UPDATE: Torrance Murder-Suicide

By Larry Altman and Denise Nix
Staff Writers
Jacquelyn Pick feared her husband, Steve. He abused crack cocaine and hallucinated about "magic people" recording him and using wires and string to move things around their house.
In her application for a temporary restraining order to keep him away from her family, Mrs. Pick said her husband verbally and physically abused her and her two children.
"He recently quit his job," Mrs. Pick said. "He is angry at me for telling our families that he is addicted to crack cocaine. He has threatened to take the kids away from me. He said not to get the police involved or the entire family will pay."
The family paid Monday night, eight hours after police enforced the restraining order at the couple's 230th Street home.
Ordered to leave when he showed up about noon, Pick returned with a gun about 8:20 p.m., shot his wife in the leg, and killed their 5-year-old son, Tyler, and his wife's 62-year-old mother, Janelle Stern.
Pick then killed himself, sparing his 4-year-old daughter, Nicole.
Torrance police Officer Dave Crespin said he does not know why Pick did not shoot the girl.
According to a family friend, the heavily tattooed Pick married his wife about a week before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Following a ceremony and party at Los Verdes Country Club in Palos Verdes Estates, they went on a honeymoon cruise.
Unable to fly home because planes were grounded, they drove from Louisiana.
Two months later, they purchased their three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in the 1900 block of 230th Street. Nine months later -- on Oct. 26, 2002 -- their first child, Tyler James, was born.
On Pick's own Web site filled with a display of family photographs, he proudly showed off a photo of himself holding the newborn, wrapped in a blanket and cap in his lap.
"This is the first baby I've ever held," Pick wrote.
Their daughter, Nicole Leannah, was born March 27, 2004.
"Dad holds Nicole for the first time," he wrote under a photograph showing him in a hospital smock and mask.
Pick's Web site shows the family enjoying life. Disneyland. The San Diego Zoo. Chuck E. Cheese's First birthday parties.
It also revealed something ominous. For some reason, Pick removed photographs of his wife's best friend.
"Jacquie's best friend of 20 years removed," is all that's left behind in spots where her face used to be.
"Right after the wedding, there was something with their cat and one of the bridesmaids," a family friend said. "He wouldn't let his wife see the bridesmaid. They haven't been friends ever since. He just kind of snapped at her and said, 'You can't see her anymore. You guys aren't going to be friends.'
The family friend, who did not want to be identified, described Pick as "odd" and controlling. He did not know what happened with the cat.
"Steve's always been a little strange," the friend said. "He's a nice guy, but then he had this crazy side to him."
The Pick family socialized with others on their close-knit street. Neighbor Patti Kimzey described Pick as an "oddball" and said the Pick marriage had become strained for at least several months.
A truck driver who delivered gasoline to service stations, Pick apparently was out of work for a couple of years, possibly because of an injury, and that made the situation worse.
Torrance court records show Mrs. Pick filed for divorce on Jan. 9. The next day, she applied for a temporary restraining order to keep her husband away from her and her children.
In her request, written in her own handwriting, Mrs. Pick said she feared her husband might harm her because of his drug use.
In an incident in November, she described how her husband called Torrance police while he was smoking crack cocaine in the attic.
"He woke me up because he believed he saw magic people in the attic, holding up signs, telling him to stop using drugs," she said.
"He also thought these people were using wires and string to move things in our house and that they were videotaping and recording us."
Pick asked her to call the police because he believed someone was breaking into the house.
"When I did not call the police -- for fear that he would be arrested in front of our already frightened children -- he swung and missed me with a metal walking cane," Mrs. Pick wrote.
"He then threw the metal walking cane into a large class picture frame, shattering it."
Police arrived and suggested he might need to be hospitalized for psychiatric observation, but "I told them he just hadn't slept in a few days," the wife said.
Mrs. Pick described other confrontations, including a time he "swung a 2-by-4 block of wood at me, but missed."
"It did go through the wall of our front entryway," she wrote.
On Jan. 3, Pick called her from the Inglewood Police Department and said he had been robbed of his wallet, keys, money, backpack "and all the crack cocaine he just bought (to kill himself with)."
He arrived home in a cab two hours later,threatening to beat her if she did not give him the key to one of their cars and whatever else he wanted, the wife wrote.
"He said he didn't care if the kids are home, they are little and they will forget," she wrote. "He had no guns, but he picked up a chair and was going to hit me with it if I didn't give him the key to his Honda Accord and my credit card.
"The abuse (verbal and physical) has always occurred in front of and within view and hearing of our children," Mrs. Pick wrote. "I feel that this is child abuse."
Three days later, Mrs. Pick wrote, her husband "coerced" her to meet him at 190th Street and Crenshaw Boulevard in Torrance to give him a debit credit card.
"He informed me that he is not sober, he is smoking crack cocaine," she wrote.
He asked her to turn off the car so he could talk to the children.
"He started to verbally abuse me and used extreme profanity to the children about me," the wife wrote. "When I asked him to stop, he physically attacked me and slammed my head into the driver side window."
She wrote that she suffered a bump on the left side of her head and broke a fingernail defending herself. Her husband pulled out a clump of her hair.
"He told me not to call police," Mrs. Pick wrote. "If he goes to jail, he'll get out eventually and he'll come after me and family members."
Commissioner John A. Slawson signed the restraining order, which prohibited Pick from coming within 100 yards of his family.
Mrs. Pick's court file contained records showing she paid $95 to a legal service to serve the order on her husband at First Federal Bank at 23415 Crenshaw Blvd.
A Pick relative, Duane Pick, also served him with the paperwork on March 27 at UCLA Medical Center in Westwood.
Pick never responded in court to either the divorce filing or retraining order, documents show.
Court records show Pick had a pending drug possession case in Long Beach Superior Court when he showed up at his wife's home about noon Monday.
Palos Verdes Estates police also arrested Pick on April 23 on an unknown charge. He posted $500 bail and was ordered to return to Torrance court on June 23.
Torrance police did not arrest Pick on Monday when he violated the order by showing up at the house. Crespin said officers did not believe Pick had been served and this was the first time he had been made aware of the restraining order.
The shooting started about 8:20 p.m.
Their neighbor, Kimzey, set up a fund for the survivors.
Donations will be accepted for the Pick Family Assistance Fund, c/o Bank of America, 1880 W. Carson St. #F282, Torrance, CA 90501.
Calling Mrs. Pick as a sweet, friendly and cool woman, Kimzey described her son, Tyler, as a bright, articulate and sweet kid.
"Tyler is best known on this street because he is obsessed with trash trucks," Kimzey said. "On Thursdays, he'd be out here all day listening for the trash truck and followed it."
larry.altman@dailybreeze.com
denise.nix@dailybreeze.com
Staff writer Andrea Woodhouse contributed to this article.