Los Angeles - Police revealed new details late Friday about the gruesome attack by a man dressed as Santa Claus who went on a maniacal killing spree during a Christmas party hosted by his former wife's parents.

Police said the killer, Jeffrey Pardo, had planned to escape to Canada after the attack. But instead he killed himself after he suffered third-degree burns when he set the house on fire.

Police also said they detonated a homemade bomb found in his rental car and that Pardo, 45, had 10,000 dollars in cash and an airline ticket for Canada.

Pardo's acrimonious divorce from Sylvia, his wife of two years was finalized last week in bad-tempered hearing, police officer Pat Buchanan told a news conference. But there had been no restraining order against Pardo and police were unaware of any threats he made against her.

Pardo was unemployed since being fired last July from his job as an electrical engineer at ITT Systems.

He had been scheduled to act as an usher at his Catholic church's midnight mass on Christmas Eve. Instead of helping celebrate the holiday of peace, he drove to the two-storey house in the middle class Los Angeles suburb of Covina, where his former parents-in-law were holding their traditional Christmas Eve party.

Dressed as Santa and carrying what looked like a large gift, he knocked on the door at about 11:30 pm. An eight-year-old girl let him in, thinking he was there to entertain the children.

But his deadly intentions became clear immediately. As the door swung open, he shot the little girl in the face with a semiautomatic handgun, and then sprayed the room with bullets.

"He fired multiple rounds into the people attending the party and multiple people were struck," said Buchanan of the Covina police department. "And this is when people were trying to escape the residence or hiding under the furniture."

About 25 people were at the party and they scattered in pandemonium as Pardo unwrapped his sinister present: a home-made device that spread pressurized fuel around the house. Within minutes the structure was an inferno.

Alerted by survivors and neighbours, police and firefighters rushed to the scene. But with details of the incident sketchy, police kept the firefighters away from the house, fearing the attacker was still present.

Police released an 11-minute tape of an emergency 911 call in which survivors could be heard screaming incoherently. A sobbing woman could be heard describing how a man dressed as Santa attacked partygoers with four guns and a fuel-spraying device.

"He's shooting my whole family! My mum's house is on fire!" said the woman, who identified the killer as her former brother-in-law.

By the time the area was deemed to be clear the damage was irreversible. Flames leapt some 15 metres into the air and it took about
60 firefighters more than two hours to quell the blaze.

Amid the charred ruins of the house the extent of the horror became clear. Nine people were dead and three more were seriously injured: the girl who had been shot in the face, a 16-year-old boy who was shot in the back and a woman who broke her ankle when she jumped from a second-storey window.

The other victims were not yet identified Friday, but Pardo's ex- wife and her parents were among those unaccounted for. "The bodies were burned to the point where they are not recognizable," said Covina deputy police chief Ed Winter. "We cannot say whether they died of gunshot wounds or as a result of the fire."

In the meantime the search was on for Pardo. He had shed his Santa uniform and driven to his brother's house about 70 kilometres away. At about 3:30 am the brother called police and said he returned home to find Pardo dead with a single gunshot wound to the head.

Those who knew Pardo were shocked that he could commit such a crime. "Bruce? He was the nicest guy you could imagine," the head usher of his church told the Los Angeles Times. "Always a pleasure to talk to, always a big smile." (dpa)