Pair Convicted in 2 Universal City Slayings

For nearly three months, Jose Antonio Salinas sat in a Santa Monica courtroom, keeping a vigil for justice for his slain daughter, Sonia.

He listened as prosecutors explained how Paul Carasi and his lover, Donna Kay Lee, killed Carasi’s mother and Sonia Salinas--Carasi’s ex-girlfriend--over child support payments after a Mothers Day luncheon at Universal CityWalk. He listened as defense lawyers argued that Lee was a third victim in the attack, not an assailant.

“You never know with juries,” the father said, but he said he knew the two were guilty.

On Monday afternoon, a jury confirmed that verdict after nearly four days of deliberation. Many of Sonia Salinas’ relatives, friends and co-workers were in the courtroom to hear their decision.

The jury found not only that the couple murdered Carasi’s mother and ex-girlfriend, but also that they ambushed the women in a plot motivated by money--special circumstances that carry possible death penalties.

Lee bowed her head slightly and quietly sobbed as a clerk read the verdicts in the double homicide trial.

When the jury was excused, an explosion of emotion filled Superior Court Judge Leslie Light’s courtroom. Salinas’ parents could barely get single words out through their sobs.

Lee’s daughter was quietly escorted away by a woman and a man quietly slipped away.

Among Salinas’ family, hugs and kisses continued into the hallway.

“I am so very happy,” Jose Antonio Salinas said when he finally caught his breath.

He, his ex-wife and their two remaining daughters have already written out the pleas for the death penalty they will make to the jury during the penalty phase of the case, which will begin Wednesday. “These are the first people I have ever wanted dead in my life,” Salinas said. “But what they did was savage.”

Carasi, struggling with a $50,000 credit card debt that required minimum monthly payments that exceeded his salary, decided to kill Sonia Salinas after she garnished his wages for child support for their son, now 5. His mother, Doris Carasi, apparently sided with the woman, prosecutors said.

After a Mother’s Day dinner at the Country Star Restaurant at Universal CityWalk, prosecutors said, Carasi led the women back to the parking lot, where Lee was waiting and the two were knifed to death.

Salinas put up a fight, prosecutors said, and Lee was slashed in the stomach during the struggle.

Bleeding, she drove to the Hollywood Freeway and dumped evidence off a highway embankment. Then she realized she had locked her keys in her car. She called for help from an emergency call box and said she had been stabbed by a gang during a robbery.

Back at the parking structure, Carasi called for help, telling police that he and the women had been attacked by thieves who held him down as they killed the women.

His lawyer stuck to that story during the trial, arguing that Carasi was covered in blood when he went to help his dying mother and ex-girlfriend, then wiped his bloody hands on his pants.

Public defender Ralph Courtney told jurors that investigators bungled the case by not collecting some blood evidence at the scene that might have absolved his client. He did not call a single witness in Carasi’s defense.

Lee took the stand in the trial, which began in January, saying she was not a killer but a third victim who was stabbed as she sat in her car waiting for Carasi. She testified that she could not remember who stabbed her. Her lawyer, Henry Hall, said the memory loss was a product of years of abuse by the men in her life.

But jurors were swayed by a mountain of physical evidence presented by prosecutors.

Prosecutors were clearly elated by the victory, hugging Salinas’ relatives. But they declined comment.

Light has prohibited comments from lawyers, investigators and jurors until the end of the penalty phase.