Facing Divorce, Father Killed Children

Facing a second divorce, Todd Vernon didn’t want to live -- and didn’t want his first wife to raise their three kids. So he planned to end the children’s lives before committing suicide.

By the time an anguished seven-page letter explaining these plans arrived Saturday at his mother’s house in Brea, Vernon and his current wife were dead in their Bay Area home -- along with the children.

“I read it several times -- reread it, telling myself it wasn’t real,” said his mother, Barbara Miller. “There were no red flags, no clues.”

The deaths shocked those who knew Vernon in Santa Clara and in Buena Park, where his children lived most of the year with their mother. Police said that although Vernon, 37, was under stress, it didn’t add up to the scene they found when they discovered five bodies at his home in Santa Clara, about 44 miles south of San Francisco.

“Truly, we don’t know why he did it,” said Santa Clara Police Sgt. Kurt Clarke, adding that Vernon had no criminal record and there was no record of domestic-disturbance calls at the home. “We can speculate. But people get divorced and not everyone kills one another.”

After receiving the letter about 10 a.m. Saturday, Miller called her brother, who alerted police. Officers said Vernon left a second suicide note in his home taking responsibility for killing his daughter, Amber, 12; twin 10-year-old sons, Matthew and Robert; and his wife, Nadine Nunes Vernon, 39.

All were shot with a .357-caliber handgun a day after the children had flown in for the weekend. All were found “in natural sleeping positions,” and the gun was in Vernon’s hand, Clarke said.

“They were my babies,” said the children’s mother, Wendy Vernon, who divorced Todd in 1996 and kept primary custody despite frequent disputes over visitation rights. “I want everyone to know how great and wonderful they were,” she said, her eyes swollen from crying. “I can’t believe all three of them are gone.”

Miller said Vernon’s letter arrived in a FedEx box. Inside were several rings, a passport, savings bonds and a seven-page typed letter sealed in an envelope.

“Dear Mom, I have been hiding my pain,” he wrote. “If you don’t know by now, I [will] be taking the life of my wife, my children and myself.... I hope you understand and please forgive me.”

Vernon told his mother that his second wife “was my whole life” but that she wanted a divorce. “Losing her was the end of the world. I love the children more than life and I didn’t want that [first wife] to raise them.”

Those who knew the couple said the children weren’t told about the impending breakup. The couple intended to vacation with the children in Hawaii over Christmas.

“I don’t think anyone saw any of this coming,” said Long Beach attorney Gregg S. Laughlin, who handled custody matters for Wendy Vernon after the divorce. “His ex-wife was on top of things and would have been sensitive to anything he did that would have been harmful to the children.”

Laughlin and La Habra attorney C. Larry Fancher, who represented Todd Vernon after the divorce, said it was clear that the father cared deeply for his children.

“He had a wonderful relationship with his children, and he did a lot of different things with them,” Fancher said. “It seemed like a very wholesome relationship.”

Todd Vernon was a truck driver who also worked as a medical equipment installer. He quit his job about three months ago to spend more time with his children, said Don Soukup, owner of the well-kept Craftsman home where Vernon lived with his wife. Pictures of the couple and Vernon’s children adorn the refrigerator.

“The kids were always smiling, happy,” Soukup said. The couple showed no sign of financial stress, he added: They owned a Corvette, a four-wheel-drive truck, five motorcycles and a motor home -- and often paid their $2,750 monthly rent two weeks in advance, he said.

Miller said her son continued to work part time and that Nadine earned a substantial income. The couple enjoyed riding their Harleys, scuba diving and owned a house on the Big Island in Hawaii, she said.

The last time she saw her grandchildren was Friday, when she picked them up from their schools and took them to Los Angeles International Airport to catch a 5:25 p.m. flight to Santa Clara to visit their father for the weekend. She called him as soon as the plane took off.

“Everything seemed fine,” she said. “He gave no clues that there was anything wrong.”

For years, however, Vernon had feuded with his first wife over custody. In April, Vernon asked an Orange County Family Court judge to expand his visitation rights from one weekend a month to every other weekend. He also asked for seven weeks in the summer and alternate Christmas vacations.

In court papers, he said his children “have a great time when they visit me” and that “increasing their time with me is something that they have expressed a desire in doing.”

“I have a good relationship with all three children and there are many activities they enjoy while in my care,” he wrote.

Vernon also said his former wife used “the kids against me” and tried to keep them from speaking to him by phone or visiting him. He said there were three times when he had to buy replacement plane tickets for the children after his former wife lost the originals or was late for a flight.

“There appears to be a complete lack of appreciation by respondent of the importance of the children having contact with their father,” Vernon’s petition stated.

In a court document filed in June, Wendy Vernon denied her former husband’s allegations. She said she thought it was important that the children maintain a relationship with their father. But she said their stepmother was physically and verbally abusive. She said Nadine Nunes Vernon had spanked Matthew and had called Amber a profane name “more than once, which upsets her terribly.”

“I do not believe that this kind of atmosphere is healthy for the children,” Wendy Vernon wrote.

In June, Judge Francisco F. Firmat granted Todd Vernon visits every third weekend, extended his summer visits to seven weeks and allowed him alternate Christmas vacations starting this year.

Neighbors in the modest Buena Park Manor mobile home park where the children lived said they were shocked by the killings.

“Everyone here is going through excruciating pain,” said Somer Zelasney, 22, a neighbor who baby-sat the children for about three months. “They were unbelievable kids.”

Amber, a seventh-grader at Buena Park Junior High School, was artistic and enjoyed dancing, writing poetry and playing softball.

Twins Robert and Matthew were students at Corey Elementary. They enjoyed playing video games and collected baseball cards.

Both schools had counselors on campus Monday to console students and teachers.

Wendy Vernon, who recently got a job in finance and plans to start classes at UC Irvine to become a medical researcher, enrolled the children in Buena Park’s Boys & Girls Club “so they wouldn’t come home to an empty house after school,” said neighbor Terri Moon, 55. “She did all she could as a single mother. I’ve never seen a boyfriend over at the house. Her kids were everything.”

“It is so shocking and sick, totally sick,” said Moon, who taught Amber how to make dolls. “Wendy is going to need a lot of prayers right now.”

*

Times staff writer Mike Anton and correspondent Donna Horowitz contributed to this report.