EP. 48 CALIFORNIA - A Christmas Massacre: The 2008 Covina Santa Shooting
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He's the most terrifying serial killer you've never heard of. Haddon Clark has confessed to several murders, but investigators say he could have over 100 victims. At the center of the mayhem, a cellmate of Haddon's that was able to get key evidence into Haddon's murder spree across America,

because hadn't thought he was Jesus Christ. Born Evil, the Serial Killer and the Savior, an ID true crime event. Premieres Monday, September 2nd at 9. Watch on ID or stream on Max. Set your DVR. Warning, the following podcast is not suitable for all audiences. We go into great detail with every case that we cover and do our best to bring viewers even deeper into the stories by utilizing disturbing audio and sound effects. Trigger warnings from the stories we cover may include violence, rape,

murder, and offenses against children. This podcast is not for everyone. You have been warned. Christmas is undoubtedly the best time of the year. The neighborhoods are covered in lights. You get to decorate a tree, spend time with your loved ones, and practice different family traditions.

One of these traditions for the Ortega family was to get everyone together on Christmas Eve. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins of all ages sit around, eat a nice dinner, play some games, and maybe even bake cookies for Santa's arrival later that night. Which is exactly what they did on Christmas Eve in 2008.

It was just like any other year. The kids were in the back of the house playing video games and the adults were wrapping up a game of Texas Hold'em when all of a sudden everyone hears a knock on the front door. No one is expecting any visitors so eight-year-old Katrina runs over to see who it is. When she looks out the window her eyes grow wide with excitement.

because standing on the front porch is Santa Claus himself. And the best part of all is that he's holding a big Christmas present in his arms. But instead of the cheerful welcome you'd expect to hear from Santa Claus, this one has an evil look in his eye.

He isn't smiling or asking if she'd been a good girl. Instead, he pulls a gun out of the neatly wrapped present, points it directly at the eight-year-old's face, and pulls the trigger. For the next few moments, the house is in chaos. Family members are screaming, running, hiding under tables, trying to get away from the gunfire. But Santa runs through, shooting at each and every person. But that's not all he does.

After murdering most of the Ortega family, he runs through the home with a flamethrower, destroying everything in his path.

Santa eventually leaves the home, but several of the family members that made it out alive watch in horror as the home burns to the ground with nine people still inside. And from that point forward, Christmas Eve in Covina, California would never be the same. This is the story of the Covina Christmas Massacre, and you're listening to Murder in America. ♪

Our story starts in Los Angeles, California on March 23rd, 1963 with the birth of Bruce Jeffrey Pardo. Now, there isn't a ton of information about Bruce's childhood, but he grew up in San Fernando Valley, California. And pretty early on in his life, it was clear that Bruce was a very smart child and he specifically excelled in math.

Now, his father was an engineer, so it clearly ran in the family, and Bruce would end up following in his father's footsteps. After graduating from high school at John H. Francis Polytechnic in Sun Valley, Bruce would go on to pursue a degree in computer science at Cal State Northridge. People around this time said that Bruce was known for being the center of attention. He was always joking around and wanting people to notice him.

So much so that at his college graduation, he walked across the stage holding a life-sized blow-up doll thinking it would be funny. Now, Bruce graduated with a respectable degree and he was very smart, so shortly after college he was offered a job at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Flint Ridge as a software engineer.

And for a while, it seemed like Bruce's life was heading in the right direction. He was young, brilliant, and he had a nice paying job. But soon after he started working there, his co-workers said that Bruce wasn't a star employee. He was known to cut corners. He would randomly call out sick in the winter just so he could go on ski trips with his friends. And he just wasn't a very hard worker. At one point, he even got in trouble at his job because he hacked their system to look up his own co-workers' salaries.

So slowly but surely, people at his job were starting to see Bruce's true colors. And a lot of his co-workers didn't really like him.

But there was one person who did. It was a woman named Delia. And she and Bruce hit it off so much that they even got engaged in 1988 when Bruce was 24 years old. And despite him having a really good paying job, he didn't want to use any of his own money for the wedding, so he convinced Delia to use her savings.

