# 17: Real Life Killer Santa Claus

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 13 Jun 2023, 14 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880328/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851628-44100-2-608f49c69609aabf.mp3

Today's episode is on the killer santa claus, Bruce Pardo Trigger Warning: mass murder Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discuss triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:38] Today we're going to be talking about the Covina massacre, where
[0:42] the killer actually dressed up as Santa to commit the massacre.
[0:46] Quickly, before I get into it, I just want to give my usual
[0:49] disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[0:51] anyone that I talk about in this video.
[0:53] This video is for educational purposes and everything that I'm
[0:57] about to say is information that I have found on the Internet and
[1:00] I'm compiling into one video on the case.
[1:02] On December 24th, Christmas Eve of 2008, the Ortega family were
[1:06] hosting a Christmas party. Random the house in Covina in
[1:10] California. The hosts of this party were an
[1:12] elderly couple named Joseph and Alicia Ortega.
[1:16] And overall it had around 25 attendees, most of which were
[1:20] close family. All five of the Ortega children
[1:23] were there, so Alicia and Joseph's children, but they were
[1:26] all adults, and their names were Charles, James, Leticia, Alicia
[1:30] and Sylvia. And some of these five Ortega
[1:33] children brought their partners and their children.
[1:36] So Joseph and Alicia's grandchildren.
[1:38] And the party started in the early evening.
[1:41] They listened to Christmas music, they ate food, they drank
[1:44] alcohol. The adults played a game of
[1:45] poker while the children were playing video games.
[1:48] And then at around 11:30 PM, there was a knock at the door.
[1:52] And so one of the grandchildren ran to answer it.
[1:54] Leticia's 8 year old daughter. So she opened the door and saw a
[1:58] man standing there in a Santa suit holding a wrapped present.
[2:02] And so she got really excited and started shouting to a family
[2:05] that Santa was here. It was then that this man in a
[2:08] Santa suit produced a handgun and shot the little girl in the
[2:11] face. Luckily she moved her head just
[2:14] at the right time and the bullet only grazed her cheek and her
[2:17] jaw, otherwise that would have been a fatal injury.
[2:21] But still, the little girl fell to the floor in shock and that
[2:24] was when the man in the Santa suit stepped over her body and
[2:28] opened fire on the rest of the household.
[2:30] So quickly the family all began screaming and running and
[2:33] grabbing kids and taking them to safety.
[2:36] All though only half of the family actually made it.
[2:39] So the little girl that opened the door and got shot first
[2:42] actually managed to run out of the house and into the front
[2:45] garden where she eventually met up with her mother, Leticia and
[2:48] her father. And they all went to a
[2:50] neighbor's house to call 911 before obviously taking the
[2:53] daughter to the emergency room. And in this time, two other
[2:57] neighbors had also called, 9111 of them reporting gunshots and
[3:01] the other one saying that they thought that someone had set a
[3:04] house on fire in the neighborhood.
[3:05] And that was because this man that was dressed as Santa, after
[3:09] he'd shot as many people as he could and everyone else had
[3:11] escaped, he unwrapped that gift wrapped present that he'd
[3:16] brought along with him. And in there was a flamethrower.
[3:19] And he set the whole house on fire.
[3:21] Quickly, police and ambulances and everyone arrived, yet there
[3:24] was no sign of the perpetrator. And it actually took 80
[3:27] firefighters an hour and a half to extinguish the full house
[3:31] fire. So while firefighters were
[3:33] working on that, trying to put out the fire, police went and
[3:36] spoke 2 survivors and neighbors trying to figure out who was in
[3:40] there, how many people are missing?
[3:42] And that was when Leticia said that she thought that nine
[3:45] people were missing. Eventually, when the building
[3:47] had cooled down, police went inside and found the
[3:50] unrecognizable charred remains of all nine of those people.
[3:54] This nine people included both grandparents, the hosts of the
[3:58] party, 80 year old Joseph and 70 year old Alicia Ortega.
[4:03] It also included four of the five grown up Ortega children,
[4:06] Sylvia, James, Alicia and Charles.
[4:09] Latisha being the only surviving sibling.
[4:12] And this also included Alicia's 17 year old son Michael Ortiz,
[4:16] who died alone upstairs in the fire.
[4:19] So police began questioning the survivors of the Christmas party
[4:22] to see if they had any idea who had done this.
[4:26] And a lot of them said that even though this man was wearing a
[4:28] costume and a full beard and everything, they believed it to
[4:31] be a man named Bruce Pardo. And parallel to this all going
[4:35] on in Covina, police 30 miles away were responding to a
[4:39] separate incident. A man named Brad Pardo had come
[4:42] home from a Christmas party in the early hours of the morning
[4:45] and found that his front door was unlocked.
