In 1988, when he was 24, Pardo became engaged to a JPL co-worker. They invited 250 guests to the nuptials at the San Fernando Mission. Pardo didn't have much money, and he was living with his mother at the time. So the bride-to-be dipped into her savings for a country club reception and honeymoon reservations in Tahiti.
On the day of the wedding, June 17, 1989, his fiancee as well as his brother Brad and his mother, Nancy Windsor, waited for nearly an hour for Pardo to show up. He never did. The next week, his fiancee learned he had withdrawn the $3,000 left in their credit union account.
"Whatever he felt like, he did," recalled Delia, the former fiancee. She asked that her last name not be published because she has since married and moved to another state. "There was no sense of responsibility."
A few weeks later, she saw Pardo again. "He was tanned, and he was looking good, like wow!" Delia said. "Turns out, he went to Palm Springs, and blew all the money."
On weekends, Pardo would often invite friends onto his boat on Lake Havasu.
"He was like a big kid, goofy and lovable," said Tina Westman, 39, who dated him in the early 1990s. Sometimes too goofy. Pardo coaxed Westman to join him on a rafting trip with friends, and when she fell overboard and nearly drowned, Pardo laughed. "He didn't get the severity of what happened," she said. "He was very, very intelligent, but common-sense-lacking."
By 2001, at age 37, Pardo seemed to have finally settled down. He was living in Woodland Hills with his girlfriend, Elena Lucano, and their 13-month-old son, Bruce Matthew.
A week after New Year's, Matthew fell into the backyard swimming pool while Pardo was watching television in the house. When Lucano returned home, she found Pardo screaming and holding Matthew in his arms, according to her attorney. Pardo maintained a vigil by the boy's hospital bed for a week. But when the doctors determined that Matthew would never fully recover, Lucano and Pardo split up.
Matthew, now 9, is severely brain-damaged and a paraplegic. Neither Lucano nor Matthew ever saw Pardo again.
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In 2004, Pardo met Sylvia Orza. They were introduced by her brother-in-law, one of Pardo's co-workers at JPL.
Orza, 40, had three children from two previous marriages. Pardo's friends thought she was just what he needed: a down-to-earth woman with a large family.