Which, to her, that was fine at first. I mean, it was their wedding day, one of the biggest days of their life, and Delia was excited.

They invited 250 people and they set a wedding date at the San Fernando Mission in California. And just a side note, Colin and I are currently planning our wedding and they are so expensive. And we're only having like 100 people. So I can't imagine the cost of 250. Delia had to put a lot of money down for this. And eventually the big day would arrive.

June 17th, 1989. Delia starts to get ready for the big day. She's doing her hair and makeup and slipping on the dress. And all of the 250 guests start arriving at the venue. But after a while, people start to notice that Bruce is nowhere to be found.

Everyone at the wedding waits around for about an hour, but it soon becomes clear that Bruce has skipped town and he left Delia at the altar. Delia was rightfully furious with Bruce. Not only was she humiliated, but he made her use all of her savings for nothing. And it only gets worse from here. A few days afterwards,

She found out that Bruce had completely drained the rest of her accounts and he used her last $3,000 to go on a vacation in Palm Springs where he spent every last penny. Now, Delia hasn't ever released her last name to the media because of the horrors that Bruce would go on to commit. But according to the LA Times, she said, quote, whatever he felt like, he did. There was no sense of responsibility.

For the next few years, Bruce enjoyed his bachelor lifestyle. He still lived with his mom for a short period of time, and he continued to go on those ski trips with his friends. He also bought a boat that he would take on Lake Havasu pretty often, and his friends said that around this time, Bruce was just irresponsible and immature, and he would be that way for years. It wasn't until his late 30s when he met someone and finally decided to settle down. Her name was Elena Lucano, and from what we could tell, the two had a pretty decent relationship at first.

They ended up moving in together in the nice neighborhood of Woodland Hills in San Fernando, California and before long, they were pregnant with their first child, who they would name Bruce Matthews. But life was far from easy for the new family. In January of 2001, Elena had left the home for a few hours and left Bruce in charge of their child, who was only 13 months old at the time. Now, anyone that's been around children that age knows that you have to watch them at all times. Even when you turn your back for a second, they'll be across the room getting into something they shouldn't be in.

Bruce wasn't being very attentive. Instead, he just watched TV and let the child run around without supervision. And somehow, the 13-month-old ended up outside and actually fell into their swimming pool. When Elena arrived home later, she found Bruce in the backyard screaming in hysterics and holding their unconscious son. They quickly rushed him over to the hospital and luckily, he would live through this horrible accident.

Bruce stayed by his hospital bed for the next week, hoping that he would be okay. But when the doctors told him that his son had brain damage and that he would be a paraplegic, Bruce up and abandoned the family. Despite the entire accident being his fault, it was just too much for him to handle, and so he left and never spoke to them again.

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That's W-A-R-B-Y-P-A-R-K-E-R dot com slash M-I-A. Anyways, everybody, let's get back to today's episode. Three years later, Bruce is 41 years old and he's still single. So a co-worker of his tells him, you know, you should meet my wife's sister. Her name's Sylvia Orza. She's a single mother, really down to earth, and I think you two would really hit it off.

And Bruce is immediately interested. Sylvia was beautiful, kind, independent. She had a huge family that she was super close with and she seemed to be the perfect match. Now to describe Sylvia a little bit, it's important to mention her big family because they were a huge part of her life.

Her dad was 80-year-old Joseph Ortega and her mother was 70-year-old Alicia Ortega. The couple met back in Mexico when they were young and they moved to the United States to start a family business, which was this industrial painting company.

Everyone described the Ortega family as great people and really hard workers. And at this point in our story, the two had been married for 53 years. And they had a great life together. They ended up having five children, James, Charles, Alicia, Sylvia, and Leticia. And between the five siblings, there were a ton of nieces and nephews. There were a ton of grandchildren of all different ages.

And it was just one big happy family. Now, Sylvia married her first husband in the late 80s and they had two kids together, but unfortunately he would die in a car accident shortly after. Her next marriage was to a man named George Orza and they had one daughter together in 2002, but would later get divorced.

So by this time, both Bruce and Sylvia were single and in their 40s, and they wanted some companionship. So in 2004, they would go on their first date. And then just two short years later, on January 29th, 2006, they would get married.

