All language subtitles for Dont.Open.The.Door.S01E01.Holiday.Horror.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

When you're sitting home
at Christmas Eve with your family,

those are
the best times a family can have.

At just before midnight,

the doorbell rings.

He moved into the house
and started

systematically shooting
that came into his view.

Santa
had some sort of flame-thrower.

Police are left
with a lot of questions:

what happened here,
and why did it happen?

They had no idea
when the doorbell rang

that
they were opening the door to evil.

Covina, California
is a small community,

just under 50,000 in population,

about 20 miles east of
the city of Los Angeles.

It is absolutely
a good place to raise a family.

Good schools. Good shopping.

One of the really cool things
about Covina

is that even as Los Angeles
has grown,

Covina has kind of really retained
its sort of smalltown feel.

The crime rate in Covina
is typically very low.

The police department
is very proactive

and our citizens
are very involved in that too.

We've been able
to keep it very safe.

Christmas has a very special place

in the heart of a community
like Covina.

There's an annual holiday parade.

The park is always
festooned with Christmas lights.

Everybody's looking forward
to celebrating with loved ones,

including Leticia Ortega
and her eight-year-old daughter,

Katrina.

Joe and Alice are the matriarch
and patriarch of the family.

They're very good people,
hard workers,

genuinely giving people.

As the son of Mexican immigrants,

Joe had started
his own industrial paint business,

but he's now enjoying retirement
with his wife of 53 years, Alice.

The Ortegas have a Christmas party
every year.

They invite the whole neighborhood,
and it had become a tradition

for people to come and go
from that party on Christmas Eve.

They have
three generations of family there.

There's about 25 people
at the house.

There was typically
a big poker game, and chatting,

and just
enjoying each other's company.

When you're sitting home
at Christmas Eve, with your family,

those are
the best times a family can have.

The party is winding down.

People are starting to gather things
to get ready to leave.

It's been a great night,
they've had a great party,

and the doorbell rings.

As part of
the Christmas Eve celebration,

the Ortega family had a tradition
of having Santa arrive at midnight.

The Ortegas had a neighbour
dress as Santa...

...and he would drop off presents
for all these Santa-aged kids.

Katrina,
the eight-year-old, heard that,

and as soon as she hears Santa,

she knows what's going on,
and she runs for the door.

Who wouldn't open the door
to Santa Claus?

The Ortega family notices
there's something off about Santa.

He's not wearing, you know,
regular sort of wireframe glasses.

The glasses he was wearing
were yellow-coloured glasses

you would take
on the shooting range.

And Santa Claus brings out
a nine-millimetre handgun.

Leticia looked on in horror

as Santa
shot her daughter in the face.

After he shot Katrina,
that... that brave little girl

turned and ran away from him,

and then
he shot the Ortega's adult son.

Then he moved into the house,

and started systematically shooting
everyone that came into his view.

There's no time to react.
This happened very quickly,

and one after another,
his victims began to fall.

This is the last thing anyone
would ever expect,

especially on Christmas Eve.

Christmas is normally
a quiet night,

and then all of a sudden
the 911 calls start coming in.

Callers tell us that they can hear
the sounds of gunshots.

They're calling in saying,
"I just heard a loud explosion."

And then
they can see the house on fire.

The neighbours are panicked.

They knew family members
were still in the house.

In the midst of all this, Leticia
and her husband and Katrina

managed to escape,
and Leticia's able

to get Katrina to a hospital
where she can get care.

The flames from this fire
were 40 and 50 feet in the air.

When firefighters got there,

they knew it wasn't just
some ordinary fire, it was arson.

Somebody set this fire
and used some kind of accelerant

to make it go so massively.

I arrived within the hour
of the first 911 call.

This fire was burning so intently
and so far up into the night sky

that there was an orange glow
on the whole horizon

that I could see in that direction.
We were very, very concerned

about it spreading.

We determined that there had been
25 people inside the house

when this event started,
and through our investigation

we were able to figure
that we had nine people missing,

including Papa Joe
and his wife, Alice.

