Plans mean something.
Pardo had created a second timeline known only to himself.
In that timeline, by midnight, people would be dead.
That is one of the eeriest features of premeditation.
The offender is interacting with people who believe they are all moving toward the same future.
He knows they are not.
11:27 P.M.
Then the two timelines collided.
The first 911 call.
A wounded child.
Gunfire.
Fire.
A woman identifying Bruce Pardo.
From that moment forward, secrecy began collapsing rapidly.
Police knew his name.
Survivors knew his identity.
The house was burning.
His body was burned.
His escape plan was damaged.
Several hours later, he was dead.
Months of secret planning survived less than one night after execution began.
What Remained
The Ortega home was gone.
Nine members of the family were dead.
Pardo was dead.
Police had no living offender to prosecute.
Yet objects remained.
A wedding ring.
A costume.
A damaged rental car.
Weapons.
Fuel equipment.
Court records.
Travel records.
Family photographs.
Charred belongings.
These objects became fragments of a story investigators had to rebuild.
The family had its own fragments.
Memories.
Voicemails.
Holiday photographs.
Baseball jerseys.
Businesses.
Children.
A lifetime of ordinary things suddenly made precious because the people attached to them were gone.
The Public Remembers Santa
Ask someone familiar with the case what they remember and the first answer will probably involve Santa Claus.
That is natural.
The disguise is extraordinary.
But if the case is remembered only as "the killer Santa massacre," something important is lost.
Pardo becomes the story.
The victims become scenery.
The more accurate memory begins somewhere else.
A family playing cards.
Children playing video games.
An 80-year-old father with his wife of 53 years.
Adult children who still came home for Christmas.
A teenager at a computer.
A little girl who ran to greet Santa.
Then one person's grievance invaded all of it.
That is the Covina massacre.
Domestic Violence on a Larger Scale
Although the number of victims and the elaborate planning make the case resemble a public mass shooting, its core was domestic.
The primary target was Pardo's ex-wife and her family.
The divorce sat at the center of the grievance.
This matters because intimate-partner violence is not always contained between two people.
An offender may view the former partner's family as part of the conflict.
Parents who provide shelter.
Siblings who give emotional support.
Attorneys who help legally.
Friends who encourage separation.
Anyone helping the partner build a life outside the offender's control can become incorporated into the grievance.
Covina represents an extreme version of that expansion.
The attack moved from ex-wife to family system.
That is part of why nine people died.
Sylvia Had Already Left
Another important fact is that Sylvia had already made the decision to leave.
She separated.
She filed for divorce.
She moved out.
The court process continued.
The divorce became final.
From a legal perspective, the marriage was finished.
Pardo did not accept that ending in a healthy way.
He did not simply dislike it.
Evidence suggests he spent months preparing retaliation.
That is why descriptions such as "marital dispute" are inadequate.
By Christmas Eve, there was no dispute being negotiated.
There was a completed divorce and a planned act of mass violence.
Christmas After Covina
For most Americans, Christmas Eve 2008 eventually became another holiday memory.
For the Ortega survivors, the date could never return to being neutral.
The calendar does not ask permission.
Every year, December 24 arrives again.
Decorations appear.
Santa images appear.
Families gather.
Children knock on doors.
Music plays.
The cultural symbols associated with comfort are the same symbols surrounding the worst event in the family's history.
That is a burden unique to crimes attached to major holidays.
The entire culture commemorates the date whether survivors want to think about it or not.
Pardo's Death Did Not Answer Why
Some killers survive long enough to offer years of interviews.
They explain themselves.
Or claim to.
They contradict themselves.
Psychologists examine them.
Prosecutors test their accounts.
Bruce Pardo offered none of that.
His suicide froze motive in partial evidence.
We know what he prepared.
We know who he targeted.
We know his divorce history.
We know investigators' theories about his mother and attorney.
We know his financial complaints.
We know his marriage was over.
We know he prepared for months.
But the final interior explanation died in Sylmar.
Maybe that is appropriate in one sense.
There is a danger in overvaluing the killer's explanation.
Even if Pardo had survived and given a ten-hour confession, no psychological explanation could create proportionality between grievance and response.
There is no divorce settlement that explains shooting a child in the face.
No lost dog explains killing grandparents.
No financial dispute explains murdering a 17-year-old.
Explanation can describe motive.
It cannot convert murder into logic.
What the Case Does Tell Us
The Covina massacre tells us that serious violence can be meticulously concealed behind ordinary behavior.
That symbolic trust can be exploited.
That a family gathering can concentrate vulnerability.
That divorce-related grievance can extend beyond the former partner.
That an offender can spend months preparing while maintaining a socially functional exterior.
And that a complicated plan can still collapse because of one uncontrolled event.
Fire.
Pardo planned the fire.
He did not plan to become one of its victims.
That injury appears to have destroyed his escape.
It may have prevented further attacks.
An operation designed to increase the number of deaths may paradoxically have limited them.
The Last Intended Victims
Police believed Pardo might have intended to kill more people after leaving Covina.
His mother.
Sylvia's divorce attorney.
Possibly members of the attorney's household.
Those people survived not because the original plan showed mercy.
They survived because circumstances changed.
The mother stayed home sick.
Pardo was badly burned.
The second stage never happened.
Whenever the Covina body count is stated as nine, it is worth remembering that investigators believed the planned number may have been higher.
The massacre we know may have been an interrupted version of an even larger crime.
The Survivors Changed the Story
The same is true inside the house.
The eight-year-old survived.
The 16-year-old survived.
Others escaped.
Adults moved children.
Leticia reached her daughter.