woman murdered with 8 family members breaks lease, survivers must pay up
 

Rent demanded from family of Covina massacre victim
By Frank C. Girardot, Staff Writer
Updated: 02/05/2009 12:19:42 AM PST

COVINA -- When she was killed on Christmas Eve with eight members of her family, Alice Ortiz unwittingly broke the lease she held on an apartment in Upland.

Now the landlord, Broadcrest Foothill Apartment Homes, wants its money, $2,821.23 in all, according to documents obtained Wednesday.

A Jan. 29 itemized invoice to Ortiz's survivors claims she owes $1,655 to the apartment complex on North Central Avenue for "insufficient notice to vacate."

The company also billed Ortiz for 12 days' rent and other fees accrued in January, weeks after she died.

"This is just low," said attorney Scott Nord, who represents surviving victims of the massacre and their family members.

Candyse Wardlow, who identified herself as the business manager for the property, refused to comment Wednesday.

"Unfortunately, I can't discuss anything," Wardlow said. "I can't go into what happened. I can't make any comment."

Messages left at the company's corporate office were not returned.

Alice Ortiz shared the apartment with her son, Michael, and her daughters Monique and Cecily, Nord said.

Alice and Michael Ortiz were among nine family members killed on Christmas Eve by Bruce Pardo, the disgruntled ex-husband of Alice's sister, Sylvia, authorities said. Also killed were Alice's parents, Joseph and Alicia Ortega; her brothers Charles and James Ortega; and their wives, Cheri and Theresa.

Alice's daughters have since moved in with their father, Carlos Ortiz, who lives in Ontario.

"I'm dealing with my son's death and the death of my ex-wife, and then they want to put up these kind of roadblocks. I just don't understand it," Carlos Ortiz said Wednesday. "They knew we would have to vacate."

Nord said apartment managers began seeking rent from the family in early January.

"I got a call from the landlord after everything happened, saying Alice didn't pay her rent," Nord said. "I asked, 'Have you seen the news? Her kids just lost their mom.'"

The apartment-management company followed up the conversation with a three-day notice to pay rent or leave, Nord said.

"So we had to get them out by Jan. 13, despite the fact that everything else was going on, dealing with the coroner, all these horrible things."

Carlos Ortiz said he would have no problem paying for cleaning and repairs to the apartment, but felt that being told the estate would have to pay for breaking the lease was stunning.

"Everything's been like a whirlwind since Christmas," he said. "It's sad. We had to fight them for two weeks just to get the stuff out. We thought that was the end of it."

Nord said he's had several conversations with the management company seeking some relief for the family on ethical or moral grounds.

"I asked, 'Do you really want to enforce this?'" Nord recalled. "Their response was, 'Our lawyers say we can.'"

Offers of help for the Ortega family in the wake of the Christmas Eve massacre have come in from around the world, Nord said.

"We had donations from around the country and even as far away as Switzerland," he said. "You never expect the kind of generosity we've seen.

"Toyota took the cars back and never said, 'We want our money,'" Nord said. "Other creditors said, 'Don't worry about it.' But what's going on here, we think it's just ridiculous."

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_11632347?source=rss

god damn that's just fucking disgusting

assholes....

Crazy world.

Hope this backfires on him.

That has to be one of the most morally bankrupt things I have ever heard.

They will ruin their own business. No one will want to rent from them and it will turn into a shit hole project apt complex if it isnt already. Lawyers and greed.. a sick thing

With any luck some of their family members will be killed and they can see how well they deal with it.

Some people are just sick :Oh crap

how about this one: in ww2 germany the death camps were located outside of germany, the reason being the insurance companies were having to pay death benefits on the murdered jews.

so the ins industry forced the gov to move the camps out of the country so they could write the jews off as immigrating and not have to pay on the benefits.

think about that next time you write out your car ins check :):thumbsup

That's fucked up! I hope they tank their own business.:mad:

omg fucked

people < money .

That's how it works in our system. This is rewarded.
I'm sure they will be very successful in our culture.
Realistically nobody gives a fuck. I just got my new laptop.

Off to Starbucks now ... see you on CNN :)

Damn...that is an insane thing!!

no offense but, ummm, having a family member who died and left a mortgage, and another who left some financial stuff up in the air...... well, lets just say, BILLS DONT STOP just because you dead.
%

That's sick, good to see they are being outed.

boy, I'll never rent from you if I plan on getting murdered with my entire family :winkwink:

As fucked up as this situation is...Take some of that FREE money, pay the lease, and move on with life.

as i said, I know its tragic, but really, have you guys never dealt with a dying family member?

the bills dont stop, my grandmother has been dead for a few years now and my mom is still getting bills for things.

I have sympathy and compassion for the family, but as someone who has seen and dealt with this stuff directly, its a wake up call when you have to pay $3-4k of someone elses bills after they die. But it happens every single day in this country, not just this case...

my condolences to family

I had a friend die of cancer. he spent his last days alive getting crap from bill collectors on the phone.

and yes I understand your point very well indeed

no more compassion left in the world......

nice folk..

savages - all I gotta say - unbelievable

From what I read in the paper, the woman who died is a total cunt who kept going after her ex for more money and more money. He was already paying a lot, so good for the landlord, get as much money from the dead chick as you can.

wow crazy opinions on this thread

They are that hard up for a couple of thousand bucks ? They are sick filthy slumlords who will lose their respect among the community. To harass a family over a couple of thousand dollars after a terrible tragedy is very telling on their business character. Outrageous.

So the business owner shouldn't get paid because this woman was killed? They got bills to pay..

If the estate is insolvent then the bills do indeed follow them to the grave. Certain investments and insurance do not count towards estate value either. And even if there is obtainable money somewhere, it's probably not worth the bill collector's trouble to go looking.

This story is actually pretty TAME compared to something I saw on Discovery channel many years ago.

It was a show about a crime scene cleaning service.

The guy would go around to the locations of violent crimes and offer his cleanup services to the property owner.

In one case a man was shot in a gas station and blood was left everywhere. The store owner refused to pay for the cleanup service and instead called the victim's family and demanded that they come into his store and clean up the blood.

When my girls dad died, they came after her really hard to pay all his bills. Then they tried coming after me! Guilty by association..lol. Obviously we both told them to fuck off.

To this day, years later, we'll still get a call from a collector here and there. They want to know where her dad is. So we give them his new address...

Nick (last name)
4245 Plot #34
Heavenly Heights, CA.

It's so funny...they write it down soooo fast thinking, "finally..we found him!"...then they take a second look..haha.

Then, the say that they require a death certificate and demand that we send them one...but not only that, it must be an OFFICIAL one.

So we tell them we will...IF they send us $50 first....which includes my gas to get downtown, the cost of the death certificate and some lunch."

We still haven't got one check from any collector yet..lol...

absolutely disgusting