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Hi. How are you today? I hope you're having a wonderful day. Today is Monday, which means it's Murder, Mystery, and Makeup Monday. Sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-sada-s
If you are new here, hi, my name is Bailey Sarian and on Mondays I sit down and I talk about a true crime story that's been heavy on my noggin and I do my makeup at the same time. If you're interested in true crime and you like makeup, I would suggest you hit that subscribe button 'cause I'm here for you on Mondays. But other than that, I hope you have a happy holiday and a happy and safe new year too. The end, goodbye. Just kidding.
But yeah, I hope you have a happy and safe holiday. I can't believe this year is done so. Wow. Okay, but today's story is not great per usual and really sad. So here goes that. So let's paint the picture. It's Christmas Eve, 2008 in Covina, California. Now Covina, California, if you don't know, is like a little suburb in Los Angeles County and it's...
a suburb, that's really what you could say about it. It's about 20 miles east of downtown LA. And today at least it has around 50,000 people in it's like seven square miles area. So in this suburb is where the Ortega family was having their yearly Christmas Eve get together at home of Jose and Alice Ortega. Now the Ortegas were said to be like
the all-American, just living the all-American dream. Jose, who the family called Papa Joe, his parents were immigrants and he was like the first generation of his family to be born here. And I mean, he had done really well for himself and his family. In 2008, he retired and he was
living happily as a retired man, but his son, I mean, 'cause he was running his own business for a while and his son ended up taking over. And one of them, one of his sons ended up expanding the business when Joe retired. What I'm getting at is a family business. Joe's family is all up in it, still running it.
keeping it going and Joe is retired. So Joe and his wife, Alice, they invited the whole family over for Christmas Eve and they did this every year. So it was like just what they did, great. So the house was packed. It had all of Joe and Alice's children, their wives and husbands, their grandchildren. And the house, I mean, was just filled with everybody. There had to be at least 25 people inside the home and they're just having a great time, you know?
Christmas Eve, great. Most of the adults were in the living room and they were playing poker, which was like a family tradition. When they all got together on Christmas Eve, they always played poker. And then other members of the family were like sitting around in the living room, chatting, having hot cocoa, whatever. And then there's like kids scattered around the house, somewhere in the backyard playing. And yeah, just everyone is everywhere. You get it, if you have a big family,
Everyone is everywhere. Well around 11:30 at night some of the family decided, you know, it's kind of late. Maybe we should start to head home. I mean they have kids. They don't want to miss Santa, you know? So they start packing up to head out and one of the kids in the living room like see someone out the window and whoever this person was looked very familiar and they're walking up towards the house and
and she's looking and she notices this person has a bright red coat and a big white beard. Yeah.
So the girl, it's a little girl, her name is Katrina. She's like, oh my God, it's freaking Santa Claus. He's coming right up to the front door. He was carrying like a huge box with him, right? And he's like pulling this box. I guess he's pulling it, not carrying it. Pulling this box up. It's all wrapped up like it's a beautiful Christmas present. And this little girl is just excited. I mean, Katrina, she believes it's Santa. I mean, she's only eight years old at the time. So...
She's stoked and what does she do? She runs straight to the front door, opens up the door and yells like, "Santa's here!" Well, when she opened up the door, it wasn't like presents with him or reindeer or anything like that. In the other hand that he wasn't using to carry the huge present, this Santa Claus person had a nine millimeter handgun
Bitch. And as soon as the front door opened, he was firing on the whole Ortega family. Fucking what? Yes. What? What a...
Douche, what a dick move on Christmas Eve, you fucking dick. Obviously his first target was the little girl Katrina. She had opened the door and I'm just gonna tell you right off the bat, she ends up being okay. She was the first to be shot at, but luckily for her, her injury wasn't fatal and she's okay. Unfortunately for everybody else, I mean, they weren't as lucky. It's just, it's awful.
