Deaf Man Sentenced to Life for Killing Girlfriend, Her Mother : Crime: He weeps and apologizes to family for ‘horrible’ murders in Santa Ana home. Victim sought to end their relationship.

A deaf man convicted of murdering his deaf girlfriend and her mother was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole after telling the victims’ family that he is sorry for his “horrible” actions.

Ronald James Blaney Jr., 35, who needed a sign interpreter during the hearing, wept when confronted with comments from the victims’ family and his own parents.

“You murdered and mutilated the two remaining members of my family,” said Gregory Vinci, 44, of Sacramento, who is the brother of Blaney’s girlfriend and the son of her mother. “For that there is no forgiveness. . . . It is a horror that we will have to live with for the rest of our lives.

“I know these words are wasted, because evil has no conscience.”

Blaney, of Fountain Valley, was convicted in 1989 of first-degree murder for stabbing his girlfriend, Priscilla Vinci, 24 times at the Santa Ana home she shared with her mother, Josephine Vinci, 66, whom Blaney stabbed 18 times.

After killing them, Blaney went home, threw away his bloodied clothes and drove to his mother’s home in Arizona. He was arrested there the next day.

He apparently told his family that he attacked the victims because his 33-year-old girlfriend wanted to end their relationship, and he wanted to marry her.

Blaney was also found guilty of special circumstances in the May, 1987, killings: multiple murder and torture in the death of Priscilla Vinci; she suffered stab wounds to her eyes.

The five years spent in court have scarred the family, Gregory Vinci said.

Nonetheless, “we feel justice (is) being served, even though it has taken so long,” he said.

After Vinci was finished, Blaney’s mother addressed the courtroom with tears running down her face.

“We love you, Ronald,” Dawn Covault said. “I was going to say that last, but I had to say it first.”

Looking at Gregory Vinci, she wept more and apologized for the tragedy her son had committed, saying she had a “great deal of sorrow” for the victims’ family.

When she returned to her seat, she and Gregory Vinci embraced.

Ronald Blaney Sr. also said he felt “a lot of remorse, but there is nothing I can do to bring them back.”

He turned to Vinci and said, “And to Greg Vinci, I’m very sorry.”

The younger Blaney also made a statement to the court, read by his attorney, before Orange County Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan pronounced sentence.

“I know my girlfriend Priscilla and I had some problems with our relationship before what happened,” Blaney wrote in his letter. “I never thought about killing Priscilla and her mom. I couldn’t remember at almost all what happen. I was doing to them . . . Yes it was a real horrible . . . I love them so much, no matter what I had done.”

The jury that convicted Blaney of the murders also deadlocked on the issue of whether he was sane at the time. During the sanity phase, Blaney’s attorney presented evidence that his client suffered congenital brain defects because his mother had rubella when he was born and that he is emotionally unstable, as well.

Blaney’s brain essentially overloaded and he could not control his violence, defense witnesses testified.

Because of the jury’s deadlock, a second trial was scheduled to decide the sanity issue. But in January, Blaney agreed to drop his insanity plea when Judge Ryan agreed to recommend that Blaney be sent to the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo, where other deaf and hearing-impaired inmates are housed. There is also a medical facility there where Blaney can be treated for epilepsy.

Deputy Public Defender James S. Egar said the agreement was the only way to ensure that Blaney was sent to that facility and not to a mainstream prison, where he would be virtually isolated because he is deaf.

As at the trial, the sentencing attracted the attention of the county deaf community, with more than a dozen members occupying the first two rows of the courtroom’s spectator section.

“I hope he gets humane treatment,” Egar said. “This was a very tragic case all the way around.”