Man Found Guilty of Stomping Aunt to Death : Crime: Taped confession leads to conviction. Jury must now decide whether San Fernando resident was legally sane when he killed the 80-year-old woman. If so, he faces 25 years to life in prison.

For three or four years, Paul Robert Runnion thought about killing his aunt, Marietta Donnelly, he told police.

On Oct. 21, 1993, he finally did, shouting “Leave, leave my world!” as he stomped on the 80-year-old San Fernando woman’s chest, according to Runnion’s tape-recorded confession to police.

Asked why he did it, Runnion explained: “Guys lose their heads sometimes.”

A tape-recording of Runnion’s chilling confession, played to a San Fernando Superior Court jury, led jurors to convict Runnion, 38, of first degree murder Wednesday.

Runnion, an unemployed truck driver, shared a house in the 2000 block of Phillippi Street with Donnelly, a frail, nearly blind former nurse who had taken care of him for most of his life.

“He took everything from her,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Edwin F. Greene said in an interview, summarizing what he told the jury. “All his life he took food from her. He took shelter from her. He took care from her. Finally, he took it all from her. He took her life.”

According to testimony by mental health experts, Runnion had come to view Donelly as his tormentor. He told psychiatrists who evaluated him that she was a witch. He said she treated him like a prisoner, and he feared she was going to kill him, the doctors testified.

The jury is scheduled to return to Judge Candace J. Beason’s courtroom today to determine whether Runnion was legally insane at the time of the murder. Deputy Public Defender Rose Fe Reglos asserts that her client was psychotic, and therefore not criminally responsible for his actions.

If the jury finds Runnion legally sane--that he knew killing Donelly was wrong and understood what he was doing--he faces 25 years to life in prison. If the jury finds that he was insane, he would be sent to a state mental hospital until he is determined by doctors to be sane.

But Greene said Runnion’s confession, given the morning he killed his aunt, shows that he was calm and rational just two hours after the slaying.

Runnion told San Fernando police Detective Michael Langston that he was happy about his aunt’s death.

“I wanted to try to kill her with my mind, but it didn’t work,” he said. “I was just trying to stare into her eyes and get her so upset she would have a heart attack, but it just wouldn’t work.”

Finally, the 5-foot-11, 195-pound Runnion said, he “just went berserk,” knocked down the 5-foot-8, 110-pound Donnelly and bounced on her chest with his knees as she gasped “Help me, help me.”

“She was gasping . . . and I kept telling her to leave, leave my world, you know,” he said.

A few minutes later, Runnion said, he returned to the dining room and stomped Donnelly again until he heard bones crack.

Runnion was drinking coffee with a neighbor and feigned surprise when police told him that his aunt had died, Greene said. Runnion admitted killing his aunt after officers confronted him with inconsistencies in his story about his activities that morning, Greene said.