So the adults were all gathered around the poker table in the living room. And I guess the Santa guy, when he gets in through the front door, he just has a quick, clear view of them. So he just starts firing away. I guess somebody in the family had shouted for everybody to get down, get down on the floor, but the bullets were already, they were already fricking flying by that point. And in just a few minutes,
The scene had gone from this wholesome family Christmas Eve magical moment to a freaking massacre. This is such an awful story. Christmas. A few of the Ortegas who hadn't been in the living room at the time, there's like a few of them who managed to escape out the back of the house. Most of them were children who were already playing out back by the pool. And once Santa had finished playing,
shooting everybody downstairs, he cleared out the upstairs as well. And once he determined that there wasn't anyone left inside, he takes his present that he brought with him, it's big, he unwraps it. And I guess inside this present, there was what looked like a fuel tank, like a propane tank.
but for racing fuel and a makeshift nozzle bottled and welded in place on top of it. So basically, it was a homemade flamethrower. Yeah, this Santa is fucked up. What? Yeah. What? Yes. Yes. I was like, are you fucking kidding me right now? No. No. This is an ad by BetterHelp.
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the 911 lines are lighting up. One of the adults who was inside of the house managed to escape and her name was Leticia. And she actually was able to hop the fence in her backyard, hop the fence and go to the neighbor's house to use their phone to call 911. But by that time, neighbors were already on top of it calling in to 911 left and right because they heard all these gunshots and whatnot. So all the neighbors who had called, they all reported something similar.
that many of them had seen a Santa, a man dressed as Santa, show up to the Ortega's house, shot up the place, and now like he was setting it on fire. And like, we're not talking just like normal flames, which are still bad and scary, right? But these were like 50 foot flames. This was...
Intense, yeah. I mean, these flames were set by someone who wanted this house to just not even exist anymore. Firefighters are able to get out there and it takes about 80 firefighters several hours to even put the flames out. And by that time, everyone who hadn't made it outside was,
So police are questioning the neighbors asking if like any of them had any other description of who this person was, anything, right? So one neighbor came forward and said that she had seen someone drive away in a blue Dodge just minutes before the police had gotten there. And she remembered it being weird because well, for starters, she heard all the gunshots and now there was a fricking fire.
But for two, the car was driving away from the scene with all of its lights turned off. So there's something going on right there in that moment, in that very time. So obviously police are like very concerned that whoever had done this, obviously most likely was in that car and had gotten away. And if so, was this Santa, was he gonna go visit other houses that night? I mean, shit, what the fuck? He might, we don't know.
Okay, well, what if I told you that what happened at the Ortega's house that night wasn't the only murder that happened that night? Nay, nay, it was not. Because roughly 40 miles away, police were called to a little home where a man named Bruce Pardo, he was found with a nine millimeter bullet hole through his head. And there was also a handgun in his lap. And then there was another on the floor. So something ain't right.
Now this suggested to police that, I don't know, maybe there was more than one shooter and that maybe this guy was trying to defend himself, but the killer maybe shot him first. Whoever the killer was though, they had left behind the murder weapon, which is like a rookie mistake, but it was good news for police.
They got the biggest clue they need for this case, the murder weapon. So you're probably wondering why this guy is related in the first place. You're like, what the heck? What does he have to do with anything? 'Cause his house was not burned down. Well, the house that they found this guy at, it was his brother's house. His brother's the one that found him.
So when police were finally able to get inside of what was left of the Ortega house, they found the bodies of nine people. All of them, they could identify only through dental records because of how badly burned they all were. Like just horrific scene, okay?
And they all shared one thing in common. All of them had a single hole the size of a nine millimeter bullet in their body. Most of them had it in their heads and it was all fired from a very close range. And it almost looked exactly the same as the body of Bruce Pardo. And it happened the same night. So even though Bruce's home wasn't burned down, it looked very similar to what happened to the Ortega family. The wounds were similar, the distance
Okay, the time it happened, it just kind of all linked together and police were believing that these two cases were most likely connected. Now, of course, it made police super nervous because here they are on Christmas day with 10 bodies, right in front of them. Okay, and they had no idea who had done it besides some guy dressed as Santa, which is just all sorts of fucked up.
