About 9:30 p.m. Monday, authorities identified the third of five people found shot at a Temecula home the night before. View A Video

Naomi Grangroth, 34, was identified by the Riverside County coroner's office.

Temecula police say she was found in the backyard of the home at 31089 Iron Circle along with her boyfriend, Jeffrey Blixt, 45, and his 17-year-old son Matthew.

Authorities have not yet identified her 15-year-old twin daughters who were fatally shot inside the home.

Two of five gunshot victims identified

By: JOHN HALL - Staff Writer

Police still aren't saying who fired the deadly shots or why

TEMECULA - A father and his teenage son, the man's girlfriend and her twin 15-year-old daughters are the five people found shot to death Sunday night at a Temecula home, authorities and family of the victims said Monday.

While authorities remained tight-lipped about details of the investigation, they did confirm each of the dead were shot in the upper body and that the deaths are being investigated as a case of murder-suicide. Investigators have not described any possible motive or said whether a suicide note was found in the home or elsewhere.

Jeffrey Blixt, 45, and his 17-year-old son Matthew were found in the backyard of the home at 31089 Iron Circle, according to the Riverside County coroner's office.

Naomi Grangroth, 34, was also found in the backyard, authorities said late Monday. The names of her two 15-year-old daughters who were shot inside the house were still not being released.

Jeffrey Blixt's sister, Tammara Arredondo, and family friend Elizabeth Daigle held an impromptu news conference outside the home Monday afternoon and identified Blixt and his son as among the dead, before authorities released the names.

"All we know is that it was a terrible thing," Arredondo said. "It's an unbelievable sight in there. It's unbelievable that this could happen."

The women said Blixt and his son were found side by side in the backyard, which is where sources close to the investigation say the gun was found.

Los Angeles-based KCAL-9 television reported that homicide investigators told them it was Matthew Blixt who killed the four and then himself. When asked about that televised report Monday night, Temecula police Lt. Scot Collins disputed that investigators released any such details, and added they were not yet ready to make that determination.

One of the 15-year-old twin girls was still alive when Temecula police got to the single-story home about 5:30 p.m., police said. She died four hours later at a local hospital, according to the coroner's office.

About 11 a.m. Monday, the four bodies were removed from the home, which backs up to a part of Temeku Hills Golf Course and parallels Rancho California Road between Margarita Road and Meadows Parkway.

Autopsies for all five are scheduled to be conducted Wednesday and Thursday, Riverside County sheriff's Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez said.

Forensic technicians were still taking evidence from the house about 1 p.m. and police took down yellow crime scene tape and opened the street a couple of hours later.

Police say Jeffrey Blixt was the only one of the five who lived at the Iron Circle home, which backs up to a part of Temeku Hills Golf Course and parallels Rancho California Road between Margarita Road and Meadows Parkway.

Just before 4 p.m. Monday, Arredondo and Daigle spoke for about 10 minutes to members of the media who had gathered on the normally quiet cul-de-sac. The two women remained composed as they answered several questions about the slayings from behind a makeshift podium of television microphones.

Both said they still aren't completely sure what happened inside, as homicide investigators have not told them very much.

There had been a backyard barbecue at the home attended by the five who died as well as another family member who fled the scene.

The women said Blixt's teenage daughter Danielle was also there when the shooting occurred.

"She survived. She is home with her mother right now," Arredondo said of her niece.

"She didn't actually see it," Daigle said of the shootings. "She smelled some food burning in the backyard, she came out to see if dinner was ready and that's when she found out what had happened."

Temecula police and investigators with the Riverside County sheriff's Central Homicide Unit declined to say what Danielle - who is believed to be 15 years old - may have been doing, where she was at the home or whether she heard any shots.

Although police also will not confirm it, Danielle appears to have made a 911 call reporting the shooting deaths. Collins said there were two calls to 911 Monday night, made about the same time.

"One caller was unsure of the location and one came from someone on Iron Circle," the Temecula police lieutenant said.

