The elderly California couple who vanished from a nudist resort were murdered by having their heads bashed in — allegedly by a neighbor who “hated” them for trimming a tree on their shared property line.
Autopsies showed that Daniel Menard, 79, and his wife, Stephanie Menard, 73, died from blunt-force trauma to the head, with their deaths officially classified as homicides, CBS reported.
The couple and their dog, a Shih Tzu named Cuddles, went missing from their home on the Olive Dell Ranch nudist resort in Colton on Aug. 24 — with cops soon zeroing in on their neighbor, Michael Royce Sparks, and the alleged hatred he felt.
“He hated them, and he told me many times,” Tammie Wilkerson, another neighbor on the nudist ranch, previously told KCAL.
“It’s such a stupid reason … They had a tree that was on their property line, and Dan used to go trim the limbs and he hated that. That formed his hatred towards them,” she alleged.
Sparks refused to surrender to cops last month, leading to an hours-long standoff that ended with armored vehicles knocking down his home.
He was found hiding in a homemade concrete bunker under his leveled home, where he tried to kill himself rather than be arrested, according to the Redlands Police Department.
“But the rifle misfired,” police spokesperson Carl Baker said at the time.
Police then found the missing couple’s remains along with “bags of evidence” in the same concrete bunker. Cuddles the dog is still missing.
Sparks, 62, was arrested and charged with two counts of murder and two special circumstance allegations in connection with their deaths.
He has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail at the San Bernardino West Valley Detention Center. He is expected to appear in court on Oct. 18.
“I just want them back,” Sandy Marinelli, a longtime friend of the murdered couple, told CBS.
“They don’t deserve this. … They’re just good people. They go to church. They don’t deserve any of this.”