So they were worried that whoever had done it is probably still out there, could be like actively shooting people. Just thinking the worst, okay? I mean, can you imagine waking up in your neighborhood, you hear that there's like a manhunt for an active shooter dressed as Santa? I mean, that shit's fucked up, but that's what they were dealing with. So police have to start somewhere, right? So they're like, okay, let's like dig around in people's backgrounds and,
I don't know, maybe it'll lead us somewhere 'cause it always does. It always does. So they start with Bruce. Like if there's a connection between this Bruce guy and the Ortega family, like maybe they are linked somehow and it made them a target.
Because to police the bullet holes, I mean, they weren't there to just, I mean, whoever had done it, like wanted these people dead. Okay. And then to fricking torch the place, hide evidence or something, I don't know, but it was a crime of passion to say the least. So they start looking to the personal histories of the victims and figure out if there's any type of connection. And boy, did they find a connection? They found one.
They start with Bruce, they see that Bruce is a local in the area. He grew up in the San Fernando Valley and he went to college. He went to college for computer sciences at North, no California State Northridge. So he's like a little smart one, college. So right after this Bruce guy graduated, he started working as a software engineer at the Jet Propulsion Lab.
or JPL. Nowadays, it's where a lot of development into NASA spacecraft is done. When it was founded though, it was a missile development company
place like for war missiles, but now it's like has to do with space and NASA. Anyway, so yeah, there's where he was working. I guess things were pretty okay for Bruce and then in the 1980s things got messy. Okay, he had a string of just really bad relationships. He even had an engagement that
No joke, he ran out of full on, left his bride at the altar with his mother and brother who were all waiting for him, doesn't show up, he ran. That's fucked up. Well, this story is fucked up, but like that's fucked up too.
lots of things can be fucked up. I mean, why do that on your wedding day? Damn, it's like you gotta waste everyone's goddamn time. Then in 2001, Bruce was in a sorta, like a sorta relationship. You know, they're like together, but they're not together, but they're together, they're fucking. But he was with this woman named Elena.
And they weren't married or anything, but they had been seeing each other off and on for like quite some time. And the two of them ended up having a son together. And then I guess, I don't know what happened, very strange, but I mean, it could have happened, we don't know. One day Bruce comes over and he's watching his son 'cause Elena, I guess she had to go run some errands and she didn't have anyone to watch their son. So Bruce goes over to the house watching the son.
Everything's peaches and cream. Elena comes home. She sees her son in Bruce's hands. And like, he appears to be limp in his arms. Their son, limp. I don't know. Freaks out, right? So she's asking like, what the hell happened? What happened? What happened? And Bruce tells Elena that their son had somehow gotten away, whatever that means, gotten away.
gotten away and he slipped into the pool.
Yeah, so they are rushing to an intensive care unit and it's just not looking good for their child, Matthew. And then he ends up staying there. The child stays there for a couple of weeks. And I guess the doctors informed Bruce and Elena that Matthew had suffered some terrible brain damage and he wouldn't be able to walk ever again. They didn't believe. So Matthew was diagnosed as paraplegic.
I'm sure. Bruce ended up staying the night with Matthew in the hospital. I mean, he ended up staying there like almost every night up until the doctors gave him the news that Matthew is stabilized. So after that, Bruce started showing up less and less and eventually he and Elena broke up and Bruce decided that he didn't want to see his son anymore.
He even stopped helping Elena with Matthew's medical bills, which were like climbing into the six figures, according to Elena's lawyer. And so she ends up
suing Bruce to get him to help her pay with the bills. She ended up winning that case in 2002 and she would end up getting some money from Bruce's insurance policies, and then after that, Bruce completely stopped communicating with Elena and his son. Just goodbye. Two years go by. Bruce is then introduced to a woman named Sylvia Ortiz.
and they hit it off, they seem to really hit it off. They end up liking each other, start dating and they get married in 2006.
So for a little bit, things started to look good for Bruce. He and Sylvia, they did tons of things together. I mean, they were a very active family and there was always some kind of group outing or an adventure. He was planning for his daughter and Sylvia's three kids. So they're just living together, big happy family and things seem to be really good, but it wasn't long. Well, it kind of was long, unfortunately, a little too long until Sylvia,
found out about Bruce's former wife and his disabled son. Yeah, she had to find out. He never told Sylvia about this. He was like, "No." He just ignored that whole part of his life. I mean, I could understand as to why he doesn't want to tell her about it, because it doesn't make him look great, but it's just unfortunate. I mean, how would you tell your partner that, like on a first date? "Yeah, I abandoned my last family. I'm looking to settle down." He'd run.
