Flowers in memory of nine dead
A small bouquet of flowers was left a few homes away from the crime scene at 1129 Knollcrest Drive where the Christmas Eve murders took place in Covina, photographed on Friday, December 26, 2008. (Photo by Raul Roa)
Dressed as Santa, Bruce Pardo, 45, of Montrose, opened fire with four semi-automatic handguns on a party at the home of his ex-wife's family. He then sprayed the home with a flamethrower, which burned the home to the ground.
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| Frank Girardot, Metro Editor for the San Gabriel Valley Newspapers, brings you behind the yellow tape with takes on true crime, cold cases and more. This is also your forum to discuss crime, its impact on your neighborhood and how we cover it. Have any questions or tips? You can leave a comment here or e-mail Frank. |
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Brian Day is the crime reporter for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper group. E-mail Brian. |
"Bruce Pardo's wife was appalled to learn that years earlier he had abandoned a brain-damaged son but still claimed him as a tax write-off." That's what LA Times reporter harriet.ryan wrote. But the truth is because she was a gold digger. After 2 years of marriage, she asked for a divorce, $10,000 cash, the family dog, and $3,166 a month in spousal support. She was expecting to get more money from him than from her job. She wasted no time celebrating her new found gold mine. "Since the date of separation, she bought a new 2009 luxury car, has gone several days gambling in Las Vegas, has frequently been out dining at finer restaurants . . . took a trip to Primm Casino-Resort . . . purchased golf school lessons, has taken a recent vacation to Magic Mountain Amusement Park and visited massage parlors," he wrote in court filings earlier this month. Well, that's just too bad. She couldn't get away with making a brilliant software engineer feeling like a fool just because the law was on her side. The law couldn't keep her alive.
Like thousands of others, I am haunted and appalled by this tragedy in Covina. The comment offered by "skeptic" is awful: it suggests that Sylvia Pardo was a gold-digger because the "law was on her side" and she "milked" her husband (or the law helped her milk her husband). Apart from a "blame the victim" tone in this commentary, and not a little bit of misogny frankly, Ms.Pardo's financial situation (or her expenditures) is mere speculation. Many men and women go through an awful time emotionally because of divorce--and a "brilliant software engineer" can be made to feel like a "fool." But surely, brutally killing an entire family, including your ex-wife, is not the act of a fool: it is the act of a deeply wounded, but deranged, individual. To malign the character of a human being whose life was cut short so brutally is mean and cruel. It is also bad karma. May the universe forgive you for these comments.