Lieutenant Doonan and I went
as close as we could do to the house

to see what we can see inside.

We were looking through windows
to try to locate victims.

The problem is, at that point,
nobody could have survived

inside that house.
There was nothing that we could do.

It took 80 firefighters
to get this blaze under control

and to put it out.

To say it was one of the most
challenging nights of my career

is an understatement. It was
THE most challenging night

of my career. All of the skills
that I had learned,

investigative, organisational,
administrative, leadership,

all came into play that night.

Police are left
with a lot of questions:

what happened here,
and why did it happen?

At this point,
it's an active crime scene.

It was not clear if our suspect
was still on that scene or had fled.

There's an extreme sense of urgency.

We have to believe that if
he's been willing to do this,

he'd be willing to do more,
to do this again.

In the initial first few hours
of the investigation,

the whereabouts of Santa
was very conflicted.

We got some information
that Santa had been in the house

during the fire, and had stayed
in the house and had died.

And we got information
that Santa had fled in a car.

One neighboUr had been at the party
and had just left

prior to everything happening,

and when they were leaving
and driving down their street,

they were passed by a car coming in
that didn't have his headlights on.

In that case,
we go with worst case scenario,

Santa has escaped.

We don't know
if he's going somewhere else

to commit another crime.
And so now we have a manhunt.

At this point,
we've got multiple people missing.

We have a suspect that we believe
to be on the run, dressed as Santa.

We don't know
if he's going somewhere else

to commit another crime.
And we did not discount

that he could have had help:

somebody driving a vehicle,
somebody helping him plan,

and we had to assume that there
may be more than one suspect,

though only one was named
in the calls.

In the early morning hours,

Los Angeles Police Department
gets a call

from a man who's home
at his house in Sylmar,

which is, by vehicle,
a solid hour away.

And he had been at a Christmas party
with his wife through the evening,

and they had gotten home
really, really late,

and he noticed that his closet door
was open, and he looked in

and he saw
his gym bag had been opened,

and he knew, one, that he kept a gun
in there, and he knew, two,

that he had not left the light on
or the gym bag open.

He started turning the lights on
throughout the house

and he was greeted
with a really ugly scene.

His brother, Bruce Pardo,
was deceased

with a gunshot wound to the head
on the couch.

It was very much a shock.

We immediately send two detectives
out to Sylmar

to meet with LAPD investigators.

His brother describes Bruce
as a very outgoing guy, friendly,

very social, the kind of guy
that you could go to dinner with

and have a good time.

He grew up
in the San Fernando Valley,

and then
he got his bachelor's degree

from Cal State Northridge
in computers.

Very, very intelligent guy.

He had several jobs
in the computer field.

One of them included a stint
at JPLA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

which works hand in hand with NASA.

In his mind, his brother believes
Bruce did not kill himself.

A lot of things at this crime scene
point away from that.

One of the things that they noticed
was a bullet hole in the ceiling,

and also, they find no suicide note.

There's a firearm
in the suspect's hand,

there's another firearm
on the table in front of him.

The fact that there were two guns,
it was one of those things

that investigators had to look at.

People are wondering,
what's going on? What's happening?

This is on Christmas.

The next question is:
could these killings be connected?

Back in Covina,
we're still looking for the man

dressed in the Santa suit
that fled in a car.

it was well into Christmas Day,
daylight,

that we were able to even go
into the house,

as the house burned to the ground
and collapsed in on itself.

It's challenging,
because a lot of your evidence

has been destroyed by fire.
- Investigators were able to find

numerous handguns
at the Ortega house,

so the indication
there was more than one gun involved

in this crime, and they were
...9mm calibre.

Also, investigators found
a fuel canister...

...a cylinder-shaped device
on the front grass,

which was wrapped
in Christmas paper.

The compressor was modified
which turned out

Santa had some sort of device
that was like a flamethrower.

The device
confirms that this was arson.