Safe, like simply safe. Okay, so Sylvia finds out and I guess, I don't know exactly like how she finds out. I think it's like she had been going through tax forms and she was claiming Matthew, this child, as he was claiming, Bruce was claiming, this child Matthew as a dependent on his tax forms so he could get money. Pause. What? Huh? Excuse me?
Why are you doing that? Why do you get the money? What did you do besides leave? What'd you do? Hmm? Gross. So if you don't live in America, when you do taxes, actually, I don't even have kids. So I don't even know how it works, but I think you get money when you have kids, right? You get like, you claim it on your taxes and then they're like, here's money. Cause you have kids. I don't, I just know you get money. Okay. But like in this case, he shouldn't be claiming Matthew because he's
he's not taking care of Matthew, it should be the person who's taking care of the child who claims. And then when you claim the child, the other person can't claim the child. So fuck that guy, right? Yeah. Just what? So Sylvia sees this. She's like, who's this child he's claiming? Huh? So this piece of work over here. Yeah, Bruce. Yeah. He wanted nothing to do with his child, but he's like, yeah, I'm definitely gonna like claim him and get tax credits.
Yay, like just everything that sucks is Bruce. Great, glad we settled that. A common theme that seemed to come up a lot when you look into Bruce's past is that he was always stressing and always over concerned with money. Like when he would talk with friends, family, whatever, it's always like,
Talking about money, his finances, like how much he has, how much does that cost? I can't do that. It's just, it was consuming him. And that got so much worse when Elena sued him for medical support, which I mean, makes sense if you're already worried about money and now you're being sued, it's probably going to stress you out. Anyway, the point is that he was a big time stressor about money and how he was going to get it.
Things ended up getting worse for Bruce over here. He ended up breaking his knee. Yeah, I don't know how, sorry about that, forgot to look. He breaks his knee. Now this forces him to start working from home. And you know, if you live in America and you're not doing well financially, you know that breaking a body part can fricking ruin your whole life. It's over, bitch. That's it, you're done. It's disturbing.
but this is where we're at. Anyways, so he breaks his knee. He's already stressed out about money. He's now got medical bills. He's working from home. Things are not great. Sylvia, his current wife,
She told her friends that the injury made him like into a completely different person. He didn't show any type of joy, interest, emotion, anything anymore. And he would just be a little hermit up at his computer all day and just working. And he would go days upon days without changing his clothes or showering, which just sounds like depression, right?
Don't really blame him. Shit's not working out so great. Not going as planned, I could see. Which nowadays, I think we have a better understanding of depression, maybe are a bit more forgiving. But to Sylvia, it was like, she didn't quite understand and the man she married had just vanished. And she was like, "I don't like this person."
They used to go from having family dinners all the time, different adventures to nothing. And she tried to support him, but support him like be compassionate. There you go, there's the word. But you know, after quite some time, it was just a lot. She's like,
This is a lot. Sylvia said that there was one moment where she had to ask herself like, "Who the heck did I marry?" Like, I don't even know this guy. Okay, fighting out about his secret son. It seemed like that was a last straw. And in 2008, Sylvia was filing for divorce.
After all that, Bruce was like, dude, this shit sucks, bro. This shit sucks. He was just done. He was at his last straw. In early June, 2008, as part of the divorce, Bruce was ordered by a judge to pay Sylvia $1,700 a month in spousal support. And during the court proceedings, Sylvia, I guess was, I mean,
she's like giving the evidence as to why she wants to divorce him right so she's airing out everything that she was having issues with Bruce about she talked about his spending habits she talked about his son that he hadn't told anyone about she talked about his depression and basically she was just
airing out all of what Bruce considered his dirty laundry. And he didn't want anyone to know about this kind of stuff. Because to everybody else, Bruce was like this friendly, easygoing father figure. He didn't want people knowing what was going on behind the scenes in his personal life.
probably for obvious reasons. And according to a couple of Bruce's friends, the divorce and the divorce proceedings just had a huge effect on him and it sent him into an even bigger and deeper depression. Well, on June 11th, Bruce, he ends up going down to Burbank, which is not far, and he goes to a gun store and he ends up buying a handgun with cash, okay?
