NYC college student Jared Eng gets 22 years in prison for murdering his mother and dumping her body in N.J.
A Manhattan college student who murdered his mother and dumped her body in the trash to get his hands on her money, will spend 22 years in prison for the crime.
Jared Eng, 25, took responsibility on Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court, for killing his mother Paula Chin three years ago.
Chin, 65, was found in a garbage bin near one of her homes in suburban Morristown, N.J. home after Eng reported her missing on Feb. 4, 2019.
Investigators recovered a pair of blood-stained rubber gloves and duct tape inside her other home on Vestry St. in lower Manhattan, where she was stabbed and cracked in the head multiple times, authorities said.
Eng told Judge Maxwell Wiley that he was at rock bottom when he committed the “evil and terrible and horrific,” crime and said he still has nightmares and flashbacks and understood he had to “atone.”
“This is justice, and I accept it,” said Eng, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Sept. 16.
“My mother deserved much better faith than when she got. She deserved happiness, deserved grandchildren, but most of all, she deserved a better son,” Eng said. “At the end of the day, she will always be my mother. And I will always love her no matter what she did or said. I am ashamed of what happened. Often times, I am overwhelmed with guilt.”
Judge Wiley appeared unconvinced of Eng’s remorse, and swiftly sentenced him to the maximum prison term.
Prosecutors said Eng wanted to accelerate his inheritance. In a jailhouse interview with the Daily News, Eng said his mother had $11 million in the bank and collected $12,000 monthly rent.
Arrested alongside Eng, a former Manhattan community college student were his two girlfriends, Jennifer Lopez and Caitlyn O’Rourke. The cases against them are still pending.
Lopez helped Eng sanitize the gory murder scene before driving Chin’s car 35 miles to New Jersey with her corpse stuffed inside a blood-soaked duffel bag in the trunk, prosecutors said. O’Rourke is accused of cleaning bloody clothes.
Eng asked the court to show the women mercy.
“If there was anybody who deserves leniency in what happened, I would give it to Caitlyn and Jennifer,” he said. “Their biggest mistake was to fall in love with me.”
Before Eng addressed the court, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass showed text messages Eng sent to the two women, with whom he was in a polyamorous relationship.
“I’ll spit on my mother’s grave,” reads one text Eng sent Lopez on Facebook Messenger in 2018, later adding this mother meant nothing to him “besides a source of income.”
In another exchange in the weeks leading to up to Chin’s murder, Eng proposed staging his mom’s death so he could “inherit everything.”
“I’ll get charged with accidental manslaughter,” he wrote. “I can also claim insanity then go to a mental ward.”
In a voicemail message from jail to his estranged brother, Eng proposed paying off Lopez and O’Rourke.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said he hoped the sentence brought a measure of closure to Chin’s relatives.
“This sentencing finally closes a challenging chapter for this family and their loved ones,” Bragg said. “I thank our prosecutors for their diligent work and commitment to ensuring accountability.”
