Arizona Warrant Charges Suspect With Murder in 2 Women’s Deaths

A data processor was charged in an arrest warrant issued in Arizona Wednesday with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his former sweetheart and her mother in their Santa Ana home.

Ronald James Blaney Jr., 30, of Fountain Valley was apprehended Tuesday morning at his mother’s home in Chino Valley, a small farm town 12 miles north of Prescott, Ariz., authorities said. In a brief appearance before a magistrate in Prescott Wednesday morning, Blaney refused to waive his extradition rights and was returned to jail, where he was being held without bail pending another extradition hearing this morning, said Yavapai County Sheriff’s Capt. Robert Carson. Because it could take two weeks for the proceedings that would allow his extradition to California for trial, Arizona authorities needed an arrest warrant to continue to hold Blaney.

Carson said Blaney, who is deaf and does not speak, was accompanied in court by an interpreter his family hired.

An attorney Blaney’s family hired to represent him during the extradition proceedings could not be reached for comment.

Blaney, who also suffers from epilepsy and spinal meningitis, was examined by the jail medical staff Wednesday and spent the remainder of the day working crossword puzzles, authorities said. Carson said Blaney also asked to see a jail chaplain who knows sign language, a request that was granted.

Blaney is accused of slaying Priscilla Vinci, 33, and her mother, Josephine Vinci, 65, with a butcher knife at their home Monday night.

Little Known About Suspect

Three Santa Ana Police Department officers, one of them fluent in sign language, had driven to Chino Valley Tuesday to question Blaney, according to Chino Valley Chief of Police Joe Amore. Amore said he arrested Blaney about 11 a.m. at the home of Blaney’s mother and remained there with him until Santa Ana officers arrived at 5:45 p.m.

Those speaking for the Santa Ana Police Department said they knew very little about Blaney.

However, Amore and Carson provided some information about him.

Amore said that Blaney drove to his mother’s home, arriving there at 4 a.m. Tuesday. She may have have been expecting him, Amore said, as she had received a phone call from Ronald Blaney Sr. in California, who apparently had heard from his son. Amore would not say when that might have been or where the father lives.

The younger Blaney was getting out of the shower at his mother’s home when Amore arrived, and “he didn’t seem surprised to see me at all,” the police chief said.

Blaney’s mother, whom Amore would not identify, was not pleased with investigators’ “harassing her son,” Amore said. She is a 10-year Chino Valley resident who works at a local convalescent care home.

“She doesn’t know about anything specific that went on in Santa Ana,” said Amore, a retired Los Angeles Police Department narcotics investigator. He said the mother and son communicate by sign language.

Police have not given any motive for the slayings.

Neighbors of the women said Josephine Vinci, who was widowed in December, had told them that Blaney hit Priscilla, who also is deaf, last week and that her daughter ended the romance.

Priscilla Vinci had worked at a credit reporting firm in Orange and studied computer science at Rancho Santiago College, according to a specialist in the campus hearing-impaired program. He said Vinci also had been president of the Southern California Recreation Assn. of the Deaf, a local chapter of the World Recreation Assn. of the Deaf.

Police did not know where Blaney worked as a data processor.