A woman charged with murdering her millionaire boyfriend inside his Fort Lauderdale mansion was found guilty of second-degree murder Wednesday.
Catherine Marie Pileggi was charged with first-degree murder in the June 2011 killing of 70-year-old Ronald Vinci.
Vinci's body was discovered in the first floor bedroom of his recently purchased Tarpon Bend mansion. The night before, Vinci spent the evening with some friends and Pileggi, his live-in girlfriend of more than 20 years, police said.
Police say Pileggi shot Vinci in the head, stabbed him several times in the chest and slit his throat. She then wrapped his body in plastic bags and planned to dump it in a body of water, according to a police report.
Pileggi initially told friends he had fallen down the stairs after the couple had a heated argument, the report stated. Pileggi allegedly told handyman Reynaldo Silva that Vinci's dying wish was to be "buried at sea" and so she needed help loading the body onto the couple's boat. Silva refused and called police.
Pileggi also allegedly came clean to several of Vinci's friends and stated she had "messed him up bad" and that he was shot in the head, the report said.
An autopsy report of Vinci's body showed even more damage than the gunshot wound. Vinci was beaten over the head with a blunt object, stabbed in the chest and suffered a large laceration to the throat, a Broward medical Examiner's Office report stated.
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Police said they found the bloody knife and clothes in a Bentley and a semi-automatic handgun with Pileggi's fingerprints on it.