The Los Angeles County
Coroner's Office was called in

to assist identifying the victims
at the scene.

We recovered nine bodies.

The results of those autopsies
revealed

that all nine of our victims
had died of a combination

of gunshot wounds, smoke inhalation,
and burns.

All nine of them were burned
beyond recognition,

and they were using dental records
to identify them.

Investigators learn
that his ex-wife, Sylvia Ortega,

is one of the victims
in the Ortega residence fire.

Now investigators have to start

considering the history
of intimate relationships.

For instance,
what is the marital history

of the parties who have
not only been murdered,

but their former partners as well?

In looking into Bruce's
background, we were able

to start piecing things together.

One of his friends,
colleagues at work,

actually introduces him
to Sylvia,

who's an administrative assistant,
and she's charming

and she has an infectious laugh,
the kind of person

that when you meet her,
you won't forget her.

Bruce and Sylvia get married
and they move into a new house

with Sylvia's young son
from a previous marriage.

After a little over
a year of marriage,

Bruce and Sylvia
file for divorce.

It's really sudden. Everything
is on the table at this point.

That's one of the most important
parts about these investigations

in police work is
you have to consider

the absolutely wildest stories,

along with the stuff
that really makes sense,

because you can't just look at
something and make a decision.

You have to let the evidence
play out.

Bruce was named
in our investigation,

and now he's dead.

The fact that there were two guns,

we had to consider that Bruce
could be the 10th victim

in this crime spree.

At that moment
there's a million things

running through my mind.

The most important step
is trying to locate our suspect.

We need to find him, because if
he's going to go do something else,

we need to try to stop that. We want
to get him in custody quickly.

The most important thing
at that point

was helping the survivors
and getting statements from them

and trying to put together
what was going on.

So the family volunteered to come
to our station with us,

where we could keep them safe,
because at that point

we still believed that our suspect
was outstanding,

and we had to make the assumption
that there may be more than one.

When we asked Leticia
if she knew the identity of Santa,

based upon his demeanour,

his build,

and his eyes that she can see
through the costume

that he was wearing,

without hesitation,
she knew it was Bruce Pardo.

Leticia told us
that the divorce proceedings

between her sister Sylvia
and Bruce Pardo were difficult,

challenging, and more contentious
than most people knew about.

During the divorce proceedings
there was multiple times

when Bruce's mother
actually would sit with Sylvia

and hold her hand
and was supporting her

during the divorce.
This really angered Bruce.

In looking into Bruce's background,
we were able to contact

several women that he dated
or been in relationships with

over several years.

We talked to women
that he had dated,

then we talked to a woman
that he had lived with,

then we talked to a woman
that he had been engaged to,

but unfortunately never showed up
on the day of the ceremony.

We talked to another woman
that he actually was engaged to,

did show up on the day, and called
a timeout during the ceremony

and left.

This sort of erratic,
very whirlwind serial monogamism

is part and parcel
for malignant narcissists.

A malignant narcissist
is somebody so self-absorbed

that they are toxic,
that they cause cancerous,

malignant destruction
wherever they go.

They are someone who believes
that they're fundamentally

and inalienably special,

and warrant special treatment
throughout their lives.

Once the honeymoon phase is over

and their partner's
no longer sort of adulating them,

they just move on.
They cut and run.

Leticia told us that she believed
that because of this divorce,

Bruce was seeking revenge
against Sylvia and her family,

which prompted him
to come to the house that night

and wreak havoc on the household.

Where Bruce is discovered dead,
there's a set of keys on the floor

with a key fob on it.

My detectives
take that key fob out

and they start walking
down the street,

and they walk around the corner,
and the key fob works

on a blue Dodge Caliber
parked on the next street over.

So they start looking in,
and immediately they know

this is their car,

because there's the remains
of the Santa suit

had been bunched up
and just flung onto the front seat.

Inside the vehicle, investigators
find hundreds of rounds

of ammunition and a flare,
which appeared to be a booby-trap.