Then in July, right after he was ordered to start paying Sylvia, he lost his job. Bitch, talk about a bad fucking day. He got caught for billing his employers for hours he wasn't actually working, AKA he was stealing. And then on August 8th, he ends up buying a second hand gun from the same store.
And in California, there's a 30 day waiting period. You have to wait after buying a gun before you can buy another one, which is like a little fun fact, I guess. Didn't know that. I don't know what it's supposed to do. But anyways, so he had to wait 30 days. He got that second gun. And then on September 8th,
There's another receipt for another handgun he bought. And then on October 11th, he bought a fourth handgun. He literally waited each month, you know? I don't know what he needs four handguns for. He only has two hands. Now it was odd because, you know, this Bruce guy, he's always afraid about money and spending money and all that stuff, but he always had money for handguns. That's for sure. He's like, "I don't have money for kids. I don't have money for my other kid, but I got money for guns."
So October of that year, 2008, a friend of Bruce's, his name is Steve. Steve lived in Iowa and Steve was told Bruce like, "Hey, you should come out. You should come out visit for my birthday. Let's celebrate. Let's get together. You seem to get away. Get away."
And Bruce is like, you know what? That sounds like a good idea. So he goes out to Iowa and visits Steve where he ends up just opening up about everything that's going on. He told him that he'd been spending most of his time quote, thinking about everything, which is like very vague, but that was him opening up. And then Bruce admitted that he was embarrassed about how the divorce proceedings went in court. Also the fact that when he was fired, it was like publicly discussed.
and he was just super embarrassed about everything. And then what made it even worse for him was that his mother, Bruce's mother, she wanted nothing to do with him. I guess they weren't even talking anymore. I guess his mom came to the divorce proceedings
And she actually chose to sat on Sylvia's side to support her and not her own son. And this obviously upset Bruce, like why are you supporting her and not me, your son? I guess Bruce's mother, she supported Sylvia's side. It's not clear as to why, but I think we can all assume, right? This Bruce guy, he doesn't really seem to be that great.
So I could see maybe why she didn't want to side with him. I guess Brucey boy over here was really blaming everything that was happening to him on Sylvia. Sorry, that was...
He was blaming everything on Sylvia. He's like, "Why is this happening to me? It's all Sylvia's fault." Some people just can't take accountability. They always got to blame somebody else. I don't know, Bruce. Maybe you shouldn't have been stealing and shit. Maybe you should have been a better father. Maybe you shouldn't have lied. But yeah, it's Sylvia's fault. So his whole life felt like, he felt like his whole life was falling apart and Sylvia was to blame. So that's pretty much Bruce. So,
The police did some digging and that's what they ended up finding on Bruce. That was his 2008. I mean, what a shitty year for him. So what does any of Bruce's life have to do with the Ortegas, right? Well, police were wondering the same thing and they're doing some digging on this guy and they're like, okay, obviously things weren't great for him, right? At first, it seemed like there really wasn't a connection at all, just...
Nothing. To them, it seemed like this guy was just having some really, a really bad time to say the least, but there was no connection between him and the Ortegas. That is until they looked into his now ex-wife, Sylvia. You see, while police were digging around all of this stuff up, you know, they found out that Sylvia's maiden name was Ortega. Yeah.
And Sylvia Ortega was among one of those who was killed on the Christmas Eve massacre situation. Sylvia and Bruce, their divorce had been finalized on December 18th, which was like barely a week before the massacre. Yeah. And then on top of all this, as part of the settlement,
of his and Sylvia's divorce, Bruce was ordered to pay $10,000 out of pocket as part of like the agreement. And on top of that, she also got to keep her engagement ring.
