Expert Reconstructs Scene in Slayings at CityWalk Garage

Almost as effectively as a witness, bloodstains and torn fabric tell where and by whom Doris Carasi and Sonia Salinas were murdered in 1995, a crime scene expert told a jury Tuesday.

By all indications, the attack began in a blue Chevy Caprice belonging to Paul Carasi, son of one victim and father of the other’s child, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department senior criminalist Elizabeth Devine, the final witness in the prosecution’s capital murder case against Carasi and his lover, Donna Lee.

It was a fitting end Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court in Santa Monica for the prosecution of a crime alleged to have been inspired by the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Carasi’s car was parked at Universal CityWalk, where Paul Carasi had taken the two women and his son, Michael, for a Mother’s Day dinner.

Prosecutor say his intent was not to celebrate, but to lure the women there so he and Lee could kill them for financial gain.

After dinner, authorities said the group walked up to the car on the fifth floor of the parking lot.

Salinas was sitting in the front passenger’s seat when she was stabbed, creeping toward, then out the driver’s door--but not soon enough to avoid a blade that likely slashed her left side and cut into the seat, Devine said.

As Salinas was being stabbed, Devine said, Doris Carasi was attacked by a second person near or on the back seat, bleeding into the car.

“If there’s one assailant and the attack occurred on Mrs. Carasi initially, then Ms. Salinas could have gotten out of the car and fled,” Devine testified. “Because of that and because the attacks occurred on the same side of the vehicle, I think that there were two assailants that attacked those women at about the same time.”

Devine said the women were outside the car when their throats were slit, their major arteries and veins cut open.

Contradicting Paul Carasi’s statement to police that he, his mother and ex-girlfriend were attacked by muggers who held him down as they killed the two women and fled with their wallets, Devine said Salinas was very much alive when she grabbed at Carasi’s shirt with a bleeding left hand.

And the attack was far from over. After she left her palm print on his shirt, Devine said Salinas was further hacked.

She bled onto the front and cuffs of Carasi’s shirt, her blood dripped onto his shoulder as his jacket was pulled partially off and as he raised his arm, tiny droplets of her blood sprayed onto his jacket and shirt, showing blunt force, Devine said.

Doris Carasi also left blood behind, on the knee of Lee’s jeans, a troublesome fact for Lee’s defense theory.

Lee’s lawyer claimed in his opening statements that she was not a murderess but a third victim. He said she was sulking in her car after being stood up by Paul Carasi, who had promised to meet her after dinner, when an unknown attacker reached in and slashed open her stomach. She managed to drive to a highway call box to summon help, he said.

But Devine said Lee left a blood mark on Salinas’ left sneaker that would be possible only if the shoe had been up against her slashed abdomen or clothing pressed against the wound.

Devine said her reconstruction of events comes from examining physical evidence, the condition of the victims and alleged killers and the size and appearance of blood at the scene and on clothing.

In some cases, she said her conclusions were the “most reasonable explanation” based on the evidence. In others, such as the blood patterns on Salinas’ shoe and Paul Carasi’s clothing, she said the stains could be left only in the manner she described.

Prosecutors say the motive for the slaying was an increasingly antagonistic relationship between the defendants and Salinas and Doris Carasi, who sided with the mother of her grandchild.

Paul Carasi and Salinas met at the Bank of America check-processing center in downtown Los Angeles, where they both worked and eventually had a son together. He later left her for Lee, who he also met at work.

Tensions escalated when Salinas garnisheed $375 each month from Paul Carasi’s wages for child support, making an already difficult financial situation “an impossible one,” prosecutors said. The monthly payment on his $50,000 credit card debt was $2,500, which he could not meet with a take-home pay shy of $1,000 a month.

Prosecutors say Carasi told his co-workers that he wished Salinas were dead and that he’d “get her one day.”

Carasi and Lee fashioned their plan on the Simpson/Goldman murders, prosecutors said, planning the attack in the secluded garage, then claiming they were attacked by bandits.

But the plan fell apart when Salinas fought back and Lee was slashed in the stomach, prosecutors say, alleging that as she was trying to ditch the evidence--including the murder weapon--over an embankment on the Hollywood Freeway, Lee locked herself out of her car.

As she bled from the wound, which was deep enough to expose her intestines, Lee walked to a call box and summoned help. She told authorities she’d been attacked by robbers.

But the California Highway Patrol officers who came to her aid found the bloody evidence, prosecutors said, including Salinas’ fanny pack and the weapon. Inside Lee’s car, they found bloody plastic bags, a Universal Citywalk parking stub for that night and a Thomas Guide marked at the page showing how to get to the dining and shopping complex.

Cross-examination of crime-scene testimony will come today. Then defense lawyers will call witnesses.

Rather than working in concert, the defense lawyers have been at odds, with Lee’s attorney saying that a key point in his defense will be to show that Paul Carasi, alone, had the motive. He has also filed documents indicating he will allege his client is a victim of battered women’s syndrome.

Carasi’s lawyer has given no indication what his defense will be.