Catherine Pileggi claimed that Ron Vinci abused her before her death

He was stabbed seven times in the neck. Five times in the chest. He was hit with a baseball bat. He also had a gunshot wound to the left side of his head.

“Whoever killed Ronald Vinci wanted to make sure he would never get up again,” said Rafael Olmeda, a journalist for South Florida Sun SentinelAt CaughtAirs Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen.

When the police finally managed to persuade Vinci’s girlfriend Catherine Pileggi to talk, she did not tell them about anger or jealousy, but about abuse and self-defense.

“It was over the top,” said William DeJesus, a former Fort Lauderdale police detective, on Caught“And every time we go to a crime scene and see that the injuries sustained are exaggerated, we know that this is a personal matter.”

Personally – because Pileggi claimed it was a matter of life and death on the night of June 27, 2011, in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, mansion she shared with her boyfriend. Her lawyers argued that she suffered from battered wife syndrome and that Vinci’s murder had been planned for years. But did a jury believe the same story?

How did Ronald Vinci die in his villa in Florida?

On June 28, 2011, a man called 911 and reported an accident at the home of his friend Ronald Vinci. He told emergency responders that someone had fallen down the stairs and died.

But when the police arrived at the villa, the body was not at the foot of the stairs, but in sleeping bags, sheets and towels.

“His body looked like a big pile of dirty laundry lying to the right of the bed,” DeJesus said. “When they saw that, they said, ‘Holy cow! We have a problem here.'”

Vinci, 70, lived in the house with his girlfriend Catherine Pileggi. The couple were 16 years his junior and had been together (on and off) for nearly two decades.

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“Cathy was a very good-looking, beautiful woman,” said Tom Gonzales, Vinci’s friend, on Caught. “I think she was kind of a model girlfriend. You know, ‘My girlfriend is a stewardess and a hottie.'”

Vinci lived a lavish lifestyle and owned yachts and motorcycles as well as several vehicles.

“He bought a two-story house in one of the wealthiest and most upscale neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale,” Olmeda said. “He shared it with Catherine.”

But just two weeks after moving into the villa, Vinci was dead.

Police initially spoke to Spencer Gordon – Vinci’s boyfriend – and the man who called 911 to report his death. Gordon said he was alerted to the death by a handyman named Reynaldo Silva who worked for Vinci.

“I spoke to Cathy,” Gordon told police in an interview. “She seemed as normal as ever.”

After Vinci’s body was found in the bedroom, he told police he confronted Pileggi about the incident and she said he fell down the stairs around 1 a.m.

“I said, ‘What did you do?’ She just stared at me. She didn’t say anything,” Gordon told police.

Finally, Gordon claimed that Pileggi told him she shot Vinci after an argument and asked him not to call the police, but he did so anyway.

Officers also spoke to Silva to find out what happened. He told police that Pileggi called him from Vinci’s phone at 1 a.m. and told him to rent a truck for the next day. When Silva called Vinci’s phone the next morning, Pileggi answered and told Silva to come to the house.

“He fell down the stairs,” Silva said on Caught. “Then she goes to me and says: ‘Ron (must) – he (wants) to be buried in the sea.'”

Silva claimed that Pileggi asked him to throw Vinci’s body into the sea and then led him into the bedroom to see the body, then called Gordon for help.

“I didn’t call the police because I was afraid… afraid of not being understood because I know my English is bad,” Silva said.

The evidence in Vinci’s house was incriminating for Pileggi. Police discovered that shortly before his death, Pileggi had purchased a large container and diving weights, which can be used to weigh down objects in the water.

“That was a warning sign because if she had planned that in advance, it would have been an indication of premeditated murder,” said prosecutor Brian Cavanagh at Caught.

Police also found several plastic bags in Vinci’s Bentley containing a gun, a blood-stained knife and a hammer. The fingerprints on the gun matched those of Pileggi. At the bottom of the stairs leading to the first-floor bedroom, there were traces of Vinci’s blood – and evidence that the blood had been wiped away.

When police spoke to family and friends, it became clear that the couple argued often and were even close to ending their relationship.

“I knew Ron was drinking a little too much, and I think that caused a fight between the two of them,” Gonzales said. “He just drank. He got very boisterous. He would bump into people or be obnoxious. And I think he was a little too obnoxious with Cathy from time to time.”

On July 5, 2011, Pileggi was arrested and charged with premeditated murder.

What defense did Catherine Pileggi offer for the murder of her friend Ronald Vinci?

Although she initially refused to speak to police, months later Pileggi was examined by a forensic psychologist, to whom she confessed to killing Vinci in self-defense – after years of domestic violence.

“She said he had two personalities,” DeJesus said. “She said he’d be as nice as ever and then in the blink of an eye he could do a flip. Become the meanest person in the world.”

Pileggi claimed that Vinci not only drank excessively, but also took various other medications that also affected his mood and personality.

Pileggi described to the psychologist what happened after an argument at the top of the stairs on the night of June 27, 2011.

“We only know this from her words. He held a gun to her face,” said Bruce Udolf, Pileggi’s defense attorney, on Caught“He was so drunk and dazed from all the drugs he had taken that he fell backwards, fell and hit his head on the bottom of the stairs.”

Pileggi claimed she wiped up the blood and dragged him on a carpet into the bedroom.

“She sees the gun,” Udolf said. “She sees that the magazine is half empty and the gun is jammed, and she realizes, ‘Oh, this time he really meant it. He really wanted to kill me.’ And then she takes the gun, goes into the bedroom and sees him lying there.”

Pileggi further described how she took the gun and shot her lover.

“She says, ‘The next thing I remember is standing over Ron and he’s lying dead in the bed. And I have a knife in my hand.’ She said, ‘I don’t remember what happened, but I know I must have killed him.'”

Although there were no police records of domestic violence in the house, the captain of one of Ron’s yachts confirmed that the two often came to blows and that he had seen Vinci shove Pileggi in anger.

“He said he witnessed significant physical abuse,” Udolf said. “He’s one of the few people who actually witnessed it in real time. Ron also pointed a gun at her on another occasion.”

The forensic psychologist who examined Catherine Pileggi testified at her trial in November 2014 that she was convinced that Pileggi had developed battered woman syndrome.

“She believed she was in danger,” said Dr. Lenore Walker on Caught“That he couldn’t control himself anymore. And that he was going to kill her. And that’s what made her actually take his life.”

A jury found Pileggi guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced her to 25 years in prison. She is scheduled to be released from prison in 2033 at the age of 77.

“She had no criminal history and there was a moment where she snapped,” Cavanagh said. “Literally snapped. And had this out-of-body experience. No matter how you look at it, it’s a disturbing case.”

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