Which I know, I know, I don't know how you feel about that, but it seemed like that really irked Bruce who needed the money. He's like, "You want $10,000 and you're keeping the ring? Fuck." An assumption, right? So then this man, Bruce, who has no money, allegedly, he ends up going back to that gun store on November 13th and he buys another gun. So now he has five guns.
Yeah, I don't know what he's doing. No one knows what he's doing. Well, I don't know. With Sylvia's marriage to Bruce officially tying everything together in terms of like a motive, police were desperate to interview anyone who had survived the fire and the shooting to see if they could identify who the Santa was 'cause they believed it's Bruce and they're hoping they can get an ID. The only trouble was that
The few who did escape, they were either children who ran out the back before this attacker had even gotten to them. So they didn't even see who it was. And the only adults in the room who made it out and maybe able to ID this person were the parents of the eight year old girl who opened the front door. And they were in the hospital with their daughter. So police weren't able to get an ID. They had to wait.
Okay, so the police go back to where, you know, they found Bruce's body. Bruce was found at his brother's house and it was Bruce's brother who actually found him and called 911 when he came home and saw Bruce. And there was like a pile of blood. There were two guns that they saw inside of the car. Bruce had been killed up close.
And given everything that they dug up about Bruce, they were able to match the guns to Bruce. Like he was the one who owned them. So the theory of there being multiple shooters went out the window because they were Bruce's guns. They even found another gun strapped to his leg. So he had three guns on him. All right, okay.
So outside of Bruce's brother's house, a block away, a neighbor called in a very suspicious looking vehicle that was parked outside. And they believed that this car didn't belong to any of the neighbors because they watched the area. They know the cars. And when police came by and ran the plates on the car, well, guess what? It matched the description of the car that the neighbor saw at the Ortega's that was leaving with no lights on.
Not only that, but when they scan the plates, it comes back telling the police that the car wasn't anyone at all. It was actually a rental. And they found out that it was rented earlier that week to... Bruce. Bruce! Bruce!
Bruce, what the fuck are you doing? What a dick. Police, they go to look inside of the vehicle, right? For evidence. So they open it up and what do they find? A Santa suit. I know, I know, I know. But then get this, 'cause this is wild. They open up the car and then they're looking through it and they see the Santa suit. But when they lifted the Santa suit up, like the entire suit, they're like, "Santa suit." It caught on fire. The whole thing caught on fire.
I mean, you can look, there's pictures of it. Okay, there's pictures of it, no joke. I guess it's believed that Bruce had rigged the car to explode if someone were to come looking for him, which I mean, he put in some serious thought and work into this. Very strange. I don't know, I don't know. But the car blew up, there's pictures of it, whoa.
Whoa, that's a lot. Now after that, the police found out that he bought a plane ticket to his friend Steve's house in Iowa, the same guy that he visited earlier, remember? Yeah, he bought the ticket, he bought a ticket to go see Steve so that police would suspect that he went to Iowa, okay? But police instead found out that he rented another car, Bruce, he rented another car, okay?
And inside of this car, because they were able to locate it, they found food, guns, ammo, maps of the US/Mexico border. So it's believed that Bruce's plan was to, you know, go to fucking Mexico, bye. And then police would be looking for him in Iowa. That's fucked up too, because now you're just involved with your friend Steve.
What a dick. What a dick. So all this evidence is just piling up, everything's pointing to Bruce, and there's really no sense for them to suspect that it was anybody else at this point. And once they were able to talk to one of the adults at the party, Letitia, they were able to confirm that she knew, she saw that it was Bruce who came through that door dressed as Santa.
Leticia was able to confirm for the police basically the entire timeline of what happened that night. So I guess what happened that night was Bruce showed up, right? Santa, hey.
and he starts shooting everyone right away. But he was mainly trying to go for like Sylvia, okay? And then after he thought he killed everyone in the house, he took out his makeshift flamethrower. Whoa, can I, am I having a shrunk? After he thought he killed everyone in the house, he took out his makeshift flamethrower thing and started spraying fire all over the place. Dude, what do you think? He wasn't gonna get caught?