The detectives,
they didn't want to mess around

based on our crime scene in Covina.

They knew that it was
really serious and violent.

So they asked for an arson
and explosives team

to come in and take a look.

They evacuated
the whole neighbourhood,

everything
within about a thousand feet,

and they brought a robot over
to the passenger's side

and rolled it up,
and the robot reached out

and grabbed the Santa suit
and picked it up,

and as it started to back away
and bring the Santa suit out,

suddenly the car burst into flames.

This car is full of
crucial evidence in this crime.

Investigators watched everything
just go up in flames.

At this point, our detectives
have found the vehicle

the suspect fled our crime scene in.

That car catches fire and it burns,
and inside the car

is a lot of ammunition,
and so it's creating rounds

cooking off,
firing inside the car.

When the fire is extinguished,
the car is just a burnt-out shell.

It totalled the car.
Completely burned it.

It just became
more and more bizarre as we went.

Every step of this story is...
gets more and more unbelievable.

But this is the stuff
that we've trained for.

We work until the work's done.

This is why
we've gone to the police academy,

gotten our education, worked hard,
to make sure

this family gets justice. Sitting on
the remains of the passenger seat

was a battering ram,

and it's the type that police
would use to break in a front door,

and we believe Bruce brought that
to our crime scene

just in case
somebody didn't open the door.

At this point in the investigation,

we are fairly certain
that Bruce is the killer Santa.

There are multiple pieces
of evidence, multiple statements.

Everything was pointing to Bruce
as the bad guy, everything.

What we're not certain of
is any help that he had.

The evidence
also raises the question,

if Bruce was the shooter, how did he
end up dead on his brother's couch?

Bruce's autopsy did reveal

that he died from
a single gunshot wound to thehead.

And that was the cause of death.

Gunshot residue
being located on his hands

proved
that Bruce Pardo was the shooter.

The officers at his brother's
house are processing the crime scene

and they're seeing strange stuff,
not a normal crime scene.

They find large sums of money

that has basically been
saran wrapped-around his leg.

In total, he had $17,000 in cash
strapped to his legs,

and inside his shoe, we found
a round-trip plane ticket

that would've landed him
in Illinois.

But the last thing
is the most shocking,

and it shows you
the depth of the plan:

he had a handcuff key
wrapped in plastic

and taped to his testicles.

Handcuff keys are fairly standard,
and if he's stopped and arrested,

he could try
to escape the handcuffs.

Often, mass murderers will have
various contingency plans.

Plan A may be to get away,
if only briefly.

They know they're eventually
going to get caught,

but in the meantime,

the plan is to stay on the loose.
- He was planning in steps:

what if this happens?
What if this happens?

He was very thorough.

There's also evidence
that Pardo was wearing a Santa suit,

because there's burnt red fabric
similar to a Santa suit

attached to his clothing.

They look at his hands
and his forearms,

and he has terrible burns
on his hands

where the skin is peeling off

in chunks, and on his forearms,
in addition to the gunshot wound

to the head that he has.

There was clear indication
that the Santa suit melted,

which caused third degree burns
to 40% of his body.

All of this physical evidence
indicated to us clearly

that Bruce Pardo was the person
who committed this crime.

And at this point, we knew
that Bruce acted alone

in our crime in Covina.

Why does Bruce Pardo
want to kill this family?

Before police
can answer that question,

police get another phone call,
and it leads them to evidence

of Bruce's deeper
and far more nefarious plan.

Examining Bruce
during his death investigation,

we found another set of keys on him.

Those keys had a tag on them
that typically you would see, like,

at a rental car dealership,
and we had no idea

where to start looking for it.
We put that vehicle information

on the nightly news in the LA area,

and within a few minutes
of that information going out,

we got a call from a resident
in the Glendale area, and they say,

"That car is parked
right in front of my house."

You realise that, wow,
this plot is a lot deeper

than we initially suspected.
There's a lot more going on here.

The second vehicle
was a Toyota RAV4.

