Northern California tree worker returned to customers’ homes and killed them, jury finds

A worker on a Northern California tree crew returned to the homes of two customers and slashed their throats, a jury found.

Ryan Scott Blinston, 38, of Oroville, was found guilty Tuesday in Butte County of murdering three people in a two-week period: the two elderly women and an acquaintance of his whose body was found by a fisherman in the Feather

River.

He was also convicted of two counts of attempted first-degree murder, arson and resisting arrest, according to a press release Wednesday from Tehama County District Attorney Matt Rogers. He faces a mandatory term of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The crimes took place in late May and June of 2020.

On May 23, a family member of

Homer Severs, 91, called Tehama

County sheriff ’s deputies to report that the elderly man had turned up at their home with stab wounds and said he had been attacked by an intruder in his Los Molinos home. When the deputies went to that house, they found his wife — Loreen Severs, 88 — dead with a slashed throat.

Investigators learned that the couple had had work done at their home that week by a tree-trimming crew that included Blinston.

On June 4, Sandra George, 82, was found dead in her Oroville home, also with a slashed throat. That day, a treetrimming crew including Blinston had been working in her yard.

On June 6, Vicky Cline, 57, went missing after last being seen with

Blinston in downtown Oroville. That night, her car was found on fire; two weeks later, her body was found in the Feather River near Belden. Her throat had been slashed. Blood and DNA evidence from Blinston’s car was matched to Cline.

On June 14 — before Cline’s body was found — Butte County sheriff ’s deputies had gone to arrest Blinston for the car arson.

As they approached the Brush Creek property where Blinston was known to have been staying, they heard screaming and saw Blinston hitting a motor home with a hatchet. He ran into the woods and was captured after what a sheriff ’s report called “a brief but violent struggle.”

The motor home’s occupant, a 50-yearold man, had been slashed on the throat. He later told deputies Blinston had stabbed him while he was asleep but that he was able to push his attacker outside and lock the door.

He said Blinston had been staying in a tent on his property and had asked to sleep in the motor home that night because he was afraid of bears.

When the deputies fortuitously arrived, the older man had been in a fight for his life — trying to stanch the blood from the 6-inch cut on his throat while repelling Blinston’s attempts to break back in, using rocks and the hatchet. There was no mobile phone service at the remote property.

The attempted murder charges pertain to the Brushy Creek victim and Homer Severs, who died in December 2020 of unrelated causes.

The cases from Butte and Tehama counties were combined to be heard by the Butte County jury. The trial began May 2 before Judge Core Caraway.

Butte County deputy district dttorneys Niels Bringsjord and Mark Emmons called 35 witnesses to testify against Blinston, including experts in DNA and cellphone GPS technology. The tree-trimming company that employed Blinston was cooperative in the investigation and prosecution.

The defendant himself did not testify. He had spent two terms in California prison for driving a stolen car, possessing stolen items and fleeing the California Highway Patrol, and also had a history of methamphetamine use. He’d been out of jail for several years at the time of the murders.

There was no indication that robbery was the motive for the killings.