Man who slashed throat of prostitute gets two life terms

Kim Smith

Friday, Oct. 20, 2000 | 10:05 a.m.

A Las Vegas man convicted in the brutal throat-slashing of a prostitute was sentenced to two life terms Thursday.

District Judge Joseph Bonaventure could have sentenced Ronald Collins to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but instead delivered a sentence that could allow him to be released in 40 years.

Collins' wife, Melanie, found Collins passed out on their kitchen floor Jan. 11 near the naked and bloody body of Agnes Ready. Her throat had been slashed.

Collins, 31, unsuccessfully tried to convince jurors in September that he killed Ready in self-defense after he was hit on the head by an unknown person and Ready lunged at him.

Collins said he had picked Ready up earlier in the evening because he wanted someone to talk to. He doesn't remember taking her home or cleaning up the blood trail left throughout his house, perhaps because of a brain injury he suffered years earlier after falling off a roof, he said.

Prosecutors alleged Collins took a handful of knives and went looking for prey the evening of Jan. 10 after arguing with his wife. They said he killed Ready in his own driveway and was in the process of wrapping her body in plastic when he passed out.

On Thursday Chief Deputy District Attorney Ed Kane said Collins deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison for a number of reasons.

Besides the nature of the killing, Kane said Collins' history merits a no-parole life term. In addition to having been arrested 24 times as an adult, police responded at least twice to the Collins house on domestic violence calls.

Kane said that although Melanie Collins later recanted her story, she told police in May 1997 that Collins raped and sodomized her, broke her nose and threatened her with a knife.

Then, three months before Ready's murder, Melanie Collins again reported being beaten up, Kane said. She quoted her husband as saying "Melanie, one of these days you're going to make me kill you."

Some believe the true test of a government or a court system is how it treats the poor, the people who are "nobodies," Kane said. Ready was just such a person.

Had it not been for fingerprint records, no one would have been able to identify her and no one outside of prosecutors were at the trial to represent her, Kane said.

Nonetheless, "she was a human being who deserved to live," Kane said.

Collins took her life "for no better reason than he was in a bad mood and had had a fight with his wife ... and she was smart enough to leave, to get out of harm's way," Kane said.

In arguing for life with the possibility of parole, Deputy Special Public Defender Joe Sciscento said neither he nor Collins' family believes that Ready died the way Kane portrayed it.

Sciscento said that if Collins were sent to prison for the rest of his life, one might say the government failed him because he obviously has a brain injury.

Sciscento reminded Bonaventure that if he gave Collins life with parole possible, he would be 71 before he could get out. At that point, he said, he'd have more "brains than energy."

Collins ended up in prison at 21 because he had more "energy than brains" back then, Sciscento said.

Bonaventure sentenced Collins after reading portions of letters written by Collins' friends and family members, who sobbed throughout. All described him as a loving, hard-working man.

Bonaventure also heard from Collins, who spent a few minutes complaining about his treatment at the Clark County Detention Center before saying he regretted Ready's death.

Collins also said he stood by what he said at trial.