The Night 'Santa' Committed a Christmas Massacre

It was Christmas Eve, 2008. - How lovely. What's in your hat? - I don't know why I'm so happy. - I know, I know, man. Just stay on the phone with me, okay? - I'm so busy. - Let your hat dress. - Yeah. - Let me understand, I hope to know your hat dress. - Joseph and Alicia or Tega were hosting their annual Christmas party. It was their favorite family tradition to have all of their children and all of their grandchildren celebrating together under one roof. The home was filled with Christmas joy, presents, laughter, and excited children anticipating the arrival of old St. Nick himself. And then there was a knock on the door. Standing outside was Santa Claus and the moment that door opened, the man in the red suit pulled out a gun and opened fire, unleashing a storm of bullets into the crowded Christmas celebration. By the time that it was all over, 10 people would be dead. Another three would be injured. And 13 were orphans. Terror, chaos, and carnage on a Southern California Christmas Eve. - This was not a random act of violence. - The man dressed as Santa armed himself with four guns and a makeshift flame grower. This wasn't Santa Claus. This was a monster who twisted one of the most innocent symbols of Christmas into a weapon of terror. A monster that turned joy into horror and a family tradition into a massacre. This man dressed as Santa Claus was Bruce Parto. And this is the case of the Covina Christmas Eve massacre. My name is Brianna and I'm hot on the case. (gentle music) Bruce Parto was born on March 23rd, 1963 and raised in San Fernando Valley in LA. His father was an engineer that really sparked Bruce's interest in technology, engineering, and mathematics. Bruce Parto was extremely smart. After university, he followed in his father's footsteps and took a job as an engineer where he was making a six figure salary. But despite how smart Bruce was, he was not a likable coworker and he was definitely not a reliable employee. He had pretty severe attendance issues. He was always late if he even bothered showing up at all. And he would use his skills as a software engineer to break into the company's system so he could look into private files. Bruce became obsessed with reading how much his coworkers were making. He wanted to know how much all of them are being paid and Bruce was just like really obsessed with money. He had really bad jealousy issues and he would compare his salary and his wealth to everyone else around him. If someone was making more money than him, then Bruce would be extremely insecure. But if someone was making less money than him, then he would look down on that person and he would think that he was better than that person. In his personal life though, Bruce was very well liked and he was really well liked his entire life. He was seen as very smart. He was seen as a nice guy, a funny guy who made friends his entire life. And he was seen as like a goofy, quirky kind of guy. Bruce had absolutely no issues with the ladies. And he was actually the type of guy that was like always dating someone and he would jump from relationship to relationship to relationship. But he had pretty severe commitment issues which is probably why his relationships never lasted very long. But by 1988, Bruce seemed like he was actually ready to settle down. He was in a long-term relationship with a woman named Dahlia and they were actually engaged. At this point, Bruce was still living at home with his parents. So his mother Nancy was really excited that her son had finally met a nice lady, was gonna get married, start a family and move out of her house. But when it came to actually paying for his wedding, Bruce was extremely stingy. He didn't wanna help contribute any money towards his own wedding. So his bride to be Dahlia paid for it entirely by herself. They invited over 250 guests to their June 17th, 1989 wedding, which is a pretty good sized wedding. Dahlia booked a country club for their reception and she had booked and completely paid for their honeymoon into Headey. But on the day of their wedding, Bruce got cold feet and he left Dahlia at the altar. And to add insult to injury, Bruce drained their joint bake account and took that money to take himself on a vacation to Palm Springs, Florida. This was a pattern in Bruce's dating life. He had a very hard time committing any time that the relationship was getting serious. He would find a way to back out. And if he even got that far, to be honest, most of his dating history was like a string of short term relationships. A few years later, Bruce once again finds himself in another long term serious relationship this time with a woman named Elena. And the relationship actually did get really serious. They were living together and then even had a son together that they named Matthew. Although at no point did Bruce propose to her or had any plans on marrying Elena. In Bruce's mind, the fact that he was even living with her and that they had a child together was commitment enough. And for a little bit, life seemed pretty okay. In 2001, Elena and Bruce's son, Matthew, was 13 months old. One day, Elena went to the grocery store leaving her son home alone with his father, Bruce. But when Elena returned from the grocery store and walked inside their home, she saw Bruce holding their 13 month