Executive Arrested in Wife’s Slaying

A Pasadena brokerage executive has been arrested on suspicion of fatally shooting his wife in their upscale Arcadia home during an all-night standoff with police, officials said Wednesday.

Richard Robert Russo, 50, was being held without bail at the Twin Towers jail. Officers found Carmen Russo, 42, shot to death next to the grand piano in their living room when the eight-hour standoff ended Tuesday morning.

“The best we can tell is they were having some type of argument. We’ve been told by friends that they’ve been having some marital problems,” Arcadia Police Capt. Gene Gioia said Wednesday.

Russo is a senior vice president in the Pasadena office of Smith Barney, a brokerage and investment banking firm. According to the company website, he has been with the company since 1983. A Smith Barney spokeswoman, Katrina Clay, would not comment other than to say the firm was “deeply saddened.”

Police said Russo ended the standoff by walking peacefully out of the house, which is in a neighborhood of million-dollar-plus homes.

“When I saw him after the arrest, he seemed pretty stoic,” Gioia said. Officers said they recovered a small-caliber handgun from the scene.

Detectives said events began to unfold at 11:30 p.m. Monday when someone called 911 and hung up. A police dispatcher called back, and a woman answering the phone said she was having an argument with her husband. “She told us everything was OK,” Gioia said.

Following routine procedure, two officers went to the house anyway and soon became suspicious. “We couldn’t get anyone to answer the door or the phone,” Gioia said.

Police were especially concerned because the 911 caller had said two children, ages 6 and 11, were in the home on the 200 block of Arbolada Drive.

After summoning police and sheriff SWAT teams, officers reached Russo by phone but he refused to come out. After several hours, the sheriff’s SWAT team unlocked a door and sneaked inside while Russo was apparently upstairs. They quietly removed the sleeping children from the ground floor, Gioia said.

Russo surrendered about 7:30 a.m. and was booked on suspicion of murder. Investigators said it was not clear when his wife was killed because no one heard a gun being fired.