Man Convicted of 1st-Degree Murder of Girlfriend, 16 : Court: Defendant told jurors that when she backed out of a suicide pact and wanted to break up with him, he went ‘insane.’

A 21-year-old grocery clerk was convicted of first-degree murder Thursday for killing his 16-year-old girlfriend during what he describes as a suicide pact that went awry when the girl backed out at the last minute.

But prosecutors contend that Richard Kenneth Nunno planned the killing because he was upset that Melissa Allyson Austin, a high school track and soccer player who talked of becoming a television producer, was trying to break up with him.

“The relationship was ending and he wasn’t going to let her go,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Clyde Vonderahe said.

An Orange County Superior Court jury agreed that Austin had been trying to break off the relationship when she was killed. Jury foreman Jack Rumfola said the evidence was “fairly clear-cut” in showing that Nunno had planned the shooting and that it was not a spur-of-the-moment act.

He said the decision to find Nunno guilty of first-degree murder--which carries a sentence of 25 years to life--was difficult to make in a case he described as “tragic all around for everyone involved.”

The jury’s verdict, which came after 2 1/2 days of deliberation, brought gasps and sobs from family and friends of Austin gathered in the courtroom. The trial started June 13, exactly one year from the day Austin was killed.

Her parents declined to talk outside the courtroom.

Members of Nunno’s family expressed shock.

“He’s not a cold-blooded murderer,” said his sister, Jill Nunno, 19. “It was more a crime of passion.”

Austin, a sophomore at Mission Viejo High School, was found shot to death in her parents’ car behind a Mission Viejo warehouse. Earlier, Nunno--whom her parents had forbidden her to see--was found miles away in his parents’ car with a critical, self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. He had called his mother earlier saying he was going to kill himself and left a suicide note expressing depression over the relationship.

Austin’s parents said they had tried for several months to get their daughter to end the relationship, worried that Nunno was obsessed with her.

But Nunno, of Anaheim, testified Monday that the two had agreed to a suicide pact June 13, 1993, and that they would rather die together than allow her parents to keep them apart.

Nunno told jurors that when Austin tried to back out of the suicide pact at the last minute and said she wanted to break up, he went “insane.” He said he shot her twice then turned the gun on himself, but it misfired. He then drove around and ended up in Laguna Beach, where he tried the gun again and shot himself in the chest several hours later.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Nunno told jurors, explaining that he was shocked by the rejection.

“Yeah, I shot her,” he continued, as Austin’s mother broke down in the audience, sobbing.

Nunno said he had been severely depressed over the relationship, and that the two--who had met at the Knott’s Berry Farm Halloween Haunt--had tried suicide together before, including wading into the ocean off Laguna Beach.

His lawyer, Deputy Public Defender E. Robert Goss Jr., said he was surprised by the verdict and asserted that the evidence supported something less than first-degree murder. He contended throughout the trial that Nunno basically “just exploded and shot her in the moment of passion.”

Nunno is scheduled to be sentenced July 15 before Judge Richard L. Weatherspoon. His lawyer said he expects Nunno will want to appeal the verdict.

Staff writer Rene Lynch contributed to this story.