Later testimony would reveal he was having an affair with Catalina Morain, a seamstress who lived at the Gomilas.

It was just a year since Spain reoccupied East Florida by treaty after twenty years of British occupation. Many of the occupation troops were married, but it was the behavior of the unmarried personnel that drew the attention of incoming Spanish Governor Vicente Manuel de Zespedes during the investigation.

It appeared to be a crime of passion. Catalina Morain was also having an affair with Distinguished Sergeant Juan Sivelly, a well-known young reprobate in the town. He'd been imprisoned six months earlier because of his publicly scandalous behavior with another woman. Yet another admirer was Corporal Francisco Moraga.

Depositions revealed that Sivelly had ordered Moraga to stop visiting Catalina, but Moraga heatedly insisted he would never stop. Of the several suitors, apparently Francisco Moraga had the most violent temper.

While Delaney clung to life, Catalina Morain, the central figure in the case, implicated two other soldiers of the garrison, who were immediately seized and imprisoned.

Shortly after the new-year, 1786, Lieutenant Delaney died. The assault became a far more serious murder case.

Governor Zespedes, unable to get legal assistance from Havana, was forced to reopen the investigation on his own. He had doubts about the imprisonment of the two suspects implicated by Catalina, and released them. Now the behavior of Catalina Morain and Francisco Moraga appeared increasingly suspicious.

Belying earlier testimony, Moraga admitted frequent visits to Catalina. Governor Zespedes decided he was at least guilty of perjury and that Catalina deserved punishment for incriminating two innocent men. He ordered them both imprisoned to await the judgment of superior authorities.

Governor Zespedes, facing other matters in the restored garrison, suspended his investigation in April, 1786, forwarding 176 pages of testimony from fifty-five witnesses to authorities in Mexico City.

In the spring of 1788, while a final decision in the Delaney case was pending in Spain's Supreme Council of War, a regular troop rotation relocated the Delaney prosecutor and witnesses over Zespedes' objections. Both Francisco Moraga and Catalina Morain remained in prison until the end of Zespedes' administration in July 1790.

The length of their sentences has not been discovered, and the trail of the Delaney murder case rests in unexplored archives.