Okay, okay, makes sense, right? Makes sense. But why did Bruce go to his brother's house and kill himself instead of go to Mexico? I mean, again, based off all the evidence they found, his plan was to go to Mexico. He even bought the plane ticket to make it look like he went to Steve's instead. So like what changed? It's believed. It's believed.
It's believed. Theories. Bruce's flamethrower was filled with some kind of racing fuel. I guess it's like extremely sensitive to heat and in an enclosed space rather than just like normal gasoline or lighter fluid, it's just extremely sensitive. That's what this means. At one point during his torching of the Ortega's home, the flames, they got loose and Bruce ended up setting himself on fire in the Santa suit.
Oh yeah, so the theory is that the Ortegas probably had like an open flame somewhere in the house. Maybe someone was cooking something, maybe there were candles lit, something along those lines, but there had to be a flame somewhere. I mean they don't know because you know the house burned down, but the suspicion is that Bruce wasn't aware that there was this open flame in the house when he started spreading the racing fuel around and
boom shakalaka, the house caught fire before Bruce was even like ready and as a result his ass caught on fire too. So when medical examiners got a hold of Bruce's remains and started taking all of his clothes off that's when they saw not only did he have a gunshot wound through the back of his head but he had been burned like severely burned all over his body and not just normal burn which is so bad normal burn bad this guy was like baked torched
broiled. So again, this is all theories here because they don't know but given the nature of like how badly burned he was, they believe, the coroners believe that he was probably in so much pain. Okay, he's probably in excruciating pain that he decided just to kill himself
the bullets exit wounds, it matched an angle that would have made sense for Bruce to have been holding it himself, AKA he killed himself. Again, rumors, but I mean, that's, you could believe that, right?
At his brother's house? That's fucked up. This Bruce guy is just all sorts of fucked up. He's fucked up on a different kind of level. And that's kind of it, really. I mean, there wasn't a trial or anything because Bruce was dead and police did eventually piece together that Bruce had actually intended on killing more people that night before going to Mexico. Yeah.
Apparently he had a list that a list of a couple names that he was marking off aside from Sylvia. He also was going to kill his ex-wife's attorney and also his own mother. Oh yeah, yeah. He was gonna kill his own mom. He was, he was, huh? Yeah, he was. But I guess he got burned so badly it just kind of
Good, you know, but still bad, but whatever. And not only that, his mom was actually invited to go to the Ortega's house that night and she was supposed to be there, but she ended up staying home because she was feeling sick. Poor thing. Hope she's okay.
Well, as a final note, since there wasn't a trial or anything, the single surviving daughter of Joe and Alice, Leticia, the one who identified Bruce to the police, she was interviewed a few years ago. And like, how has her life been since 2008?
And I mean, of course, she misses her family deeply. But one thing she's been doing with her daughter is reaching out to other families who have been affected by gun violence. Her daughter Katrina, the daughter that answered the door, she wrote letters to different families over the years to try and comfort them as someone who had gone through the same thing. I'm sure it's a very unique experience.
experience that is hard to understand unless you've been in it. And then in 2018, she helped organize a walkout at her Pasadena High School.
She actually made a video where she encouraged her classmates to participate in this walkout. And she said, "I've lived through it and I'm still living my life as best as I can. It's not stopping me. It's not instilling fear in me. I want that change. I don't want other families to go through what me and my family went through."
End quote. Calling for some kind of gun control. That's what the walkout was for, gun control. But then my friends, it's a really awful story about this Bruce douche and him ruining fucking Christmas for a whole family. Disgusting fucking troll. The end.
The end. I hope the family is doing well. I hope they're okay. I don't really have any thoughts. It's just like so gross. I mean, it's one thing to do it, but to dress up as Santa on Christmas Eve, like how fucked up. He is so fucked up. He's a different level of fucked up, this guy. He is different.
Ugh, sorry for ruining your holiday. Thank you for hanging out with me. I hope you have a wonderful holiday and I hope you're safe. Don't drink and drive. I love and appreciate you so very much. And I hope to be seeing you very soon. Okay, have a good day. Make good choices and I'll be seeing you guys later. Bye.
