The attack he had designed to destroy evidence and kill others also damaged him.
He apparently abandoned the larger escape sequence.
Instead of going to the attorney's home, he drove to his brother's house.
That failed transition may have prevented more deaths.
Again, circumstance mattered.
Not remorse.
Not intervention.
Fire.
His own weapon harmed him badly enough to derail the next stage.
No Trial
Most famous American murder cases eventually produce a courtroom image.
Defendant at the table.
Families in the gallery.
Prosecutor pointing toward evidence.
Defense attorney offering another interpretation.
A judge announcing sentence.
Covina never had that.
Bruce Pardo was dead before Christmas morning fully began.
That denied survivors and families a particular kind of legal reckoning.
There could be no murder convictions.
No consecutive life sentences.
No victim-impact statements delivered directly to him.
No opportunity to ask him why.
No cross-examination.
No formal verdict.
The investigation could establish what happened.
It could not force the offender to account for himself publicly.
This is one reason the months after the massacre became so focused on reconstructing Pardo's preparation.
With no defendant, the evidence had to speak for him.
Gun-store records.
Costume-shop records.
Divorce filings.
Travel receipts.
Rental-car records.
Computer evidence.
Fuel equipment.
Witness accounts.
911 calls.
The house.
The burns on Pardo's body.
The cash attached to him.
The ticket hidden with his belongings.
Together, those pieces became the closest thing to testimony the public would ever receive.
The Santa Costume
Of every object in the case, nothing became more infamous than the costume.
That is understandable.
The visual contradiction is enormous.
Christmas iconography is intentionally safe.
Red suit.
White beard.
Children running toward the door.
The Ortega family's eight-year-old relative did exactly what children are expected to do.
She saw Santa.
She became excited.
Then she was shot.
That image traveled far beyond Covina.
International newspapers covered it.
Television networks repeated it.
The massacre became known around the world partly because the disguise made the attack almost impossible to forget.
But the focus on the costume can distort the story if it becomes too theatrical.
This was not a horror movie.
The child was real.
The wound was real.
The family members hiding under the table were real.
The burns were real.
The bodies recovered from the house were so badly damaged that identification took time.
The Santa suit was not horrifying because it looked frightening.
It was horrifying because it looked safe.
Pardo understood that.
That is why he used it.
The Victims Could Not Be Identified Immediately
After the fire was extinguished, investigators faced another terrible task.
Recovering the dead.
The heat and destruction were so severe that immediate visual identification was impossible.
Bodies had been badly burned.
Coroner personnel had to use methods such as dental comparison and other forensic evidence to establish identities.
For days, public reporting referred to family members as believed missing rather than officially confirmed dead.
Everyone already understood what the burned house likely contained.
Formal identification still takes evidence.
That gap between knowing and confirmation can be brutal for families.
They know someone has not escaped.
They know the house contained bodies.
They know who attended the party.
But legally and medically, identification still needs to happen.
One by one, names were confirmed.
Eventually all nine.
Then came autopsies.
The coroner later said that the victims had suffered combinations of gunshot injuries, burns and smoke inhalation severe enough that determining one simple primary cause of death for each person was difficult.
The massacre therefore cannot be described as only a shooting.
Or only an arson.
The two forms of violence overlapped.
Some people were shot before the fire.
Some remained inside as the house burned.
Michael appeared to have died from the fire or explosion rather than gunfire.
Pardo had created a situation where surviving one danger did not guarantee survival of the next.
The Ortega Family Afterward
Three days after Christmas, the house at the end of the cul-de-sac was no longer the center of holiday gatherings.
Yellow tape surrounded the ruins.
Family members stood outside looking at burned belongings that had been recovered.
Charred photographs.
Household objects.
Pieces of ordinary life.
The structure itself was almost secondary.
What mattered was who had been inside.
Friends described the Ortegas as unusually close.
If you became a friend of one member of the family, you became connected to the whole family.
They celebrated together.
Worked together.
Traveled together.
Helped one another.
That closeness meant the losses were concentrated beyond comprehension.
One surviving daughter, Leticia, lost her parents.
Two brothers.
Two sisters.
Two sisters-in-law.
A nephew.
Her daughter had been shot in the face.
And all of it happened during one family party.
There is almost no normal psychological reference point for that scale of loss.
Most people experience grief one person at a time.
The Ortega family had to bury nine relatives together.
The Funeral
In January 2009, more than 1,500 people attended a funeral Mass for the nine victims at Holy Name of Mary Catholic Church in San Dimas.
Cardinal Roger Mahony attended.
So did Covina Police Chief Kim Raney.
Young people came wearing school jerseys and letterman jackets to honor Michael Ortiz.
At the end of the service, music reflected parts of the family's life and personality.
The funeral became both mourning and public evidence of just how many people had been connected to the Ortegas.
This is often where mass-murder statistics become understandable.
Nine victims sounds enormous.
Then you see 1,500 people.
Friends.
Coworkers.
Classmates.
Neighbors.
Church members.
Extended relatives.
Every murder victim leaves a network.
Nine victims leave overlapping networks of grief.
Pardo's act did not affect nine people.
It affected hundreds directly.
Thousands indirectly.
And because he chose Christmas Eve, the date itself became permanently contaminated for survivors.
Every December 24 afterward carried another meaning.
The House
The Ortega home had hosted Christmas Eve celebrations before.
Friends had attended previous gatherings.
Family members knew where they sat.
Where food was served.
Where cards were played.
Where the children gathered.
After the massacre, that geography became crime-scene geography.
Front door.
Dining room.
Back exit.
Second floor.
Fire.
Ordinary spaces acquire new meanings after violence.
A dining table once associated with cards and food becomes the place family members tried to hide.