Parents of Mother’s Day Slaying Victim Tell Court of Loss

For months after her daughter’s stabbing death, Elba Salinas was terrified to answer the door or telephone, fearing the killers would return to take her 2-year-old grandson from her, she testified.

Her grandson Michael suffered from fever, vomiting and diarrhea and refused to eat or sleep, crying out inconsolably in the night: “Mommy! “Mommy!”

Salinas testified Friday in Santa Monica Superior Court in the penalty phase of the trial of Paul Carasi and Donna Kay Lee, who have already been found guilty of murdering Salinas’ daughter Sonia.

Her family’s lives were shattered by the killing, she said.

Carasi and his lover Lee were convicted Tuesday of killing Sonia Salinas, Carasi’s former girlfriend, over child support payments for Michael. Also killed in the stabbing attack after a Mother’s Day luncheon at Universal CityWalk in 1995 was Carasi’s mother, Doris Carasi.

On Tuesday, a six-man, six-woman jury found that the couple not only murdered the two women, but that they also ambushed them and were motivated by money--special circumstances that carry possible death penalties.

On Friday, a pale Paul Carasi sat with eyes downcast during the penalty phase of the trial presided over by Judge Leslie Light. With Lee seated nearby, he shifted nervously in his chair when Salinas’ mother began to sob as she read a prepared statement in Spanish.

“Those killers also assassinated me because I feel like the living dead,” said the diminutive black-clad woman, her face streaked with tears.

“There are no more happy holidays for me,” said Salinas, who has been caring for her grandson for the last three years. “We celebrate holidays by going to the cemetery and bringing her roses.

“When I go to the store, my grandson asks me to buy flowers for his mommy, Sonia,” she said.

Family and friends of the dead woman punctuated the mother’s testimony with their sobs and a female jury member wiped her eyes.

Defense witnesses for Lee are scheduled to testify on Monday.