Police: Stanford Student Built Guns Used In Walnut Creek Murder-Suicide
WALNUT CREEK (CBS SF) -- A 21-year-old Lafayette native built the firearms he used to kill a 19-year-old woman and then himself at her home in Walnut Creek last month, police said Tuesday.
Scott Bertics secretly built two firearms used to kill Clare Orton and then himself by buying parts through the mail, police said. Guns that people build themselves are not required to be registered, Walnut Creek police Lt. Lanny Edwards said.
Edwards thought that once built, the guns would be illegal, but in California, that doesn't seem to be the case.
"As long as you possess it yourself and don't sell it, it's not illegal to have," Edwards said.
Nor was it illegal for the companies that make the parts to sell them. Edwards said coupled with instructional videos on the Internet, it created a lethal combination.
Although Edwards said building the guns does not take a "rocket scientist" or a degree in mechanical engineering, he did say it was more complicated than merely snapping a few parts in place.
Bertics had enrolled at Stanford University in the fall of 2012 but took a voluntary leave of absence in the fall of 2014, according to university spokesman Brad Hayward.
Hayward said Bertics had not yet declared a major, but he is listed on a 2013 demonstration called "Controlling Robot Dynamics with Spiking Neurons." He's also acknowledged in a paper titled, "Developing Articulated Robots in Task-Space with Spiking Silicon Neurons."
Detectives found nothing in their investigation to suggest anyone was involved or had knowledge of Bertics' plan, police said.
Officers responded at 6:50 a.m. on July 21 to a home in the city's north Homestead neighborhood on a report of shots fired, police said.
Officers arrived to find the pair dead from apparent gunshot wounds in the home where Orton lived her family, according to police. Police have ruled it a murder-suicide.
Orton was a Las Lomas High School graduate and captain on the school's cross country team, according to the school's newspaper, Las Lomas Page.
She was living at home during summer break after finishing her freshman year of college at San Diego State University, where she was an honors student studying environmental engineering, according to university spokesman Greg Block.
Homemade guns are becoming more common, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Tuesday.
"We're starting to see more and more of them," said ATF spokeswoman Helen Dunkel. "It's been a trend over the last couple years in our division."
The San Francisco field division covers an area extending from Bakersfield to the Oregon border, she said.
It's perfectly legal for someone who is not otherwise prohibited from owning firearms—convicted felons, for example—to assemble their own gun, Dunkel said.
Certain types of guns cannot be lawfully assembled at home, including automatic machine guns, silencers, sawed-off shotguns and short-barreled shotguns, according to Dunkel.
"Those types of weapons are considered more dangerous and are required to be registered to lawfully possess one," she said, adding that users must also pay a federal tax. "As long as it's not in that category, you, who has no record, can manufacture a firearm."
State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) introduced a bill last year that would have required people who make their own guns to register the firearms and attach a serial number to the devices.
The bill passed the House and the Senate but was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown. In a veto message dated Sept. 30, 2014, Brown said he appreciated the author's concerns about gun violence, but "can't see how adding a serial number to a homemade gun would significantly advance public safety."
Asked if the governor still held this view - given the recent murder suicide in Walnut Creek - spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said, "The veto message speaks for itself."
A spokeswoman for de Leon said the senator wasn't planning on reintroducing the bill.
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