An 80-year-old man fatally shot his wife and then himself in the couple’s La Jolla home Tuesday night, police said, the same day his daughter said he emailed her and others to say he believed his wife was having an affair.

The two were identified by police as John Mattiace and Parvaneh Jilavi, 60.

A man called San Diego police about 7:30 p.m. to report that his friend’s mother had just been killed by her husband at their home on Avenida Fiesta, off Pacifica Drive.

A next-door neighbor, Susana Smylie, said one of the Jilavi’s two adult sons found her in the home. Smylie said she looked out her window and saw the son run frantically out of the house. “Call 911,” the man yelled to another neighbor.


“He was devastated,” Smylie said of the son, who does not live with his mother and stepfather.

Officers found Jilhavi’s body on a sofa with a gunshot wound to her upper body, homicide Lt. Todd Griffin said.

The officers didn’t know where her husband was, so they backed out for their own safety and called in a SWAT team to search the rest of the house. Those officers found Mattiace, also with a gunshot wound to his upper body, in a downstairs storage area. A handgun lay near him, Griffin said.

Neighbors were evacuated from the cul-de-sac, or told to stay indoors, until the SWAT team finished searching the home. Griffin said homicide investigators were called in after that. It was after sunrise before they entered the house to begin collecting evidence.


The couple had been married since 2008 and did not appear to have problems until this week, when John Mattiace wrote an email to his daughters and close friends saying he thought his wife was having an affair and that he was heartbroken, said his daughter Nancy Mattiace.

“There was nothing threatening, nothing at all,” she said of the email, which she shared with police. “It was kind of cryptic. I didn’t understand all of it.”

Nancy Mattiace said she tried to reach her father by phone and emailed him back immediately after getting the note.

She didn’t know about the fatal shooting until she heard the couple’s address mentioned on TV news Wednesday morning.


“I was in complete shock,” she said.

Mattiace’s family also said he suffered from PTSD.

Smylie, the next-door neighbor, said she was fond of the married couple. She said she broke down in tears when she saw medical examiner investigators carry out the two bodies out of the home Wednesday.

“It still seems unreal. I felt pain and sorrow,” she said.


She described Jilavi as a lovely woman who was friendly to neighbors and their children. “Her character was unforgettable,” Smylie said.

Mattiace said her father was a decorated Marine Corps veteran who served two tours of duty in Vietnam and was decorated for heroism in battle. His first wife died in 2006 and in 2008 he married Jilavi, who had lived across the street, Nancy Mattiace said.

Jilavi had worked as a registered nurse and administrator of an assisted living facility at the Avenida Fiesta home that was called La Pappion. According to state records, it operated from October 2002 until April 2009. Promotional materials online said the home had rooms for six residents.

After La Pappion closed, the home was operated as an assisted living facility called Butterfly Gardens II from 2009 to May 2015, according to records from the state Department of Social Services.


The couple recently remodeled the house and had it listed for sale or rent.

An online site for John M. Mattiace, real estate broker, lists the home for sale at just under $3 million. The listing notes the 3,825-square foot, two-story home has six bedrooms and four bathrooms. There is an enclosed courtyard and a second patio, with an east-facing view toward a canyon.

The home also was listed for rent at $14,995 a month.

Nancy Mattiace said her father and Jilavi planned to sell the house and buy another and were still looking for a new house last she knew.


“Our father I think was getting a little bit senile the past couple years and sometimes he would be difficult to understand,” she said. “We loved him every much and... we are heartbroken that we could not get to him in time.”

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