Few Clues in Deaths of Father, Son

In the week before his father shot him to death and then committed suicide in a park near their elegant Long Beach home, 19-year-old Blaine Edward Mansfield confided his hopes--and his worries--to trusted advisors at Long Beach City College.

An outgoing, hard-working theater arts student with a bent for community service, Mansfield was the college’s Student Senate secretary, and he was running for vice president in upcoming elections.

“He was excited and nervous about the elections. . . . He had mentioned to me, the week before all this, that his time at college was some of the happiest times of his life,” Bill Webb, advisor to the student senate, said on Monday.

But the young man had also told Webb and his assistant, Paulette Marshall, about troubles at home--about an impending divorce and financial problems that were forcing the sale of the home he shared with his mother, Diane, father, Blaine Estell Mansfield, and sister, Danielle, 17.

“He came to school as an escape,” Marshall recalled of the young man she said was like a son to her. “He said that on more than one occasion, that school was an escape from the pressures of home.”

Nonetheless, young Mansfield clearly loved his father, Marshall said. “His life pretty much revolved around his dad. He was always doing something to try to please him. . . . He was real close to his dad.

On Sunday morning, the father and son arrived at Recreation Park in their charcoal-gray Mercedes-Benz. They spread a blanket on the ground and laid down. There, police said, the father, 56, shot his son once in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. Then he placed the weapon in his mouth and pulled the trigger. They died hours apart, in separate hospitals.

Police said they did not know whether the younger Mansfield knew of his father’s plans. Officers found a typewritten note near the blanket, but they said it contained names of people to contact, not an explanation.

The two witnesses police interviewed Sunday said they had seen the pair arrive and arrange the blanket but had looked away by the time the first shot rang out. Startled by the sound, they looked back in time to see the father shoot himself beside his mortally wounded son.

“There are no words to express it,” Diane Mansfield, 51, said Monday in an interview at the family home just west of Cal State Long Beach. She said her husband of 30 years had been depressed lately, but she did not say why.

Asked if there were any personal problems, she answered: “We all have personal problems, but nothing that would have led anyone to this.” She did confirm that the couple were planning to divorce.

Diane Mansfield said her husband had been “a giver and a nurturer,” active in several civic and charitable organizations, including the Century Club, which raises money for school athletics, and the St. Mary Medical Center Foundation. He was a venture capitalist, investing primarily in high-technology firms, she said--and he deeply loved his children.

“He was devoted to his children. He wanted them to have the best of everything,” Diane Mansfield said. Father and son were especially close, going on trout-fishing trips to Mammoth Lakes in the High Sierra every June.

But Mansfield’s life was unraveling, according to court documents and interviews with some who knew the family.

Mansfield was president and chief executive of a financially troubled company called Net/Guard Technologies Inc., a high-tech company and software developer based in Garden Grove.

The price of Net/Guard stock, traded over the counter, has plunged to about 4 cents a share. It had sold for $3.75 in February 1997 when it bought a San Dimas company called Amtek Corp.

According to a recent filing with the Security and Exchange Commission, Net/Guard suffered a net loss of just over $1 million during the last nine months of 1997. At the end of 1997, Net/Guard reported liabilities of $834,000 and assets of $527,000.

The company filed for bankruptcy in July, court records show.

Despite his company’s financial woes and marriage problems, Mansfield had remained upbeat and was seeking other business ventures, said Cherlynne Casadonne, president of Concord Credit Solutions. Casadonne’s company was next door to Net/Guard, and took over the computer services office when it closed.

Young Mansfield’s student advisors, while aware of troubles at home, said they never anticipated Sunday’s tragic turn of events.

“I never had any indication that he was in any danger because of that,” Webb said.

The young man will be “so terribly missed. He was incredibly giving,” Webb said, noting that Mansfield was a well-rounded, excellent student who worked hard to attain his goals and always had time for community service.

“If you were on campus, and someone needed help, you could almost bet that you would find Blaine there,” Webb said.

A memorial service was held on campus Monday, attended by about 100 faculty and students. But perhaps the most touching tribute came from Blaine’s younger sister, in impromptu remarks during an interview with The Times.

“I don’t want the world to look upon my dad as a horrible person,” Danielle Mansfield said. “He wasn’t. He was a good man.”

As for her brother, she added, he was “the purest person. You couldn’t have asked for a better brother, a better friend.

“Everything about him was beautiful. He was supposed to live.”

Times staff writers Jean Merl and Debora Vrana contributed to this story.