Afterwards, Bruce bought a beautiful three-bedroom home in a nice neighborhood of Montrose, where he and Sylvia lived along with her four-year-old daughter. And they even completed the family by adopting a dog named Socky. And for a while, it seemed like all was right in the world. Bruce and Sylvia were making friends in their community, attending a local Catholic church where Bruce was actually one of the ushers. He and Sylvia's marriage was playful and fun.

and Bruce actually felt like he was a part of her big family. But after about a year, when the honeymoon phase ended, Sylvia started to notice some behavioral changes in Bruce. He was more mean and distant, and it felt like they were always arguing about money. - Sylvia also wanted to open up a joint bank account with Bruce, like most married couples do, but he refused for whatever reason. But Sylvia was doing everything in her power to make the marriage work.

She had even grown close to Bruce's mom, Nancy. And in late 2007, one day while the two were visiting, his mom revealed something about Bruce that would completely change their relationship. Nancy had let it slip that Bruce had a child, a disabled child that he abandoned.

And even worse, Bruce hadn't seen or spoken to this child in six years and he has never supported him. But yet he claims him as a tax deduction. This was a bombshell for Sylvia because she had no idea. And it was becoming all too clear that she didn't really know the man that she was married to at all.

Just a few months later, in March of 2008, the two would separate, but Sylvia begged Bruce to let her and her daughter live at the house for a little bit longer because her daughter only had a few more months left of kindergarten and she didn't want her to have to move schools at the very end of the year.

But one day, while she and her daughter were at a birthday party, Bruce threw all of their things in the front driveway and kicked them out. Sylvia was devastated because it was clear that Bruce didn't care about she or her daughter. So, afterwards, she filed for divorce and moved in with her sister. The following month, Bruce tried to get back together with Sylvia, but she had had enough. She had seen Bruce's true colors, and she didn't want anything to do with him.

Around the time the divorce was filed, Bruce had quit his job at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and started a new job at a place called ITT Radar Systems. But he was still making a ton of money. According to the LA Times, his average income was around $122,000 a year, while Sylvia was only making $31,000 a year and supporting her kids. So because of this, Bruce was ordered to pay Sylvia $1,785 a month in spousal support, starting in June of 2008.

But the first check he ever sent ended up bouncing. The next month in July, he sent another check, but he ended up stopping the payment before it could ever go through. And after that, he just stopped sending them entirely. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. We talk about BetterHelp a lot on this show, and this month we're discussing some of the stigmas around mental health.

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During the first few months where Bruce was ordered to send spousal support, he was clearly getting angrier and angrier at Sylvia. And instead of sending her the money, he went by a gun shop in California and he purchased a 9mm handgun for nearly $1,000. Probably a reason why his check bounced.

And by this point, Bruce was spiraling out of control in all aspects of life. By the end of July, he had been billing fraudulent hours at his new job and they quickly caught on and fired him. Bruce tried to file for unemployment but he was denied. So instead, he goes to a gun shop to purchase another 9mm handgun. And he would do this exact same thing for the next few months.

In California, you're only permitted to buy one firearm every 30 days. So Bruce bought one in July, then one on August 8th, September 8th, October 11th, and finally on November 13th. Five guns within five months.

all in preparation for the horrors that he would commit that upcoming Christmas Eve. In September, the same day that he bought the third gun, Bruce called his neighbor, Jerry, who owned a costume store and told her that he wanted a custom Santa suit for a kid's party. Now, it's only September, months before Christmas, and Bruce didn't have any children in his life, so it was a weird request. But even weirder, Bruce asked Jerry to make the Santa suit with a lot of space inside of the suit. But...

But business is business, so Jerry told him to drop off a $200 deposit and that she would have it to him by December. Now, at this point in our story, Bruce is failing in pretty much every part of his life. He was going through a divorce, he was still unemployed because no jobs would hire him, and he was having financial trouble. So a judge eventually stopped Bruce's spousal support payments, but the people in his life said that they could tell Bruce was different.

and that his circumstances were really affecting him. In October of 2008, Bruce decided to go to Iowa to celebrate his friend's birthday. And he confided in this friend that he was having a hard time with everything. He said he was embarrassed that his divorce was so public, that he lost his job and he had no money, and he wasn't even getting along with his own mother.

