Santa Killer: It's a Losing Battle to Try to Psyche Him Out

How often have we heard of people who killed family members, then turned the gun on themselves? With that, we’ve wondered why they didn’t just kill themselves first?

Pardo’s killing of eight people wasn’t a spur of the moment, lose control thing. It was carefully planned.

Police investigators said Prado, brought a sophisticated fuel spraying device with him to burn down the Covina house after his murder spree, left an incendiary device in a car, another car without any device, weapons, ammunition, $17,000 in cash and an airline ticket to a foreign country with him.

The extra car was to be used to continue his killing spree by murdering his mother and his ex-wife’s attorney and his family.

Everything indicated he was planning to escape the country after his murder spree and not bent on committing suicide, which he ultimately did.

The one thing he didn’t account for in his well-layed plans was getting burned when he torched his ex-in-laws house. That led police to speculate the burns were the reason he went to his brother’s home in nearby Sylmar where he killed himself.

He could have had a severe case of killer’s remorse. We’ll never know any more than we’ll know what motivates any person to commit such a heinous crime. They probably don’t know themselves.

The bottom line is to never try to figure why people do what they do. Even the most seemingly altruistic act can have ulterior motives.

There are two lessons to be learned here:

One, is never allow children to open the front door under any circumstances.

Two, if someone is at the door who’s been giving the family trouble -- whether it be a family member, former family member or friend -- don’t let him in, and if he won’t go away…call the police.

You never know what someone is capable of doing.

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