The registration on that vehicle
had also been doctored by Bruce

to make it appear like he was
the registered owner of the car,

that it wasn't a rental. He had
changed the registration paperwork.

It has things inside it that look
like it would be for a road trip.

It's got a case of water, it's got
a computer tower, it's got clothes,

it's got toilet paper. We also find
maps for the southwest United States

and Mexico.
- We also find a sprayer

which is similar to the device
we found at the Ortega home.

It was absolutely something
that he would've used

to burn a second house.

When the police
come across this car,

they're thinking, why is it here?

It's not
anywhere near the Ortega family,

and nowhere near Bruce's brother.
What's the reason

for it being parked here?

That's when we realised

that Sylvia's divorce attorney
lived right around the corner.

Tells us that he was going to go
to Sylvia's divorce attorney's house

and kill the attorney, his wife,
and both of his kids,

and burn his house down.

It was indicating to us

that Bruce Pardo
wanted to seek revenge

on the attorney.

Detectives
interviewing this divorce lawyer

learned some pretty chilling detail

about the reason
behind Bruce and Sylvia's divorce.

It seemed like, at first, Bruce
and Sylvia had a storybook romance.

Everything was perfect.

But it deteriorated very quickly,
and now they knew why.

He had had a knee injury
a couple years prior.

So he had to have knee surgery
to repair that.

He had put on a lot of weight
and was kinda depressed.

At that point, it was kind of
the start of his downward spiral.

Bruce was just a changed person.
He wasn't acting the same

as when they dated. He wasn't fun.
At that time,

Bruce was filling out his tax return
and Sylvia saw it.

And she noticed that Bruce
was claiming a son

as a dependent,
a son she'd never heard of.

She confronted him on it,

and he admitted that he had a son
with another woman.

Bruce was living with a woman
out in the San Fernando Valley

back in 2001,
and they had a son together.

At the time, the son
was about 13 months old,

and his girlfriend had told him,
"I'm going to the store,

watch the baby."
And Bruce was just watching TV

and he was like, "OK."
And she's gone for about an hour,

and she comes back,
and she looks around and says,

"Where's the baby?" And Bruce
has not been watching him.

She realised that the boy
had fallen into the pool

and nearly drowned.

He was severely brain damaged,

so much so
that he's confined to a wheelchair.

And once they told them
he's not going to recover from this,

Bruce left and packed his stuff
and moved out,

and never went back
and never contacted her again.

The ex-girlfriend
was forced to sue Bruce

for financial support
to take care of the kid's needs.

The fact that his child
is in his care

and has an accident
that causes him to be, you know,

severely brain damaged, and then
he won't support the kid,

this guy was a real, real creep!

Pardo, based on the evidence
we have now,

ticks a lot of the boxes t
hat would classify him

as, number one,
a malignant narcissist, and two,

on the psychopathic spectrum
or having psychopathic traits,

if not a full clinical psychopath.

This really infuriates Sylvia
and she tells her family and friends

that this is a deal-breaker.
She's going to file for divorce

from Bruce, and it really sets off
a whole chain of events.

The divorce
became pretty contentious

and Sylvia was going to move out.

She, you know, she's living
her own life,

kind of separate from Bruce,
and she comes home one day

and finds
that he's taken all of her furniture

and pushed it out onto the driveway,

as if to say, that's it,
don't come in, figure it out.

At this point, Sylvia is forced
to move in with her married sister

nearby.

Bruce and Sylvia's divorce
was finalised

on December 18th, 2008,
just a week before Christmas.

The question is,
why would Bruce Pardo want

to kill the entire Ortega family?

When a malignant narcissist
is crossed,

you're going to get
a very predictable

and potentially explosive outcome.
In Pardo's case,

there is sort of
a perfect storm of triggers

that send him over the edge,
and it's one thing after another.

They call it
death by a thousand cuts,

and when you're talking about
that happening

to a malignant narcissist
who is obsessed with control

and with themselves,
and they no longer have that,

at that point they're unhinged
and very unpredictable,

which is what makes them
fundamentally so dangerous.