According to the LA Times, during he and Sylvia's court hearings, his mom would actually sit on her side in support. And Bruce told his friend that he spends the majority of his time just sitting at his house thinking about the entire situation, ruminating in anger about how quickly his life went downhill. And even on this trip to Iowa, Bruce was still plotting his revenge.

You see, gun laws in Iowa are a little more relaxed than they are in California. In Iowa, you can buy handgun magazines that hold 18 bullets. And in California, they're only allowed to hold 10. So Bruce took advantage of these relaxed gun laws.

Right before leaving his friend's house, Bruce gave his friend's children some change in dollar bills, he hugged everyone goodbye, and then he went by an Iowa gun shop to purchase 16 handgun magazines.

When Bruce came back to California, he stopped by his neighbor's costume store to pick up his Santa suit, and it was exactly what he wanted with plenty of space. So he paid the remaining $100 for the suit, tipped his neighbor an extra $20, and left the store. Once back at his house, Bruce put the suit along with all the other items he was gathering for his night of revenge together. And it wouldn't be long until that night would come.

But for the next few weeks, Bruce tried to blend in, even putting Christmas lights up on his house for the holidays.

As for Sylvia and her daughter, they were staying with Sylvia's parents in West Covina during this difficult time. And her parents wanted to do everything in their power to support Sylvia because her and Bruce's final divorce hearing was set to be a week before Christmas. And as horrible as it is to go through a divorce during the holidays, Sylvia was excited to put it all behind her and move on.

on with her life. At the hearing, the judge ordered that Sylvia got to keep her engagement ring and their dog, Saki, and Bruce would get to keep the house but he had to pay Sylvia $10,000. And that was supposed to be the end of it all.

At the end of the hearing, their marriage was finally terminated for irreconcilable differences. And Sylvia went home that day thinking that she would probably never see Bruce Pardoe again. But Sylvia was wrong because Bruce had every intention of seeing her on Christmas Eve. A few days before, Bruce went by a travel agency and booked a $650 round trip flight to Illinois that departed on Christmas Day, the day after he would get revenge on Sylvia.

After he booked the flight, Bruce called up his friend in Iowa to tell him that he was coming to visit him again, even though he had just seen him. I'm sure the friend was a little confused why Bruce randomly booked a flight on Christmas to hang out with he and his family. But his friends knew that Bruce was going through a lot and that he would be alone on Christmas, so he told Bruce that he was welcome to come and visit. And with that, Bruce's getaway plan was all in order. Now all he had to do was wait until the day finally came. December 24th, 2008.

Many families throughout the country that night were gathering together with their loved ones, including Sylvia and her family. As we mentioned before, it was an Ortega family tradition to have everyone come to the grandparents' house on Christmas Eve and spend the holiday with each other. They had a big family as well, so on this night, around 25 people filled the home. They all ate a good Christmas dinner together, opened some presents, and as the night went on, the children went to the back of the house to play video games, and all of the adults started a game of Texas Hold'em in the front

of the home. - Earlier that night at around 6:00 PM, Bruce is by himself at his home when he calls up his friend in Iowa to confirm their plans together that next day. His friend said that Bruce sounded sad, so he made sure to let him know that he would be there to give him some company and some warm clothes. But little did they know that this would be the very last time that they would ever hear from Bruce.

Because after this phone call, Bruce would do a little cocaine and then he would leave his home and head to Sylvia's parents' house. On the way out, Bruce's neighbors saw him and he told them that he was on his way to a Christmas party. But there was something weird about this interaction to his neighbors.

Because they said that Bruce didn't get into his car that was in his driveway. The car that he always drove. Instead, he walked down the street and got into a blue Dodge and drove away. A car that Bruce rented specifically for this night.

At around 10pm, Bruce's brother showed up at his home to pick him up for a Christmas party, but Bruce wasn't there. This was strange because Bruce didn't call or leave a note that plans had changed, and he was nowhere to be found. So his brother left and went to the Christmas party by himself.

