Posted on 05/03/2007 12:18:23 AM PDT by BurbankKarl
Four little girls searching for their friend tossed rocks at her balcony Tuesday night, then peeked through her bedroom window.
What was soon discovered rocked the Santa Clarita Valley on Wednesday as details unfolded of the worst homicide in years in a town that touts its low crime rate.
Using a flashlight, the youngsters saw their friend, 8-year-old Angelica Maldonado, lying motionless, blood around her head, and yelled out.
Rudy Alvarado, a neighbor in this gated town-home complex in Canyon Country, forced his way inside, where he found Angelica dead. She was one of three people killed in what sheriff's homicide detectives believe was a murder-suicide in a family facing financial troubles.
"It's unbelievable," a grim-faced Alvarado, 22, said Wednesday morning. "I just couldn't believe it, seeing a little girl like that."
Authorities determined that Richard Boyd Burton, 52, shot his daughter, Crystal Marie Burton, 24, and his granddaughter, Angelica, said Craig Harvey, a spokesman for the county Coroner's Office. Burton then turned the gun on himself, Harvey said.
The bodies were found about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at the town home on Annes Circle Drive, just outside Santa Clarita. Angelica's friends went to find her when she didn't show up for a planned sleepover, said Capt. Ray Peavy of the sheriff's Homicide Unit.
Neighbors say the girls, accompanied by a mother, knocked on the window and threw rocks onto the balcony to try to get their friend's attention, but got no response.
The commotion attracted Alvarado, who said his cousin called him over. Using a flashlight, Alvarado also looked through the window and saw the girl in her bed, with blood around her head, he said. He and two others broke through the front door.
In addition to the girl in an upstairs bedroom, Alvarado said he found a man dead on a sofa, his head leaning back.
"I just ran downstairs," he said. "I didn't want to look no more."
The bodies of the girl and her mother were both found in their beds, and they might have been sleeping when they were shot, Peavy said. The grandfather's body was found on a chair in the living room, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound and a handgun in his hand, Peavy said.
On Wednesday, police tape was strung across the front door of the home, and mangled blinds were visible through the window.
Neighbors said the family, who lived at River Ranch Townhomes, had received eviction notices, and the grandfather was upset about it.
"All indications are that he was going through some difficult times financially, and that might have caused the whole thing," Peavy said.
Neighbors spoke of the family on Wednesday, of little Angelica, whom they said was an active girl, with shoulder-length dark-blond hair.
Michele Perez, 34, who lives nearby, said she often saw the girl and her grandfather together.
"They were always happy, they were always out by the pool, he was always taking her swimming and jumping rope around here," she said.
Some neighbors said they heard what sounded like gunshots at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday. Sheriff's deputies responded to a report of two to three gunshots called in by a resident in the area, said Lt. Brenda Cambra, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's Santa Clarita station.
The deputies arrived 10 minutes later, but didn't see or hear anything more, or locate the source of the gunshots, Cambra said. Sheriff's deputies came back to the town home Tuesday night, after neighbors discovered the bodies.
"The lady next door said they're not going to knock down the door, they're going to come by and patrol the area, which makes perfect sense," said Rhonda Robb, 27, a receptionist who just moved into the neighborhood Tuesday with her boyfriend, Alvarado.
River Ranch has gated entrances and maintenance employees who drive around in golf carts. There is a pool near the leasing office, and the wheat-colored town homes have balconies and face neatly clipped lawns.
Finding his neighbors' bodies was the worst thing he has ever seen, Alvarado said.
Robb said she could not sleep Tuesday night because of the grisly discovery almost next door from where she just moved in.
"I just hope the best for whatever family they do have left," she said.
The love of money is the root of . . .
Some how I doubt that this was a guy who obsessed about money.
More likely this was a guy obsessed with what seemed to be insurmountable problems.
He probably had lost a job that he had for many years and had expected to retire from.
He had been unable to find a new job, he is 52 and if he was a skilled man many would be unwilling to hire him because they would not be willing to pay him the going rate.
He has gone through his savings and is looking at being homeless with his daughter and her child. He feels ashamed that he can not provide for his child who he has raised and the grandchild he loves.
Is there a better recipe for depression for a middle-aged man?
Unfortunately this man chose a permanent solution for a temporary problem.
Yes; he was surely severely depressed. I just wish he had given his daughter a chance to help him.
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