Dedicated Soldier, Role Model, Father--and Accused Murderer

Whatever troubled Richard Fontes, the U.S. Army Reserve recruiter accused of slaying his former wife and her parents last week in their home, nothing of it showed in the days before the shooting, his startled family and friends say.

Family members knew that Fontes, 26, still struggled with his former wife over visitation rights involving the couple’s 2-year-old son. But he had started a seemingly happy new life for himself, said his older brother, John.

Fontes, a staff sergeant in the Army Reserve, received an Army medal for exemplary service during the riots in Los Angles last year. In July, Fontes took his new job as a recruiter for the Reserve ranks, and, his brother said, became a role model for youngsters enrolled in ROTC at Pomona High School. Three months ago, he remarried and bought a new, three-bedroom tract home in Fontana.

Then came the shootings and killings Monday and now Fontes faces three murder counts.

“No one can believe it’s him,” said John Fontes, 28, acting as the family’s spokesman. “He’s not that kind of guy. Something just broke him.”

During an appearance Wednesday in Citrus Municipal Court in West Covina, the muscular, crew-cut military man--accustomed to wearing his Army uniform with its six medals and three stripes--wore a baggy, yellow County Jail jumpsuit. His head was bowed and his face shielded by a folder held by the public defender who is representing him. The yellow jumpsuit is generally worn by prisoners, like Fontes, who are under medical observation.

“He’s just groggy on the phone; he’s not himself,” said his brother. “It’s almost like a family member has died. That’s what it feels like. It feels like he’s gone.”

Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators say that at 3 p.m. Monday, Fontes called 911 to tell Pomona police about the shootings and surrendered peacefully at his work site, an Army recruiting station on Indian Hill Boulevard. A handgun and shotgun were taken from him there.

Meanwhile, Covina police, directed to a home in the 400 block of West Adams Park Drive, found the bodies of Fontes’ former wife, Suzanne, 28, and her parents, Rachel Kelly, 63, and Charles R. Kelly, 66, a retired El Monte police detective. All had been shot inside the home.

Memorial services for the three are scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday at Faith Community Church in Covina. Burial will follow at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier.

Suzanne’s marriage to Fontes lasted only a year. Along with the couple’s boy, Suzanne had a 9-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.

News of the shooting shocked many in the east San Gabriel Valley, where Fontes grew up and was well known. He had been a standout Walnut High School varsity football player, who many thought might have had a professional career--until a neck injury in an auto accident ruled that out, his brother said.

Fontes also briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a professional bodybuilder and worked for a time as a bouncer at nightclubs in Diamond Bar and San Dimas. But the Army was his true love, said his brother and Army co-workers.

Fontes spent two years in the regular Army, stationed in Hawaii and South Korea, before joining the reserve. He earned six medals, one of them for leading a 10-person squad in South-Central Los Angeles when the National Guard was sent in during widespread civil disobedience in the spring of last year, his brother said.

“He is a very true, dedicated soldier,” said one Army colleague, who asked that his name be withheld. “He doesn’t believe in anything mediocre.”

After becoming a recruiter in July, Fontes helped launch the first military officer training classes at Pomona High School.

“He was just so positive,” said school Principal Norman Fujimoto. “The Army had been such a great thing in his life. I felt, this is what the kids need to hear.”

But apparently his former wife and her family did not share Fontes’ enthusiasm with all things Army.

Richard Bridgewater, his former brother-in-law, complained that Fontes talked incessantly about the Army and always dressed in fatigues.

“He was the GI Joe type,” Bridgewater said. “All he knows is about Army stuff.”

Bridgewater said his side of the family was not happy about the marriage from the beginning. Others in the family have said that Fontes disliked the Kelly family, in part because he wanted his son and Suzanne’s other child reared strictly and felt the Kellys were too lenient, family members have said.

Fontes and his former wife also continually haggled over how frequently he saw their son, Richard Cody Fontes. And the couple differed over when Fontes could see his son and how much child support he should pay, John Fontes said.

Even the boy’s name was a battle. The Kellys and their daughter called the boy Cody, while his brother insisted that the child be called Little Richie, John Fontes said.

“He loved his son very much, and they used that against him,” Fontes said. “Everybody thinks he’s the big psychopath that went crazy, but it built up over time.”

The Fontes family is struggling to make sense of what happened, stand by Richard and apologize to the Kelly family, whom they haven’t been able to contact.

“We just want them to know we feel sorry, very sorry about what happened,” John Fontes said. “We don’t know what else to tell them.”

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Times staff writer Chau Lam contributed to this story.