old son, Matthew, in his arms. Matthew was soaking wet and unresponsive. His body was limp and blue. His head was hanging unnaturally over Bruce's forearm. While Elena was at the grocery store and Bruce was distracted watching TV, their son had wandered outside and into their pool. By the time Bruce noticed and got Matthew out of the pool, he was already blue and unresponsive. And this was the exact moment that Elena walked in through the front door. Bruce never attempted to call 911 or to give his son CPR. Elena rushed her son, Matthew, to the nearest hospital and thankfully they were able to resuscitate Matthew and then he was airlifted to a children's hospital where he was still fighting for his life. Matthew did survive, but he had severe brain damage and due to the lack of oxygen he had to his brain for such a long time, he sadly lost the use of his arms and his legs and would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He would also require round the clock care for the rest of his life. Within six months of his son's accident, Bruce abandoned Elena and Matthew and tried to spend the rest of his life pretending that they did not exist. And this left Elena alone with a disabled son now drowning in their son's medical bills. Within the first year after Matthew nearly drowned, his medical bills reached over $350,000 and that was in 2001. So adjusted for inflation today in 2025, that would be over $600,000 in medical debt today. So Elena sued Bruce. She took him to court where she won, I guess, because he was ordered to only pay her $240 a month towards Matthew's medical bills. Which obviously was not enough to cover Matthew's medical bills. It wasn't even enough to cover half of his medical bills. On average, Matthew's medical bills were costing his mother $25,000 every single month and his father only had to contribute about $240. And after the lawsuit was over, Bruce never contacted Elena or his son Matthew ever again, which absolutely disgusted Bruce's mother Nancy. She was shocked that the son that she raised would do this to his own son. Bruce was completely unaffected, though, and he got right back into the dating pool. Only a few short years later in 2004, one of Bruce's co-workers introduced him to the 40-year-old De Forse, and single mother of three, Sylvia Ortega. And pretty much immediately, the two hid it off, and this time Bruce had seemingly found the woman that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. By early 2006, Bruce and Sylvia were married. Bruce kept his son Matthew a secret, so as far as his new wife Sylvia knew, her new husband had no children of his own. Sylvia, of course, had her three children, so they were raising her children together. They moved into this gorgeous home in Montrose in LA and from the outside, they seemed like this happy all-American family, nice home, nice kids, nice parents. They even got a beloved family dog together. Bruce really had this image of like the upstanding family man and like this pillar of the community. Bruce would volunteer every single one of his Sundays to his Catholic Church's Children Sunday Mass, where he would be an usher. All of their friends, their fellow church members, and neighbors only had extremely nice things to say about Bruce. He was hard-working, successful. He had a lot of money. money and he definitely liked to flaunt it. In his first year of marriage to Sylvia, on top of their $500,000 home, Bruce bought himself a Cadillac Escalade, a Hummer, and a boat. But there were some cracks in this marriage. Bruce who was always so obsessed with money and looked down on people that made less money than him definitely treated his wife Sylvia like a second-class citizen. Because she made less than 1/3 of his yearly salary, he was making over $100,000 a year and Sylvia, his new bride, was making about $30,000 a year. Bruce refused to open a joint bank account with Sylvia and he also refused to help financially support her three children. He did not want to be financially responsible for another man's children, so none of his money would directly fund anything for Sylvia's three kids. And this really upset Sylvia, any parent wants their new partner to love their children as their own. But little did she know that Bruce did have a child, that he was not physically therefore emotionally therefore or financially therefore. So in a sense, Bruce was actually loving Sylvia's kids like he loved his own. In fact, he was probably doing more for her children than he was even doing for his own because at least he was acknowledging their existence. The cracks in this marriage were one thing, but by 2007 the marriage began to completely crumble. Bruce had become cold and distant towards his wife and her children. By the end of the year, the couple weren't even sleeping in the same bed. Sylvia would spend all of her free time and all of her days off at her parents house just to get a break from her husband. And the lie that Bruce had been hiding for years was about to come out and below up this marriage. Bruce's mother Nancy, unlike her son, still kept in contact with Elena and her disabled grandson Matthew. And she had kept in contact with them all of these years. In all of these years, she was disgusted of her son and what her son did to them. And this disgust over her own son Bruce just grew and grew as