Jury Convicts Deaf Man of Murder With Torture

A young deaf man with a history of psychological problems was convicted Tuesday of murder with torture in the stabbing death of his ex-girlfriend and of the murder of her mother at their Santa Ana home two years ago.

The jurors, who had deliberated five days at the four-month trial in Santa Ana, must now decide whether 32-year-old Ronald James Blaney Jr. of Fountain Valley was sane at the time of the killings. A hearing is scheduled to begin before Superior Court Judge Leonard H. McBride next Tuesday.

If found sane, Blaney would face an automatic sentence of life without parole because of the jury findings of torture and multiple murder. Prosecutors had accused Blaney of torture only in the younger woman’s death. They claimed that he had inflicted special punishment on her for rejecting him.

Blaney, whose eyes were concentrated on the sign-language interpreter, stood stoically when the verdicts were read. He blinked nervously when he learned the results.

His attorney, Deputy Public Defender James S. Egar, said Blaney “is frightened and confused. He is devastated.”

Blaney has admitted that he was responsible for the May 4, 1987, stabbing deaths of Priscilla Vinci, 33, and her mother, Josephine Vinci, 65, who were found on the kitchen floor of the home they shared.

Blood splatters in several rooms and defensive wounds on the women’s hands showed that they had struggled for their lives, with Priscilla once making it to the door before her death. She was found with multiple stab wounds to her face and wounds to her back. Prosecutors say Blaney stabbed her in the back as she lay on the floor clutching a throw rug to her chest to protect herself.

The women were stabbed more than a dozen times each with three different instruments: a carving knife, a smaller kitchen knife and a fondue pick.

Afterwards, Blaney has admitted, he took a shower in the victims’ home and changed his bloody clothes. He also took money from them and their house keys.

The defense argued that Blaney suffered an epileptic seizure inside the house, leaving him unconscious of what he was doing.

Blaney did not testify, but family and friends told jurors that he was distraught that Priscilla Vinci, who was also deaf, wanted to cool their relationship to just a friendship. At the same time, his father testified, Blaney also had lost his job with an accounting group and was upset because he felt that his deafness limited his chances to make enough money to provide for a family.

Egar also presented testimony that Blaney suffered from rubella at birth, leaving him mentally impaired as well as deaf, and that he suffered from emotional problems most of his life.

Blaney’s mother, Dawn, broke down when she heard the clerk read the jury’s finding of torture.

“I’ve never had a case which touched so many lives,” Egar said. “This is a tragic case for the Vinci family and for the Blaney family.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert H. Gannon, who was in another court Tuesday morning and did not hear the verdicts read, had argued that Blaney went to the Vinci home knowing that he was going to kill both women.

“If he couldn’t have Priscilla, nobody could have her; and Josephine Vinci wasn’t going to stop him,” Gannon had said. “He wanted to inflict upon Priscilla the ultimate price . . . extreme, cruel, prolonged physical pain.”

The special circumstances findings could have qualified Blaney for the death penalty. But prosecutors chose before the trial not to seek the punishment. They said they based the decision on Blaney’s lack of a criminal record and their belief that jurors would not send a deaf man to the gas chamber. Testimony showed that Priscilla Vinci had tried to break off the relationship for several months, but Blaney had resisted. In one argument, Blaney struck Priscilla, chipping a tooth. The Vinci family had asked him to stay away from their home.

The day of the killings, Blaney had told the young woman, communicating through telephonic equipment for the deaf: “I’m sorry, but you will suffer more from your problems because you won’t resolve them.”

Blaney drove to his mother’s home in Arizona after the slayings and immediately confessed to his family. He was arrested the next day and has remained in custody at the Orange County Jail since.