3 Dead in Apparent Murder- Suicide Case

Three people were found shot to death Tuesday inside their home in the gated community of Porter Ranch, the victims of an apparent murder-suicide, police said.

The dead included an older man believed to have shot his wife and teenage son before turning a handgun on himself, according to neighbors and Los Angeles Police Det. Marshall White of the Devonshire Division.

The bodies were discovered Tuesday afternoon by firefighters who were contacted by a private security guard in the northwestern San Fernando Valley community. The guard had left a note on a car idling in the victims’ driveway and found the vehicle untouched and still idling several hours later.

Police declined to identify the victims until relatives had been notified. But neighbors said they were John and Nancy An and their son, Franklin. John was described as a retired aerospace worker thought to be in his 70s, Nancy in her 40s, and Franklin, 15, neighbors said.

The couple had loud arguments, neighbors said, and Nancy An had confided to at least one neighbor that she was planning to divorce her husband and was afraid of him.

The confidant, neighbor Lee-yea Chung, said she became alarmed Tuesday morning after noticing burned Chinese currency littering the lawn between her home and the Ans in the 12000 block of Stone Gate Way. Burned money is often offered as a sacrifice to dead ancestors, and is a common mourning ritual among some Buddhists, she added.

“I thought it was very strange to see that,” Chung said. “I felt something was wrong.”

Later Tuesday morning, before she left for her classes at Pierce College, Chung noticed Nancy An’s tan Mercury idling in the driveway. She went next door and rang the doorbell but there was no answer.

“Then I went to the backyard and yelled: ‘Nancy! Nancy!’--still no answer,” she said.

Chung then told her husband to call the private security force that patrols the community to make sure An was all right.

A security guard left a note on the car about 9 a.m. When a guard found the car still running at 1 p.m. the Fire Department was notified.