Murder-Suicide Suspect Named

A man suspected of decapitating a Cal State Los Angeles professor at her Pasadena home and then apparently committing suicide was identified Tuesday as a boyfriend and former student at the university.

By the time the body of Glenda Vittimberga, 36, was found Monday, Mark Guerro, 38, had stripped naked and walked into the path of a big rig on Interstate 15 in the Cajon Pass, Pasadena police said.

Detectives said the deaths were the result of a “domestic dispute between a boyfriend and a girlfriend.” The detectives said only that the two had been dating.

Officers went to Vittimberga’s home on Medford Road in the Upper Hastings Ranch area of northeast Pasadena about 4 a.m. after Guerro called his sister in West Covina to say “something bad” had happened to Vittimberga, investigators said.

Vittimberga’s headless body was found in the kitchen. Her head was in the living room fireplace. The coroner’s office said she had been stabbed several times.

University officials said Vittimberga, 36, was a professor of education. She had been a member of the faculty since 1998.

Guerro, a resident of West Covina, graduated from Cal State Los Angeles with a master’s degree in education in 2000, and subsequently enrolled in postgraduate courses at the university, the officials said. Whether he attended any classes taught by Vittimberga was not clear.