About three dozen friends and neighbors gathered to honor and celebrate the late Phyllis Ann Patterson, an active member of the Sylmar community who died tragically last month in a murder-suicide that culminated in an ammunition-fueled house fire at her Sylmar home.
Police later discovered neo-Nazi material in addition to firearms in the debris of the fire.
Patterson, who was 68 years old, was found dead in the pool at her 1.6-acre gated property at 13755 Glenoaks Blvd. Detective Gabriel Bucknell of the Los Angeles Police Department said Patterson’s 59-year-old nephew Richard Yapelli Jr. beat her to death and left her body in the pool, and fatally shot her dog before shooting himself in the head with a rifle on Dec. 3, 2023.
Firefighters extinguished the early-morning fire, initiated by Yapelli, in just over an hour. The blaze destroyed the main house and damaged two other structures on the property.
‘If anything ever happens to me’
“Phyllis would always say, ‘If anything ever happens to me, it’s my nephew, Richard,’” recalled Gerome Huerta, a friend and tenant who had been renting a house from Patterson for nearly six years on De Garmo Avenue, behind Patterson’s Glenoaks property.
Huerta and other friends attended an informal afternoon memorial for Patterson at the home of a next-door neighbor last weekend. Her photo was set up on a screen, but there were no speeches. Instead, participants talked among themselves, sharing stories and feelings about their friend.
Huerta and neighbors who spoke with the San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol described a contentious and sometimes volatile relationship between Patterson and her nephew, who had been living in one of the smaller homes located on her property for about five years.
They said Patterson had been asking Yapelli to move out for years. Detective Bucknell confirmed that when she died, Patterson and Yapelli were having a dispute because she was threatening to evict him for drug use.
Huerta said that early on in his friendship with Patterson, she began confiding in him about the difficult nature of her relationship with her nephew, who was sometimes very intimidating towards her. Huerta recalled one particular incident when he went over to Patterson’s house and found her “really upset, like she had been crying and she was holding back tears.”
“[Yapelli] had browbeat her enough to make her get rid of [a] dog she was fostering,” he said. She told him Yapelli didn’t like how loud the dog was and “didn’t want anything to do with it.”
Despite such incidents, Yapelli’s public demeanor was always outwardly polite, he said.
“I used to bring Phyllis food all the time and he [Yapelli] was always really nice to me, but there was always an underlying fakeness to it; it just was never real,” said Huerta. “It was always very creepy to be around him, and then more so after Phyllis told me what she told me about him.”
Sarah Rosenbaum, who moved in next door to Patterson about three years ago, discussed similar interactions with Yapelli. She described him as a “strange character [who] made himself … look like a very helpful neighbor” by offering to help with various handy work around her property.
“Meanwhile, all this other stuff was happening below the surface,” said Rosenbaum regarding the private conversations she had with Patterson about Yapelli, who she described as a “very emotionally disturbed person.”
“What happened was not unexpected – the moment we heard the gunshots over there, we kind of knew it was him … but it was very sad,” said Rosenbaum, adding that she believes Patterson “didn’t want other people to get involved because she didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Yapelli Had Neo-Nazi Ties
Erin Ziliak, a Sylmar resident who met Patterson more than 20 years ago, echoed the belief that Patterson resisted any friends becoming involved because she didn’t want to put anyone else “in harm’s way.” Ziliak said she first encountered Yapelli about two decades ago, at a birthday party for Patterson’s then-young daughter. She said he was wearing military fatigues and “stuck out like a sore thumb.” Ziliak said she recalls Patterson describing him as a “neo-Nazi” at the time.
Yapelli had a checkered past – in the 1980s, he was the leader of Fight for Freedom (FFF), a punk band turned street gang that spouted neo-Nazi rhetoric. After being arrested at 19, he reportedly disappeared from the scene.
After the Dec. 3 fire, authorities found numerous firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and Nazi paraphernalia on the property.
In recent years, Ziliak said Patterson asked Yapelli to move out multiple times, but he claimed to be disabled and unable to work, and said he supposedly wouldn’t have anywhere to go.
At the time of her death, Ziliak said Patterson was considering selling her home and relocating to Oregon, and she wondered if that information might have triggered Yapelli’s deadly rampage.
Remembering Phyllis
“[Since this happened] I feel like a lot of people are more interested in Richard and what was happening with him, but this [community memorial] wasn’t about him – it was about Phyllis and the kind of person she was,” said Ziliak. “She was such an advocate for Sylmar. She was trying to get a new fire station [in Sylmar] and she was trying to do something to resolve the issue with the [makeshift] RV property on Hubbard and Glenoaks. … She helped with anything that affected our community.”
Kurt Cabrera-Miller, president of the Sylmar Neighborhood Council (SNC), said Patterson had lived in Sylmar for more than 40 years, and regularly attended the SNC meetings. He knew that she had personal issues involving a family member, but wasn’t aware of the details.
“She was very active and was a good person. … She was a force to be reckoned with,” said Cabrera-Miller, noting that she helped him stay aware of issues before they got out of hand. He said Patterson was also an animal lover who was assisting him with an animal resource fair.
Ziliak also mentioned Patterson’s passion for animals – especially her beloved dog Max, who had been by her side for more than a year before being killed in the tragedy.
“Phyllis was an advocate for animals; it seemed like every time I talked to her she had a new animal – a dog, a cat or kittens – that she had found on the street or was fostering,” said Ziliak, adding that she hopes Patterson will be remembered more for the kind of person she was, rather than the tragic circumstances of her death.
“She was the nicest person in the world.”
Semantha Raquel Norris contributed to this article.
I knew Richard “Ranger” Yapelli in the 80s when I was in High School. He was a psychotic, sociopath back then…my only surprise was that I thought he was in prison already. But, he’s dead and the world’s a better place. My condolences to Phyllis and the dog though