Bruce married Sylvia and was keeping Matthew a secret from Sylvia. Nancy really liked her new daughter in law Sylvia. Sylvia was kind and warm and she was a great mother. She didn't deserve to be lied to and Bruce did not deserve Sylvia. She knew that her son was lying to his new wife about not having any children. And one day Nancy just couldn't take it anymore and she told Sylvia everything. She told Sylvia all about Matthew. And this was the final straw. After learning the truth about her husband, the man that she brought into her children's lives that under his own watch, his baby nearly died and then he couldn't even stick around and support his child. He pretended that his own child didn't even exist. Sylvia was disgusted in her husband and she officially left him. In March 2008, they were officially separated by the following month Sylvia had filed for divorce. They had been married for less than two years. And this was a messy nasty divorce. During the divorce proceedings, some of Sylvia's demands were that she wanted Bruce to pay for her lawyer fees and she also wanted about $3,000 in alimony every single month. And the court fully sided with Sylvia. Bruce got to keep their house, but Sylvia was awarded the alimony. She got to keep her engagement ring plus she got to keep the beloved family dog by June 2008. That same month Bruce bought his first gun. Bruce, part of his life, began to completely fall apart all around him. A month after he lost in divorce court, he was fired from his job. Turns out Bruce had gone on a month-long vacation without telling anyone in his company, which would already be bad enough, but he was billing the company and creating fraudulent time cards for time that he was not working, so he was collecting money for times that he did not work and was actually on vacation. And because he was caught stealing, Bruce was fired without a severance package. Bruce tried to get another job in the engineering field. He also tried to file for unemployment while he was looking for another job and he was denied because he was fired for stealing. Without an income and all of his monthly expenses, luxurious LA home, his multiple cars, his boat, the spousal support that he was meant to give Sylvia, etc. Bruce was racking up debt. Well, I guess I should say the spousal support that Bruce was supposed to be paying Sylvia because he was not paying her. He didn't pay her one time and since he lost his job, he actually took her to court to try and have the spousal support cancelled. But this actually did not turn out in his favor, it actually kind of blew up in his face. They lowered it a little bit. Now he would have to pay her about $1800 every month, but he was also ordered to pay her back pay for the alimony that he had not paid her. Bruce attempted to pay Sylvia the $1800 in spousal support that month, but the check bounced and he allegedly never tried to pay her ever again. And then Bruce just started stockpiling firearms and ammunition. A month after buying his first ever gun, Bruce bought his second 30 days later, he bought his third gun. A month after that, he bought his fourth. Bruce was angry. He started telling anyone that would lessen that his ex or soon to be ex-wife Sylvia was taking him to the cleaners that she was a leech and was taking all of his money. Sylvia wasn't paying any bills allegedly according to Bruce after their separation. She had been living with her parents, so she wasn't paying rent. She wasn't paying bills, but she was still bleeding him dry. In Bruce's mind, he was barely scraping together enough money to survive month to month. And Sylvia was buying expensive cars. She was going on gambling trips to Vegas, going on fancy vacations and eating at expensive restaurants. Now this is of course all according to Bruce. I don't know if Sylvia was actually doing this, but whatever she does with her life is none of her ex's business. But regardless, Bruce was telling all of his friends how his ex was living this life of luxury on his dime. And he was left struggling to survive. And people in Bruce's life felt really bad. They felt awful for Bruce Prado. In his whole life, he liked to be the center of attention. He was also definitely an exaggerator. Because I really bet as he's telling all of his friends this story about this leech of an ex he had, that he failed to mention that he wasn't even paying her the alimony, that he was ordered by the court to be paying her. Around the time that Bruce bought that fourth firearm, he reached out to one of his neighbors who owned a costume shop. And through this costume shop, Jerry's costumes, Bruce ordered it to have a custom made Santa suit made just for him. Bruce was a pretty big and tall guy, so the suit had to be just right. The neighbor thought nothing of it, the holidays were just around the corner. And Bruce was always seen as this fun, loving, jolly type guy. He probably just wanted to wear the Santa suit, the upcoming Christmas service, where Bruce would always volunteer to help out the children at the church. But I didn't think anything of it until they were saying that he used the Santa suit and he put stuff in the Santa suit, like guns and whatever he used. And then it kind of freaked me out, thinking that maybe he had already planned this for a long time. And like I say, he stopped here. I