‘Be Good,’ Father Says, Kills Self

A man who left a note on a blackboard telling his two children to “be good girls” killed himself on his 47th birthday today by dousing his body and car with gasoline and driving the flaming vehicle into a mountainside, police said.

The Hawthorne resident, who had two plastic gallon bottles of gasoline in the front seat of his car, rolled up the windows and locked the doors, police said. The car crashed into the Sepulveda Pass hillside, a few hundred yards short of a gap in the fence at the edge of the road, which dropped off steeply into a canyon. California Highway Patrol officers found the smoldering car at 12:45 a.m. Police said the man, whose name was withheld, worked for Century City-based Teledyne.