental car.

It's 9 dead at current count, excluding Pardo. The 8-yr-old and a 16-yr-old remain alive.

[OliX]

I really really wonder how and where they were shot. In the ear or in the eye, or in the back or in the leg? Do they say anything specific? I'm blind.

[Ajax Knucklebones]

but Charles Manson sounds like a fucking moron in interviews!

Manson was a pussy. He got other people to kill for him. He never did it himself. He was charismatic. Doesn't mean he was intelligent.

[Ajax Knucklebones]

I really really wonder how and where they were shot. In the ear or in the eye, or in the back or in the leg? Do they say anything specific? I'm blind.

They said on the news "execution" style. So probably in the back of the head or forehead.