Robin Reeves, who lives on Royal Oaks Drive - about a half-mile from Iron Circle, said Monday he was shocked when he answered his door Monday night to a Temecula police officer pointing a gun at him.

"I don't know how close I came to getting shot. I just froze," he said. "I thought at first it might have been a home-invasion robbery."

Reeves now owns the home where Jeff Blixt previously lived.

"I think it donned on them pretty fast they had the wrong place," he said of officers who came to his home as his family was eating dinner inside.

"It's hard for me to get too upset, I just thought they should have identified themselves first," he said, adding that he is not trying to fault the officers for their actions now that he knows the circumstances.

Once they confirmed they were at the wrong home, an officer explained to him what was happening, Reeves said.

"He said that someone named Danielle Blixt had called them and said there were bodies and blood everywhere," Reeves recalls.

The caller told police to meet her at a nearby fast food restaurant because she didn't know the address and she would take them there, Reeves said.

But, the officer told him, no one was there so they used a database and came up with Jeff Blixt at the Royal Oaks Road address that is not far from the Iron Circle home, Reeves said.

In between living on Royal Oaks Road and then on Iron Circle, Blixt lived at a home on Corte Montiel.

Rudy Rios, 58, lives directly across the street from the home Blixt rented on Corte Montiel. He said he remembers Blixt and his wife.

"They were both really nice people," Rios said.

He recalls Blixt working for some sort of transportation company and thinks Blixt's wife ran her own business, possibly from the home.

"He was interested in cars, mostly muscle cars and he had a couple of motorcycles," Rios said.

Other nearby neighbors on Corte Montiel, who asked to not be identified, recalled the Blixts as being big fans of motocross.

"They were decent neighbors and mostly kept to themselves," the neighbor said. "They'd be out washing their cars or something and they'd talk to us."

The shooting of five people on Iron Circle is one of the largest cases of deaths at a single place in recent Riverside County history.

In May 2005, David McGowen, a Riverside County district attorney's investigator, shot five family members to death before killing himself in his home near Idyllwild.

Six people were killed near Temecula Valley High in June 1992 after an undocumented immigrant fleeing authorities sped through a red light at an intersection next to the campus, slamming into a car and then crushing two students walking to school. The driver was later convicted of murder in the six deaths.

- Staff writer John Hunneman contributed to this report. Contact staff writer John Hall at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2628, or jhall@californian.com.

Sheriff's officials confirm ID of father, son - Last updated at 4:55 p.m.

A sheriff's spokesman has just confirmed that two of the people who died in the shooting were Jeffrey Blixt, 45, who lived in the home, and his son Matthew Blixt, 17, who did not live in the home. They have not formally released the identity of the others yet. Instead, they have identified them only as a 34-year-old woman and two 15-year-old girls.

Family IDs victims - Last updated at 4:15 p.m.

Jeff Blixt's sister and a family friend just came out and addressed the media and identified some of the people who were killed at the Iron Circle home on Sunday.

According to family friend Elizabeth Daigel and Tammara Arredondo, who is Blixt's sister, the people killed in the shooting were: Jeff Blixt; his 17-year-old son Matthew; Jeff's girlfriend Naomi; and her 15-year-old twin daughters, whose names were not released. The girls are students at a Temecula school.

Blixt's 12-year-old daughter was home at the time, saw the aftermath of what had happened and fled, the women said.

Sheriff's officials have not confirmed the names of the victims or released any further details.

Look for updates here as additional information becomes available.

Bodies removed from Temecula home

Updated at 1:12 p.m. By: The Californian

Sheriff's officials are officially investigating the shooting deaths of two men and three women as a case of multiple murders and then a suicide.

The bodies were found at a home at 31089 Iron Circle. The identities of the victims have not been released, however neighbors say the home was being rented to Jeff Blixt, 45.

Authorities say that only one of the victims - one of the men - lived at the home. At this point, investigators are not saying who they believe the fired the shots.

Bodies removed from Temecula home

Updated at: 11:40 a.m. By: The Californian

TEMECULA - Coroner's officials removed the bodies of two men and two women late this morning from a home on Iron Circle, in the wake of a Sunday afternoon shooting rampage that authorities believe was a murder-suicide.