sure, at the church cross the street, he stopped here a couple of times and knocked on the door and said, "Hi, how are you? How's your dog?" And mine's fine, you know, and da-da-da, and, you know, I just, just nice go. Throughout the next handful of months, Bruce continued the same old song and dance about how mean his leech of an ex-Sylvia was being to him. How they were going through this extremely messy and nasty divorce that he was drowning in debt because of it. And during the divorce proceedings, all of his finances were exposed and laid bare for the entire court to see, and it was extremely embarrassing because he was in so much debt. And the most embarrassing thing that came out of all of this was Bruce's mother Nancy chose to support Sylvia. Instead of sitting behind her son and supporting her son, Nancy was sitting behind Sylvia with Sylvia's family, supporting her and not her own son. In November, Bruce picked up his custom-made Santa suit. He also bought his fifth gun. And a month later, on December 18, 2008, Bruce and Sylvia's divorce was officially finalized. Sylvia's parents, Joseph and Alicia Ortega hosted an annual Christmas party every single year on Christmas Eve for their entire family and all of their loved ones at their home in Covina, a suburb about 30 miles outside of LA. Joseph and Alicia have been happily married for 53 beautiful years. Together, they had five children, James, Charles, Latisha, Alicia, and of course, Sylvia. And throughout their five children, they had over a dozen grandchildren. And this family was a big one and it was very close and they were very happy. Joseph and Alicia loved having their entire family over for Christmas Eve every single year. This was their favorite tradition. And that Christmas Eve in 2008 was no different. It was one week since their daughter Sylvia's divorce was finalized. But the family did their very best to keep the energy high and that evening was a fantastic time. After inviting over all of their close family friends, their five children and their five children's families and all of those grandkids that they had, Joseph and Alicia had about 30 people celebrating at their Christmas Eve party that night. The youngest of the grandchildren were running around outside playing together. One of the older grandchildren, 17-year-old Michael, was upstairs on the computer. And Joseph and Alicia had their five children around for the annual Christmas Eve tradition of playing Texas Holdum in the dining room. The Christmas Eve party was full of good energy and Christmas spirit and everyone was having a blast. By 11.30pm, the party was winding down and the adults were all getting ready to call it a night. As everyone was grabbing their coats and saying their goodbyes and saying Merry Christmas, there was a knock on the front door. And an eight-year-old girl named Katrina ran to go open the door and to her delight. Standing in front of her was a tall, broad man holding a large present, dressed in black boots, red trousers, a deep red coat with a fur trim, a thick, snowy white beard, and a red Santa hat. There, right in front of this little girl, stood Santa Claus. The big man himself standing there right in the flesh. Eight-year-old Katrina screamed in excitement that Santa came early. She ran towards him with her arms wide open, probably hoping for a hug, or maybe an early Christmas present. And as the eight-year-old girl excitedly ran toward Santa, Santa reached into his coat, pulled out a gun, pointed it at the girl's face, and pulled the trigger. After the first gunshot ran out, the entire Otega home was sent into a panic. Bullets were raining down from the ceiling. People were scrambling to safety to find their children, shot after shot. Family members fell to the ground. The man dressed in Santa would empty one gun, reach into his Santa coat and pull out another fully loaded pistol, and then he would empty that one, and then he would pull out another fully loaded pistol. 52-year-old James, which was Sylvia's older brother, was shot in the chest, and then her other brother, 50-year-old Charles, was also shot. Right as he realized, who it was, who the gunman was, behind the fake Santa beard. He yelled out its Bruce, as he was shot. Both brothers who had just been shot still managed to get to their feet, and they tried to ambush Bruce, but both men were shot multiple times before they even reached him. Sylvia, along with her sister, Alicia, and both of her parents, attempted to hide under the dining room table, but Bruce quickly found them, and he fired a storm of bullets under the dining room table. Bruce then unwrapped the large Christmas present that he brought with him to uncover a homemade flame thrower that he had built using his skills as an engineer. After covering the home, the furniture, and all of the dead bodies with gasoline, he started to burn the home down. Little did Bruce know, though, due to two fireplaces in the home being lit at the time, the second that he attempted to use the flame thrower to torch the entire home, it pretty much exploded into flames. His Santa costume that he was wearing immediately began to burn as he was wearing it. Some of the family members were able to escape the home and make a run for it, hopping the fence in the backyard and running to safety. As the party goers scattered throughout