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Back at the Ortega household, it was around 11:25 p.m. and the family was starting to wrap up their night. They ended their game of Texas Hold'em, the children were getting ready to wake up and get presents from Santa, and everyone was savoring the last few minutes of their Christmas Eve together. At around 11:30 p.m., everyone started putting on their jackets, grabbing their gifts and leftover food, and getting ready to head home, when suddenly they hear a knock on the front door.

Sylvia's niece, eight-year-old Katrina Yusef-Polsky, rushes to the door and looks through the window, and when she looks, she experiences every child's dream. Standing right on the front porch is Santa Claus, and he's carrying a large wrapped gift. Katrina quickly opens the door, screaming, Santa! But as we all know, it wasn't Santa. It was Bruce, and in that moment, he lifts a pistol up to Katrina's head and shoots her directly in the face.

Bruce then steps inside of the home and immediately shoots Sylvia's brothers, James and Charles. At some point, someone in the home recognizes the man dressed as Santa and screams, It's Bruce! Alicia and Joseph Ortega, the patriarch and matriarch of the family, dive under the dining room table to protect themselves from the bullets.

And their three daughters, Sylvia, Alicia, and Leticia, along with their daughter-in-law, go under the table as well. For the next few minutes, screams and chaos fill the room.

And the entire time, Bruce continues to unload his pistol into the crowd of family members. Sylvia's two brothers, while shot and bleeding from their gunshot wounds, get up and they try to attack Bruce, but they quickly are killed in doing so. Their cousin told the LA Times, quote, even bloodied, they got up. They stood up. They tried to grab him to stop him, but they couldn't.

Afterwards, Bruce walks over to Sylvia's parents, who are hiding under the table, and he shoots both of them, execution style. Next, Bruce shoots Sylvia's sister, Alicia, and then Sylvia herself. Local authorities believe that afterwards, Bruce walked around the home executing individuals point-blank with his pistol.

As Bruce continued firing shots inside of the home, some family members grabbed their children and ran for the exit, and some even broke windows and crawled out to escape. One family member facing an extremely hard and horrific decision shattered a window on the second floor and jumped to the ground in order to escape the chaos that was unfolding downstairs. But Bruce wasn't finished just yet.

Inside of the wrapped Christmas present, he had brought a makeshift flamethrower device that he had constructed himself using a DeWalt air compressor, a 50-foot hose, and a tank of highly flammable octane fuel. After Bruce was done unloading his pistols on the family members inside of the home, he fully unwrapped his gift and used the air compressor to spray the house with fuel, covering the home from floor to ceiling in gasoline.

After he had emptied the full fuel tank, Bruce used either a pilot light or a candle to ignite the accelerant. Immediately, the fuel ignited, turning the interior of the Ortega household into a massive fireball.

Bruce had actually miscalculated just how much octane fuel he had sprayed and just how flammable it would be, and his Santa suit ended up catching on fire. After extinguishing the fire burning on his body, Bruce changed into his street clothing, ran out to his blue Dodge rental car, and took off speeding away into the night with his headlights off.

The only sibling of the Ortega family to make it out alive was Sylvia's sister, Leticia, who was under the dining room table when her family was shot in front of her. Her daughter was eight-year-old Katrina, who thought Bruce was Santa Claus. Now, luckily, right when Bruce shot Katrina, she turned her head at just the right moment

so she would end up surviving her injuries and actually stumbled out of the house after being shot in the face. After this happened, Leticia quickly escaped the flames and ran outside with her daughter, and she made a call to the police.

Okay, can you tell if there's anybody injured? Because we have fire department and officers en route. Hello, hello? Hi. He's coming in here. Oh, what? I'm in your house. Is the guy in your house right now? Okay, okay. Ma'am, ma'am.

Okay.

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 there's a Santa Claus suit on. I didn't see from when he shot. I heard the shots, and they were like poppers, and I wasn't sure what it was, so we all...

Everyone started panicking and running, so we all dove under the tiny roof. Some of us dove, some of us didn't. I don't know. My mom's house is on the fire department. Ma'am, ma'am, the fire department's there, okay? What's he wearing? What is he wearing? Please, what is he wearing? He's panicking. What is he wearing now? He changed his coat from Santa Claus clothes. Okay, let me know what he's wearing. Black clothes. All black? He's walking on neighbor's floor. Okay, ma'am.

