Investigators Say Carasi, Girlfriend Planned Slayings

Sheriff’s investigators said Thursday they now believe that Paul Carasi and his girlfriend Donna Kay Lee plotted to kill Carasi’s mother and ex-girlfriend at Universal CityWalk on Mother’s Day and that evidence against Carasi includes a victim’s blood on his clothes.

“It’s our belief now that there was some pre-planning and collusion involved,” Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Robinson said.

Carasi, who had been arrested and released earlier, was re-arrested Wednesday in part because “there was blood on Paul’s clothing that conflicted with his story,” Robinson said. “It was in a place that it shouldn’t have been, and it showed that he was more of a combatant than a victim.”

Carasi, 30, and Lee, 44, have been charged in the knife slaying of his mother, Doris Carasi, 61, and his former girlfriend, Sonia Salinas, 29, who were found with their throats cut May 14 atop a CityWalk parking garage.

Just moments after the women were discovered, witnesses said they found Carasi’s 2-year-old son by Salinas strapped in a child seat in Carasi’s car, according to a crime report filed by sheriff’s deputies in Los Angeles Municipal Court. The little boy was screaming “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” as he pointed out the car window to where the bodies lay in pools of blood, the report said.

Carasi told CityWalk guards that he, his mother and Salinas were attacked as they returned to their car after a Mother’s Day dinner at the Country Star restaurant on the amusement park’s promenade.