the neighborhood, many ran to neighbor's homes for help. Multiple 9-1-1 calls started coming in all at the same time from different homes in the neighborhood. One of these calls from a neighbor's home was made by Latisha, the only surviving daughter of Joseph and Alisha and the mother of eight-year-old Katrina. I think it's the same for the paramedics. I understand this, please. How lovely. Who's in your house? The only family. Yeah, man, sit down, sit down, can you eat at your house? No, he can't sleep, he can't sleep. What do you think his name is for? It's Bruce Pozo. Okay, enjoy the tea to you guys. Do you think he is? Who is he to you? Do you think he was? He was, he was my father-in-law to you. The place where it's next to me now. Okay, sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down one second, okay? I don't know who lost his wife. I know, I know, man, just stay on the phone with me, okay? I lost family, so I didn't eat both when he's hiking. I know, I know. It's okay, the officers are there. They're trying to get to you guys, okay? He came in through the entrance of the door and it was a set of costs. I didn't eat them when they shot. I heard the shots and they were, like, poppers. And I wasn't sure what it was, so we all, everyone said it, got a king and running. So we all drove under the dining room. To the living room, to the living room, I don't know. My mom calls him on the phone. Yeah, I found the fire department there, okay? See where he is. What is he wearing? Please, what is he wearing? Please tell me, what is he wearing? What is he wearing now? He changed his clothes from Santa Claus clothes. Um, yes, I'm on North Side Avenue. I'm on the side of the guide. And he's found my little cousin right now. Okay, can you tell if there's anybody in there because we have fire department and officers in the house? Many of the neighbors reported it seeing Santa Claus walking through their neighborhood, even waving at them, smiling at them, and wishing them Merry Christmas right before. They started hearing a bunch of gunshots and this fire broke out in this home. He said Merry Christmas to me and just kept walking down this way and that was it. The neighborhood and the family watched in horror as the home that they were just celebrating the holidays in burst it into flames and began to burn to the ground. The flames reached 50 feet into the air and it took over 80 firefighters nearly two hours to put out the fire. And by the time the fire was out, it was Christmas morning. The home was nearly burnt to the ground and the charred skeletons of nine family members were found amongst the ash and rubble. And those victims were Sylvia, both of her parents, Joseph and Alicia, James, his wife Teresa, Charles, his wife Cherry, the daughter Alicia, and Alicia's 17-year-old son, Michael. Among the survivors were eight-year-old Katrina. She had been shot in the face through the cheek and jaw, but miraculously survived and made a full recovery. Another 16-year-old girl was shot in the back as she was running from the house, but luckily she was able to flee to safety right as the house broke out into flames. Like seconds after she escaped the home, it exploded. There was also a 20-year-old girl who was a member of the family and to flee the gunshots, she ran up to the second floor and then jumped out a second story window. She broke her ankle so she was injured, but she survived. At the time that the gunshots began, a majority of the children were outside playing, so they were able to luckily get to safety the quickest. A majority of the survivors of the Kovina Christmas Massacre were children, and after the massacre was over, 13 children were orphaned in a single night on Christmas of all days. Out of the nine sets of remains found in the home, Bruce Parto was not one of them. He had been set on fire by his own flames that he started, but he was able to escape the home and he drove off in his rental car, resulting in the massive Christmas Day manhunt for Bruce Parto. And then 40 miles outside of Kovina, another 911 call came in about a few hours later. Bruce's brother Brad came home from his own Christmas party around 3am and found his brother dead on his couch. From a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The theorized motive behind this horrific tragedy was revenge. Bruce felt like his life was out of control that the world was out to get him and he took all of that anger out on his ex-wife until he just snapped. And he took all of that hate and that rage against people that he once claimed to care for. He used to go to this Christmas party. He had been with Sylvia since 2004, meaning that he knew these people for four years. He knew Katrina since she was four years old and still, he took out a gun pointed at her face and pulled the trigger. I can't even wrap my head around it." Everyone in his life, his entire life, said what a great person he was, that he was a family man, that he loved children. No one knew the true monster that this man was, all that he was capable of. There's a really real evidence that Bruce's original plan was not to take his own life after committing this horrific massacre that Christmas Eve. He had a plane ticket booked for Illinois to leave that Christmas morning. Bruce had a friend that lived in the state and he visited that friend in