Firefighters would come to the scene, but because of the accelerant used, it was incredibly difficult to put the fire out, and it would take dozens and dozens of firefighters and nearly two hours of work until the flames were finally under control. At the end of the night, nine members of the Ortega family would die at the hands of Bruce Pardo.

including 43-year-old Sylvia, her parents, 80-year-old Joseph and 70-year-old Alicia, two of her brothers, 52-year-old James Ortega and 50-year-old Charles Ortega, their wives, 51-year-old Teresa and 45-year-old Sherry, Sylvia's sister, 46-year-old Alicia Ortiz, and lastly, Alicia's 17-year-old son, Michael Ortega, who was upstairs on his computer when the fire started.

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to escape the flames and ended up dying in the fire. As for the rest of the family, they were burned so badly that it was hard to determine whether or not they died from their gunshot wounds or from the flames. But while all of this was happening, Bruce left the home and he drove to his brother's house in Sylmar, which is about 40 minutes away from Covina. Once there, he parked the rental car down the street,

and he let himself inside because his brother was still at the Christmas party. Because his brother was still at the Christmas party. Once inside, he sat down on the couch, put a pistol in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. His brother would come home at around 3 a.m. to find him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Bruce Pardoe ended his life that night after massacring his ex-wife and nearly her entire family. But the investigation into what exactly happened that night proved that Bruce had even more murderous plans. When authorities eventually searched Bruce's rental car, the one that he drove to the Ortega home, they found remnants of his Santa suit along with all of the weapons he used in the attack.

But Bruce had actually rigged the rental car to explode when the Santa suit was removed from the vehicle. So when the bomb squad robot tasked with checking out the car moved the Santa suit, Bruce's rental car erupted into flames. - Inside Bruce's home, investigators found a shotgun, five empty boxes that once contained handguns, ammunition, and a container of high-octane fuel tank gasoline.

Investigators said that what they discovered inside of Bruce's home was essentially a bomb-making factory. In the days following the massacre, investigators also found that Bruce had rented another car, a Toyota RAV4, that he parked in Glendale, next to Sylvia's attorney's house. Many believed that Bruce was going to continue his murder spree long into the night, killing not only Sylvia and her family, but her divorce attorney as well.

But Bruce never made it to the attorney's home that Christmas Eve, because while he was spraying the Ortega home in flames, he accidentally caught his Santa suit on fire and the material melted into his arms and legs and neck, leaving Bruce with third-degree burns all over his body. Because of this, Bruce was far too injured to continue the spree and kill Sylvia's attorney. Investigators also believe that Bruce intended to escape the country after the massacre. You see, in the alleged getaway car that Bruce left at Sylvia's attorney's house,

Investigators found a laptop and a desktop computer, food, water, some spare clothing, maps of the United States and Mexico, and a full can of gasoline, all items that suggested he wanted to go on the run after the massacre.

In addition, when they found Bruce's body, they found his plane ticket booked through Canadian Airways and $17,000 in cash wrapped in plastic around his body. But Bruce's plans to escape were ruined when he was burned in the fire. He knew he would have to receive medical attention after his injuries, and it was over for him. So he killed himself, taking any unanswered questions to the grave. It's also believed that Bruce intended on killing his mother Nancy that night as well.

She was actually invited to the Ortega Christmas Eve get-together, but she didn't end up going. It was known that Bruce was angry with his mother for siding with Sylvia and their divorce, and many believed that she too was his intended target. Nancy faced a lot of heartbreak after the massacre not only because of the atrocities her son committed, but because she was very close to the Ortega family, and she felt a lot of guilt about what happened.

But the surviving family members assured her that she wasn't to blame and that they loved her regardless of her son's actions. According to the LA Times, a member of their family would later say, quote, he wanted to kill everyone, even his own mom. A monster. That man was a monster. He killed good, hardworking people. End quote.