Our priority now is to get
a search warrant

for Bruce Pardo's residence
in Montrose,

which would assist us
in locating evidence.

The police really cracked the case

when they got a search warrant
for Bruce's home,

and once inside, they discovered

the truly terrifying scope
of his plan for the Ortega family.

The search warrant of Bruce's home

finally gives detectives
the opportunity to look inside

and see exactly what the plan was
and how terrifying it would be.

Any evidence that we still needed

to tie him to our case was found
during search warrant serviced

in his house.
In the back of the house,

there was a studio apartment
with a little workshop attached.

There was a plastic container
with one nautical flare missing.

There was black powder boxes,
there was ammunition boxes,

gun boxes, just everything else
that we needed to tie into the case.

He was designing
a flamethrower device,

and they thought that they were
looking at a bomb-making factory.

We find a table
that has Christmas paper,

that has the same pattern
that was used

to cover the flamethrower
or sprayer at the Covina residence.

Detectives find evidence

that Bruce
had contacted a seamstress

and ordered
an extra-large Santa suit.

The suit cost $300,
and it came with boots,

a belt, glasses, and a hat:

all the things that you would need

to make
a perfect Santa Claus costume.

Bruce told the seamstress

he wanted this suit
to be extra-large

as he would wear it
to a holiday party

and he wanted to be extra-jolly.

The way
the Santa suit was configured,

he had a pocket
where he had all of the guns.

One of Bruce's targets
was his mother, and the reason is,

because he believed
that she sided with Sylvia

in their divorce,
and in fact she'd even been invited

to the Ortega party.

Bruce's mother
had knee replacement surgery,

so she decided Christmas Eve morning
that she wasn't gonna go.

And it's the kind of decision
that you make hesitantly,

but ended up saving her life.

If everything had gone
according to Bruce's plan,

not only would he have
killed the Ortega family,

but he also
would've killed his own mother.

Of all of the recognised sub-types
of mass murderer,

the family annihilator is defined
by a pathological narcissism.

They truly believe that,
whether it be their family

or another family, are incapable
or unworthy of living without them.

Everything we found in the house

indicates to us
there was meticulous planning.

He had experiments,
or he was developing the tools

that he was gonna use
in this crime, to see

how they would assist him

in carrying out his plan.
- in this case,

Pardo being a family annihilator
also shows traits

of another recognised sub-type
of mass murderer: pseudo-commando.

A pseudo-commando is somebody
who takes great preparation

that would suggest this is some type
of military operation,

and Pardo did precisely that,
the difference being,

rather than having a bandelier
or fatigues,

he has a Santa suit crafted,

which is
just another narcissistic twist.

The thought that was put into it
by the suspect and the depravity,

and just the types of things he did,
it was unheard of at that point.

Based upon this evidence,
now we have a good idea

on what Bruce Pardo planned
on Christmas Eve.

The motive was the divorce
with Sylvia for this thing,

and Bruce had been very angry
with his mother

for siding with Sylvia.
He was driven by his own madness.

The Santa costume
served a couple of purposes

for Bruce. One was,
it was a natural thing for him

to walk up to the door
dressed as Santa.

It wouldn't have raised
any suspicions anywhere.

It's just Santa
walking around on Christmas Eve.

The other thing it allowed him to do
was conceal his identity.

And third, he was able to bring
five guns in those pockets with him.

Bruce knew the Ortegas
were used to welcoming Santa

on Christmas Eve,
and they wouldn't even think twice

about opening the door.

Bruce Pardo parked a Toyota RAV4

near Sylvia's divorce attorney's
residence in Glendale.

After murdering the Ortegas
in Covina,

he planned on going
to the attorney's house,

commit harm to him and his family,
then get in the vehicle and flee.

Shortly before midnight,
Bruce walks up to the front door,

rings the doorbell.

Unbeknownst to them,

they were allowing evil
to come into their house.

