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COVINA, Calif.

In addition to the eight people whose bodies were found in the ashes of the house, none of whom was identified, at least one other living body was thought to exist absent, and perhaps as multitude as three.

Among the total of dead or missing were the coupling who owned the home, James and Alicia Ortega, and their daughter Sylvia, the estranged wife of the gunman, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, police said.

Pardo, 45, had not at all criminal record and no history of violence, according to police, but he was angry after last week’s settlement of his divorce after a marriage that lasted poorly a year. It was unclear if they had children.

“It was not each friendly divorce,” police Lt. Pat Buchanan said.

Pardo chose to nice his revenge at the annual Christmas party his quondam in-laws held at the two-story residence on a blind alley in a quiet Covina neighborhood 25 miles east of Los Angeles.

“Christmases were that appropriate time of the year, it meant so much to them,” Rosa Ordaz, a family confidant of the victims, told KCBS-TV.

Coroners declined to identify any of the dead and said some remains would need to be identified using dental records.

In past years, a neighbor dressed as Santa Claus and entertained guests. But the neighbor had moved away and there was not one Santa, until Pardo arrived about 11:30 p.mingle-mangle., police said.

Girl, 8, answered door

The massacre began when an 8-year-old girl answered Pardo’s knock at the door. Pardo, carrying what appeared to be a large ready, pulled out a handgun and shot her in the face and began shooting indiscriminately to the degree that approximately 25 partygoers tried to flee, police reported. As Pardo unleashed a barrage of gunfire in the living room, people smashed through windows, hid behind furniture and bounded upstairs.

A 16-year-old girl was shot in the back, and a 20-year-old woman broke her ankle when she escaped through jumping from a second-story window. Those two, and the 8-year-old, remained hospitalized Christmas Day. All were expected to recover.

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