Illinois that past October, so just a few months before all of this tragedy happened, and he told that friend that he was going to be coming to see him soon. A few blocks from his brother's home, investigators found Bruce's rental car, inside the front seat, they found what was left of his Santa suit. The costume had been burned so badly during the explosion that the fabric had melted into his skin. Investigators later determined that Bruce was forced to peel the suit off of himself, leaving pieces of his own skin, fused into the fabric of the costume. Hidden beneath the Santa costume in his car was a pipe bomb that was rigged to explode if anyone tried to move the Santa suit. The bomb squad was immediately called, despite their best efforts, the car ultimately burst into flames, destroying much of what was inside of it. Bruce had suffered pretty severe second and third degree burns across his body, especially along his arms where the coat had fused to his flesh. Investigators believed at some point he realized that he desperately needed medical attention, that seeking help would mean needing to answer a lot of questions and answering those questions would mean being arrested for murdering nine people. So he was trapped. He was too injured to flee, but unwilling to get help knowing that it would lead him straight to going to jail. So that is why he likely chose to bring an end to his own life. As the investigation continued, another discovery raised even more alarms. Police learned that Bruce had a second rental car. And that car was found parked right outside Sylvia's divorce lawyer's home. Investigators believed that he intended to have this car explode and kill his ex-wife's divorce lawyer. But luckily no explosives were found inside this car, but what they did find was extremely telling inside there were a bunch of Bruce's personal belongings, some food, some of his clothing, and a map of Mexico. Even more damning investigators found about $17,000 in cash strapped to Bruce's legs. Even more evidence that he was planning to flee, maybe even flee to country to Mexico. And that plane ticket to Illinois was just like to cover his tracks. So the police would be looking there and not Mexico. Toxicology report later confirmed that at the time that Bruce committed the COVID massacre, he was under the influence of cocaine. It's also a real possibility that Bruce also planned to kill his own mother. His mother was actually invited to Sylvia's family's Christmas party and Bruce knew that, but canceled last minute because she was sick and her son did not know that she would not be there. In the aftermath of this horrific tragedy, the community and the family really came together. Patricia, who lost both of her parents and all four of her siblings, started her own blog called Leticia's Hope, where she documents her experience and writes about her family and love and healing. Her daughter Katrina, who was the eight year old girl that opened the door and was shot in the face by Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, is now an advocate against gun violence. I'm able to really fight for something that is truly, truly close to my heart is very different. It's not something that I needed to know all of the details too. I just knew I had to keep fighting and I knew I would live my life to the fullest for each one of my family members and everybody affected by gun violence. Left here on this earth for a reason, you're left here for a purpose and your job is to keep fighting and to shine that light on everybody else that has been affected. And that's all I have on this truly horrific case today. This one I know will haunt me for a long time. All of those children, all of those children that were traumatized forever, I mean, could you imagine next year when Katrina was nine years old and she saw Santa at the mall. All of those children that were left orphaned, oh my God, I just know that Christmas was definitely never the same for any member of this family and that truly breaks my heart as someone who really loves Christmas and it's supposed to be this like happy, joyful, innocent celebration all about love and warmth and the fact that this disgusting, I don't even want to call a man. He's a pathetic excuse for a man, this pathetic monster just destroyed all of that and took nine people with him. It absolutely breaks my heart. I get mad about a lot of the cases that I cover and this one is no different. This left me horrified and disgusted and heartbroken and all my love and my support truly goes out to every member of this family and every single person that was affected in the community. The loved ones, the family members of all of these people, so many people were left affected by this senseless tragedy and just all my love goes out to every single one of them. I'm really interested to hear all your thoughts on this case. I bet a really interesting dialogue could happen in the comments, but I urge you to please always be respectful because you do not know who could be in the comments. A member of this family that lost nine members of their family on Christmas Eve could be in the comments. You don't know. Please always leave your thoughts, theories and opinions with grace and respect and love for those people. And I will see you guys all next week when we are hot in the case once again.