MONTROSE, Calif. (AP) – Bruce and Sylvia Pardo started the new year in 2006 with all signs pointing to a bright future – an upcoming marriage, a combined income of about $150,000, half-million-dollar home on a quiet cul-de-sac and a beloved dog, Saki.

But things quickly turned sour and divorce documents paint a bitter picture of Bruce Pardo’s increasing desperation as he lost first his wife, then his job and finally the dog. By fall 2008, Pardo was asking a judge to have his ex-wife pay him support and cover his attorney’s fees.

Pardo’s downward slide ended Christmas Eve, when the 45-year-old electrical engineer donned a Santa suit and massacred nine people at his former in-laws’ house in Covina, where a family Christmas party was under way. He then used a homemade device disguised as a present to spray racing fuel that quickly sent the home up in flames.

Pardo had planned to flee to Canada following the killing spree but suffered third-degree burns in the fire – which melted part of the Santa suit to him – and decided to kill himself instead, investigators said. His body, with a bullet wound to the head, was found at his brother’s home about 40 miles away.

Shocked friends said nothing indicated he was on the verge of a murderous rampage. Pardo had told one friend he planned to usher at the Christmas Eve midnight Mass at his church and told another to expect him for a visit in Iowa around the holidays. He had no previous criminal record.

Court documents from the Pardos’ nearly yearlong divorce proceeding reveal a marriage that faltered early and then descended into a bitter feud.

The couple married on Jan. 29, 2006, and moved into a home Pardo already owned in Montrose, about 15 miles north of Los Angeles. The house sits up the hill from the Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, where he volunteered as an usher at the children’s Mass.

Sylvia Pardo didn’t bring much money to the marriage – just $31,000 a year from a job at a flower-breeding company in El Monte – but she brought a 5-year-old daughter from a previous relationship and almost all the furniture. By all accounts, Pardo was close to his wife’s daughter.

Sylvia Pardo also had two other children from a previous marriage.

Bruce Pardo was making $122,000 a year as an electrical engineer at ITT Electronic Systems Radar Systems in Van Nuys, and together the couple built a nest egg of $88,500 in two years. He often puttered around the house or walked Saki, the couple’s big, brown Akita, in a local park.

But by December 2007, Sylvia Pardo was sleeping in another room and spending weekends with her parents, according to court papers. Two months later she told him she wanted a divorce.

She filed court papers asking for attorney’s fees and $3,166 in monthly spousal support. She claimed her husband had drawn down their $88,500 savings to $17,000 in two months and was transferring funds to a private account.

“The situation has become untenable, and continuing the marriage was not an option,” she said in court documents.

In July, Pardo lost his job at ITT and soon was drowning in debt while scrambling to find work. He begged the court to grant him spousal support until he could find employment. He complained in a filing that he had monthly expenses of $8,900 and ran a monthly deficit of $2,678. He also had $31,000 in credit card debt and a $2,700 monthly mortgage payment.

“I was not given a severance package from my last employer at termination and I am not receiving any other income,” wrote Pardo, who also was denied unemployment benefits. “I am desperately seeking work.”

Instead, the court ordered Pardo to pay his ex-wife $1,785 a month in spousal support, plus $3,570 for past payments. When the divorce was settled, the court waived those payments and Bruce Pardo got the house – but he also had to pay his ex-wife $10,000 and return her valuable diamond wedding ring.

Two days before the killings, he told his attorney he still was trying to come up with the money.

When Pardo’s body was found, $17,000 was strapped to it, money he apparently planned to use to fund his escape to Canada. His mother, Nancy Windsor, told the Los Angeles Times that she wanted that money and any in her son’s estate to be placed in a fund for the children of her former daughter-in-law.

“Anything that our family realized from Bruce’s vehicle, from the money on him, whenever that’s released, everything is going to my grandchildren,” Windsor said.