Police informant convicted of murder based on his own statements

An Elk Grove man who accidentally implicated himself in a cold case homicide when he believed he was helping police identify the killer has been convicted of murder.

Paea Tasini, 46, was convicted of murdering 22-year-old Danny Guyse Jr. in 2000, in Pittsburg, and attempting to murder another man in a shooting several months prior. The prosecution's best evidence at trial was videos of Tasini's own statements to police, in which he placed himself at the scene of both shootings and essentially confessed to ordering Guyse's murder.

Guyse was shot and killed Sept. 27, 2000, as he sat in a brown Datsun vehicle in Pittsburg. Prosecutors say Tasini and two other men were driving by and spotted him. Tasini is not believed to be the shooter, but allegedly told the shooter to get out of the car and execute Guyse.

The motive, according to prosecutors, had to do with Guyse allegedly insulting the shooter and being friends with members of a drug ring that was feuding with the occupants of the Mustang.

The case remained unsolved until 2019, when a Pittsburg police cold case investigator realized Tasini had given a prior statement that investigators hadn't recorded. So he went up to Elk

Grove and interviewed Tasini, who gave authorities a blow-by-blow account of the killing. Tasini also admitted to shooting and wounding a man who'd thrown rocks at his car in Pittsburg eight months earlier, and said that he scolded the man who later killed Guyse for not also firing at the rock throwers.

During trial, Tasini's lawyer argued that Tasini had no idea that Guyse was to be fatally shot, and that he believed the rock throwers had actually been firing shots.

Jurors convicted Tasini after asking Judge Mary Ann O'Malley for clarity on whether state law allows people to be convicted of murder even if they didn't personally kill the victim.