[4:48] And when he walked into the living room, Brad found his
[4:50] brother, Bruce Pardo, laying dead in a pool of his own blood
[4:54] with a handgun next to him. So Brad called police, who came
[4:58] and quickly began making connections between this suicide
[5:02] and the massacre that had just happened a few hours prior in
[5:05] Covina. The weapons seemed to be the
[5:07] same, the bullet casings seemed to be the same.
[5:09] Bruce Pardo had a lot of burning to him and the house in Covina
[5:13] was set on fire. So who was Bruce Pardo and what
[5:17] was his connection to the Ortega family and ultimately what was
[5:20] his motive to carry out this massacre?
[5:22] Well, Bruce Pardo was actually the ex-husband of Sylvia Ortega,
[5:27] one of the five Ortega children that was killed during the
[5:30] massacre. And when I say ex-husband, I
[5:32] mean it was still very, very fresh.
[5:34] The divorce was actually only finalized a week before this.
[5:38] The divorce was Sylvia's idea, and there were multiple reasons
[5:42] as to why she wanted it, including that Bruce was
[5:45] unwilling to set up a joint bank account for the both of them.
[5:49] Sylvia had three children to a previous marriage, and although
[5:52] Bruce had no problem acting as a father figure to these children,
[5:56] he refused to pay a single penny for any of them.
[5:59] And on top of all of these financial things, Sylvia had
[6:02] just become less attracted to Bruce.
[6:05] He became demotivated and lazy. He never really wanted to leave
[6:08] the house. He was unambitious.
[6:10] But the final straw for Sylvia Ortega was when she was speaking
[6:14] with Bruce's mother and she told Sylvia that Bruce had a secret
[6:19] child from a previous marriage. Bruce had been previously
[6:22] married to a woman named Eleanor, and in 2000 the two of
[6:25] them had a son named Matthew. So one day Eleanor went out to
[6:29] run some errands and she left 10 month old Matthew in the care of
[6:33] Bruce. And so Bruce was sat inside
[6:36] watching TV, and he let 10 month old Matthew go and play outside
[6:41] by himself. Later that day, Eleanor returned
[6:43] home from running her errands and found Bruce at the side of
[6:47] their outdoor swimming pool, cradling Matthew in his arms.
[6:50] Bruce was sobbing, telling Eleanor that Matthew had fallen
[6:54] into the pool and he hadn't noticed, and Matthew had began
[6:57] to drown. Luckily, Bruce got to him in
[6:59] time and got him out, and he was still breathing, although he was
[7:02] unresponsive. Matthew was in intensive care
[7:05] for a week afterward, but actually survived the incident,
[7:08] although he was left severely brain damaged and partly
[7:11] paralyzed. And this eventually led to
[7:13] strain on Bruce and Eleanor's relationship, and the two of
[7:16] them got a divorce. And then Bruce moved to a
[7:19] separate part of California and never saw his son again.
[7:22] And when Sylvia found out that her husband had kept this from
[7:25] her for so long, that was the final straw.
[7:28] And so she filed to get a divorce in the summer of 2008.
[7:32] And it seemed that that summer in 2008, Bruce Pardo's life just
[7:36] kind of started crumbling around him.
[7:38] His wife left him. He lost his job as an electrical
[7:41] engineer. He fell into depression and
[7:43] debt. And he owed Sylvia a lot of
[7:45] money. But obviously, because he wasn't
[7:47] working, he didn't have the money to pay it.
[7:49] And so he was just very stressed.
[7:51] And around that same time in summer, Bruce walked into a gun
[7:55] store and bought his first ever handgun worth $1000, which would
[7:59] eventually be one of the guns that he used to either kill
[8:02] himself or those nine other people.
[8:05] And due to California laws limiting the sales of firearms,
[8:08] you can actually only buy one every 30 days.
[8:11] And so Bruce Pardo returned to that same store in August,
[8:15] September and October and bought a new gun every time.
[8:19] Around October time, Bruce got in contact with an old friend
[8:22] named Jerry who owned a costume shop, and he ordered a Santa
[8:26] costume. And he told Jerry that he needed
[8:28] this Santa costume for his Christmas party for his family
[8:32] so that he could give out presents to the children as
[8:34] Santa. Around the end of October over,
[8:37] Bruce traveled to Iowa to celebrate his friend's birthday.
[8:40] And this friend said that he'd never seen Bruce so depressed in
[8:44] his life. This friend said that Bruce
[8:46] would just kind of sit and stare at walls, and all he was really
[8:49] capable of talking about was himself.
[8:51] And like his divorce, the loss of his job, how sad he was, his
[8:55] financial situation. And he expressed anger a few
[8:59] times that his financial situation was being spoken about
[9:02] in court at the divorce hearings.
[9:04] And he said that it was just really embarrassing and he was
[9:07] also angry that his own mother was taking Sylvia's side in this
[9:11] and would sit with Sylvia in court rather than her own son.