Eight-year-old Katrina
instinctively runs to the door,

because she wants to be
the first one to see Santa.

I've never
seen anything like this,

because
she must have turned her head...

...because the round travelled
along her jawline

and it exited
back at the base of her jaw,

but it didn't even
chip a tooth of hers.

Bruce turns his attention to
brothers Charles and James Ortega,

killing both of them.

Then he turns his attention
to his ex-wife Sylvia...

...and stands over her,
firing multiple rounds into her...

and then her parents,
Joseph and Alice Ortega.

Sylvia's sister,
Alecia Ortega, is next.

Then James's wife, Teresa,
and Charles' wife, Cheri.

And finally,
17-year-old Michael Ortiz.

The rest of the family
ran away in terror.

Some of them even
jumped out of windows to escape.

One young lady even broke her leg
jumping from a second-storey room.

The spray device,
he had wrapped it

to look like a big present,
so it wouldn't look suspicious

dragging across the yard
up to the house. It was

an 18-gallon compressor,
and he had modified it.

The actual body of the compressor
was filled with gasoline.

He then uses the device to spray
an accelerant around the house.

He made his way through the house
delivering that gas into the house,

including spraying it
onto victims. Inside his costume,

he had a nautical flare
that he could quickly strike

and light, and use to ignite
the fire. The one really mistake,

and it was a fatal mistake for him,
he didn't account for an open flame

inside the house.
There was fires in two fireplaces,

there was also candles
burning in the house,

and that gasoline vapour that he was
delivering into the house

at some point connected with
one of those open flames,

and it was absolutely
like an explosion.

He planned this crime out,

but the one thing
that he really didn't think about

was, like, buying a $300 Santa suit

and what the materials
would be made of.

This is a highly flammable,

sort of temporary kind of costume

that, when exposed to heat
or any sort of flame,

would
immediately become combustible.

He was critically burned
in that explosion,

but he still managed to flee.

He knew he had left survivors
that could identify him.

He was burned severely enough

that he could not get away
without medical treatment.

He knew the police would be waiting.
- Instead of going

to the attorney's house in Glendale,
he drives over 40 miles from Covina

to Sylmar, to his brother's house.

Bruce had those burns,
there were literally chunks of skin

falling off, and he still drove
45 minutes in that condition.

It would have been
excruciatingly painful.

He took the Santa suit off
and dumped it in the car.

He went to his brother's house.

He didn't have a key for the house,

so he crawled in
through the doggy door.

And he did all of this
with these tremendously

and excruciatingly painful
third degree burns

on his hands and arms.

He was going to be looking at life
in prison.

So he went to his brother's house
and killed himself.

Mass murderers have to be prepared
to go out with their victims

and take their own life
and not be taken alive,

and whether that's at the scene
for dramatic effect,

or to die by suicide by cop,
that is always on the table.

The suicide
is part of their preparation.

It's to make a statement.

We shared that news
with the family

as a way of bringing them
a small sense of relief

that he wasn't on the loose anymore.

Eight-year-old Katrina
said in an interview,

"I'll still believe in Santa Claus,

but I won't open the door
to anyone."

As a young adult,

Katrina became involved actively,
actually,

in advocating for gun control.

I can't imagine
what she's gone through,

and, you know,
here she is speaking out

on behalf of people who've faced
similar types of circumstances,

and it's a powerful message,
I think, that she carries with her.

As a crime reporter,
I've run across some crazy stuff,

but nothing
as absolutely nuts as this.

You know, these police officers
are real heroes,

because they are dedicated
to finding out what happened

to the Ortega family.
- The Ortegas are a good,

good, hardworking family.
They did nothing to deserve this.

It just makes you think
that this could literally happen

to anybody
when some madman is involved,

and that's pretty sad.

As a homeowner,
when the doorbell rings

or someone knocks at the door,
even as a police officer,

I look out the window
to see who it is.

You never know who's gonna be there.

Subtitles by Sky Access Services