Ex-Cop Kills Wife’s Boyfriend, Then Himself

A retired Los Angeles police officer gunned down his estranged wife’s boyfriend Sunday and then killed himself as his children watched from an upstairs window, police said.

Jon Gregory Pearce, 39, shot Kirk James Krcmar, 37, of Simi Valley at least six times outside the Simi Valley house where the former officer had once lived, said Simi Valley Police Lt. Robert Klamser.

Pearce, who had moved out of the state after he and his wife separated 11 months ago, apparently died from a gunshot wound to the head, Klamser said. No one else was wounded in the incident.

Pearce came to the house in the 1700 block of Colleen Avenue about 9:20 a.m. Sunday for a scheduled visit with his three children, Klamser said.

Krcmar was at the house when Pearce arrived, and the two men went outside and argued about Krcmar staying in the house, Klamser said. During the argument, Pearce went to his car, which was parked in front of the house, and grabbed a .357-caliber revolver and ammunition, Klamser said.

Pearce then walked back to the house and shot Krcmar from a few feet away, witnesses said. Krcmar’s body was on the porch and Pearce’s body was in the walkway a few feet away.

Jon and Judy Pearce’s three children--girls ages 8 and 4 and a 2-year-old boy--saw part of the shooting from an upstairs window before their mother took them to the back yard for protection, Klamser said.

“I saw (Pearce) when he made the second two shots,” said Dean Kraft, a neighbor across the street who witnessed the shooting from his kitchen window. “He was crouched, and his arms were extended. I figured he was shooting Judy and the kids. . . . We knew they were having family problems.”

Pearce, who joined the Los Angeles Police Department in December, 1983, retired in 1990 on stress disability after a 1986 shooting in which he wounded an elderly man, said LAPD Sgt. Alan Sorkness. In May, 1986, Pearce shot Murphy Pierson, 71, who was chasing away drug dealers from his Southwest Los Angeles home with a shotgun.

Police said Pierson was shot after he ignored repeated warnings to drop the weapon. Pierson’s wife blamed her husband’s death a year later on complications stemming from his wounds, and the city of Los Angeles settled a civil lawsuit with his family for $1.8 million, the second-highest amount in the city’s history.

When Pearce and his wife decided to file for a divorce more than a year ago, he left her and his children in the Simi Valley house and moved out of the state, neighbors said. Although Pearce was driving a car with Arkansas license plates Sunday, police said he had moved to Mountain Grove, Mo.