[9:15] Which honestly, Bruce's mother just felt really bad for Sylvia.
[9:18] She didn't know that Sylvia didn't know about his son from a
[9:22] previous marriage. And Sylvia was kind of like a
[9:25] daughter to Bruce's mother. And so of course she felt bad
[9:28] for Sylvia during the divorce. So five days before committing
[9:32] the massacre, Bruce went into a travel agents and bought a one
[9:35] way ticket for Canada, leaving midday on Christmas.
[9:39] And so police believe it wasn't actually part of his plan to
[9:42] commit suicide after committing the massacre.
[9:45] They think that he was just going to go to Canada.
[9:48] But police didn't only think this because of the ticket.
[9:51] They actually thought this because of the way that his body
[9:53] was found. After committing the massacre,
[9:55] Bruce drove his car 30 miles to his brother's house, which is
[9:59] where he eventually committed suicide.
[10:02] And there he began to RIP the Santa costume from his body
[10:06] because because he'd set the house on fire with that
[10:08] flamethrower, a lot of this costume had actually melted to
[10:12] his skin. He put what was left of this
[10:14] Santa suit, everything that he could get off his body.
[10:16] He put it on the car seat and booby trapped it with gunpowder
[10:20] so that if it was touched or moved, it would blow the whole
[10:23] car up. He then got changed to grabbed
[10:26] his handgun, went to his brother's house and committed
[10:28] suicide. When police recovered Bruce
[10:31] Pardo's body from his brother's house, they found $17,000 clean
[10:35] wrapped to the side of his leg, which also kind of alludes to
[10:39] the fact that he wasn't planning on killing himself.
[10:41] They think that he was planning to go somewhere, probably
[10:44] Canada. And obviously he wouldn't be
[10:46] able to use his cards or anything because they can be
[10:48] tracked if he was thought to have been a suspect in the
[10:51] massacre. And so he would need cash.
[10:54] And despite this divorce being in the works for over six months
[10:57] at this point, and it was finalized a week before this,
[11:01] Bruce Pardo died wearing his wedding ring.
[11:03] And some people theorized that Bruce was actually going to kill
[11:06] his own mother and Sylvia's divorce lawyer.
[11:09] But of course, his plans changed.
[11:11] He never actually did that. They think he planned to kill
[11:14] his own mother because she was actually supposed to be in
[11:16] attendance at that Christmas party that night.
[11:19] Like I said, she was still very close with Sylvia.
[11:21] However, last minute, his mother cancelled due to illness, but
[11:25] Bruce didn't know that she cancelled.
[11:27] So maybe he knew that she was going to be in attendance at
[11:30] that party and went intending to kill his own mother as well.
[11:33] And they think he also planned on killing Sylvias lawyer
[11:36] because just a couple of days before this, he'd rented out a
[11:40] car and filled it with a bunch of supplies.
[11:42] So clothes, food, laptop, water, just things that you would need
[11:47] to get away. And this rented car was found
[11:50] parked 500 meters away from the lawyers house.
[11:54] So it's theorized that he was going to do the massacre, then
[11:57] go and kill the lawyer and then jump in his getaway car and go
[12:01] to Canada. But police believe he decided
[12:03] not to go through with all of those plans because he was in so
[12:06] much pain with his burns. He felt like it just wasn't
[12:09] worth it and he might as well just kill himself.
[12:12] Had he not had those burns, however, police believed that he
[12:15] would have gone on to kill a lot more people and then get away
[12:19] with it. Maybe.
[12:19] But yeah, that completes this case and absolutely insane one.
[12:24] It's crazy to think how long he was planning to do this.
[12:28] He bought his first gun in July. So that is over six months of
[12:34] him thinking about doing this. And not once did he decide it
[12:39] wasn't a good idea. And I wonder if anyone had any
[12:42] idea that he was at this point, because obviously, like I said,
[12:46] his friend in Iowa that he went to visit said that he seemed
[12:49] really depressed. But do you think that friend had
[12:52] any idea that he was angry, that he was this angry?
[12:58] It always blows my mind to think that people can be planning
[13:02] something like this for six months in advance.
[13:05] Buying guns, buying a Santa suit, all of that planning what
[13:09] they were going to do, getting a getaway car, buying a ticket to
[13:12] go somewhere. And no one can have any idea
[13:16] like that this is going on in someones head.
[13:19] And it's even more sad when you realize how many children's
[13:22] parents were killed during this massacre.
[13:25] I read that between 12 and 14 children were left orphaned
[13:29] after this. Yeah, a really sad note to in
[13:32] this video on. I'm sorry about that.
[13:37] Thank you so much for listening to Usual Disclaimer.
[13:40] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[13:42] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[13:45] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[13:48] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
[13:51] follow Usual Disclaimer on your podcast app so that you get
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[13:57] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[14:00] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[14:03] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[14:06] See you next time.

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