Bruce Pardo was truly the embodiment of evil. He attacked a family on the most joyous of days when they least expected it and slaughtered anybody and everybody in his way. He chose to come dressed as Santa, knowing that the sight of Santa is supposed to bring people joy. In an article published by CBS News in the wake of the massacre, a psychiatrist named David Singer was asked to advise parents on how to explain to their children how a figure like Santa Claus could commit such a horrific crime.

He was so full of hate that he had to disguise his hate by dressing up as someone full of love. "Santa Claus," David said. In perpetrating this massacre, Bruce took a beloved character, Santa, and morphed it into a symbol of hatred, violence, and terror. It would take a while for Katrina to understand that it wasn't Santa who killed her family. It was an evil man, full of hatred, but I'm sure she's never been able to look at Santa the same way since.

But even though the Ortega family was forever changed in only three minutes on that Christmas Eve in 2008, some stories of hope did emerge from the atrocity. Even though many people were wounded in the massacre, a lot of people ended up surviving. Katrina Yuzepulski, the eight-year-old girl who was shot in the face by her uncle, would be one of those survivors. Miraculously, she survived the gunshot wound, and after multiple surgeries, she is healed and is living a completely normal life.

and she has actually used her past experiences and the tragedy that she survived to become an advocate for gun control.

When the Stoneman Douglas shooting occurred on Valentine's Day in 2018, Katrina helped to organize a walkout at her school, a walkout which lasted 17 minutes, one minute for each victim of the Stoneman Douglas shooting, and a walkout that protested gun violence and lobbied for the updating of outdated gun laws. She used her terrible experience to fight what she believes is the good fight, and as she stated in the past, the entire ordeal made her a much stronger person.

Nine people died that night on Christmas Eve in 2008, a day that's supposed to be the best day of the year. There were several family members with physical scars from the massacre, but the emotional scars that the tragedy left would be way deeper. Bruce Pardoe murdered most of the Ortega family that night. Thirteen kids lost their parents that night.

and then had to watch as the house burned down to the ground in the fire. Leticia, the only Ortega sibling to survive the shooting, lost her two brothers, her two sisters, two of her sister-in-laws, her 17-year-old nephew, and her mother and father. But for Leticia, Christmas time nowadays isn't all about gloom. It's about healing.

and remembering the good times. For years after the fire and shooting, Leticia worked at mastering her mother's pozole recipe, a recipe handed down throughout her family that her mother always made during the holiday season. The remaining members of the Ortega family still meet every Christmas Eve to break bread, exchange gifts,

and reminisce on old memories. However, the traditional Christmas Day trip to church is now followed every year by a Christmas Day trip to the cemetery to visit and celebrate the ones that they lost that night. So even though Bruce Pardoe tried to ruin Christmas forever, he didn't.

It seems like for Leticia, her daughter Katrina, and the rest of the family members that survived that night, the spirit of Christmas lives on. It lives on through their family traditions, through their surviving relatives, and through the memory of those who are no longer here.

Hey everybody, it's Colin here. Thank you so much for listening to this holiday edition of Murder in America. No matter what you're celebrating or where you're celebrating from, I hope that the end of the year is amazing for all of you out there. I know that this has been a life-changing year for both Courtney and I. We got engaged this year. We have some huge plans for the podcast and, uh,

I'm actually really excited to announce here that you guys have heard me trying to get this Christmas present for Courtney to hit 2 million plays on Murder in America. Well, we actually have already hit 4 million plays. 4 million plays on our podcast in one year. That is...

It's mind-blowing. Courtney and I were literally tearing up, like crying when we heard that there was just so many plays. We hadn't been checking the right websites to get these accurate counts. So, yeah, y'all are so amazing. I want to give a shout-out to our patrons that help make this show possible. Without you guys, we are nothing.

Damn, that is so many patrons. Y'all, we have some huge plans for Patreon, too. You can become a Patreon member at...

We're on patreon.com. Just look up Murder in America. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Murder in America. We're trying to hit that 10,000 by the end of the year. That's our big goal. But yeah, if you enjoy the show, just post a screenshot of you listening on your Instagram story. Tweet about us. Talk about us. And yeah, I hope you all are having a safe and very happy holidays. And we'll see you next week before the end of the year. The dead don't talk. Or do they?