When officers arrived at the home late Sunday afternoon, they found four dead bodies and one woman who was still alive. That woman later died at an area hospital, authorities said.

Although some of the victims have been identified, coroner's officials are still working on notifying their family members and have not released their identity to the media. A sheriff's spokesman did say they are all relatives.

On Monday, a sheriff's spokeman said investigators found a gun inside the home. They did not say what type of gun was used in the killings, nor where it was found.

The street remained blocked off at Rough Way, and cars were parked along side streets as there was no access in to the short cul-de-sac.

As neighbors looked on from a distance, coroner's officials brought the bodies out of the home on stretchers and loaded them into a transport van.

Details were still in short supply Monday, but neighbors said Sunday night that there had been a gathering at the house for a barbecue.

Officers were notified about 5:20 p.m. that gunshots had been fired. At least one neighbor said she heard the shots but initially thought they were golf balls hitting the house. It was only later, she said, that she realized they were gunshots.

Five shot to death in Temecula

Updated at: 11:00 p.m. By: JOHN HALL - Staff Writer

TEMECULA - Five people were shot to death at a Temecula home Sunday in what police believe may have been a massive murder-suicide.

Two men and a woman were found in the backyard and two more women were located inside the home in the 31000 block of Iron Circle. One of the women found in the house was alive when officers arrived and was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, but died shortly after 9:30 p.m., police said.

Temecula police received a call on shots fired about 5:20 p.m. and arrived minutes later to find the horrible crime scene.

None of the dead had been identified by late Sunday night. They ranged in age from early 20s to mid-40s, said Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez, spokesman for the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, which provides police service in Temecula.

"Since we haven't been able to identify everyone yet, we can't say whether they all lived at this house or not," he said.

Because sheriff's Central Homicide Unit investigators were waiting for a search warrant to go back into the home, Gutierrez said they had yet to recover a weapon from the crime scene.

The home, with an American flag waving out front, sits on a quiet cul-de-sac that is lined by one- and two-story homes and backs up to Temeku Hills Golf Course.

Maureen Fowler, 53, lives two houses away and said there was a barbecue going on at the house before the shots rang out. She heard what she now knows were five shots about 4:30 p.m.

"I wasn't sure if they were shots then," she said. "I thought the first one was a golf ball hitting a house."

Fowler said that after the first "bam," there was a pause followed by four more "bams" in quick succession.

She went outside to see what might be going on and didn't think much of it until she heard sirens. Fowler said she and her husband only knew one man who lived at the home where the shooting happened.

She said she only knew him by the first name of Jeff. Fowler believes he was renting the home, was divorced and had at least one daughter.

"He never made an attempt to be friendly," Fowler said, which she said was odd because most of those who live on the street are pretty close.

"We saw a lot of people coming and going from that house," she said.

"I just can't believe this is happening here," Fowler said.

Another neighbor, Dyan O'Bourke said the man who lived at the house "kept to himself."

O'Bourke, 35, was driving home when police cars passed her. Once home, she went out to ask officers if she needed to worry about anything. While outside, a woman in a pickup drove up and was stopped by officers.

"She was hysterical and told them she just got off the phone with police and that her whole family was dead," O'Bourke said. "I don't know how she found out about what happened so quickly."

O'Bourke's husband, John, said this is the sort of neighborhood where you can take walks at midnight with no worries.

As more and more investigators and a number of television news crews continued to trickle onto the normally peaceful street, Temecula Police Chief Jerry Williams looked around and pondered what he saw.

"It's extremely rare for something like this to happen around here," Williams said.

"This is the first time, that I can remember, that Temecula has had this many victims in a single homicide investigation like this," the chief said.

The largest single number of deaths at one homicide scene since Temecula became a city in 1989 was six in June 1992 when a Chevrolet Suburban filled with undocumented immigrants fleeing authorities sped through an intersection and killed six people. The driver was later convicted of murder.

- Contact staff writer John Hall at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2628, or jhall@californian.com.