Paula Chin (L) and her son and killer Jared Eng (R) show in an Instagram photo he captioned “Friends of the Hudson with the momz.”
A New York City man on Wednesday was sentenced for the brutal murder of his mother inside their shared apartment in January 2019.
Jared Eng, 25, will spend 22 years to life in state prison, according to a press release from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
The defendant, a self-described “creative consultant, media enthusiast, gamer, [and] cat dad,” pleaded guilty to one count of murder in the second degree in New York State Supreme Court on Sept. 16, 2022. In New York State, the lowest level courts are referred to as “Supreme.”
“This sentencing finally closes a challenging chapter for this family and their loved ones,” Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (D) said in a statement. “I thank our prosecutors for their diligent work and commitment to ensuring accountability.”
On Feb. 4, 2019, well after the gruesome deed was done, Eng reported that his 65-year-old mother, Paula Chin, had been missing for days.
In reality, Eng slit his mother’s throat, stabbed her repeatedly elsewhere, and beat her to death in order to speed up his multimillion-dollar inheritance, the defendant would later admit. The two lived together in the posh Tribeca neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.
After the murder, Eng and two women – who he was reportedly in relationships with – allegedly disposed of the body in a garbage container at the defendant’s family home in Morristown, New Jersey.
Investigators also found “bloody rubber gloves in the garbage” and “swabs of blood stains on the floor inside the garage of the residence,” according to a copy of Eng’s indictment obtained by the Poughkeepsie Journal. The defendant would later tell NYPD detectives that his mother took “a while to die.”
“My mother deserved a much better fate than what she got,” Eng told Justice Maxwell Wiley during sentencing, according to a courtroom report by the New York Post. “She deserved happiness, she deserved grandchildren, but most of all she deserved a better son.”
Chin was reportedly worth some $11 million.
Eng initially disclaimed responsibility for his mother’s death.
“I want to clear my name,” he said in comments reported by the Post immediately after his arrest. “I didn’t kill her.”
By September, Eng was singing a different, mournful-sounding tune.
“What happened can be no other way to describe as evil, terrible and horrific,” the murderer said. “I was quite delusional and I struggled with coming to terms with the fact I did such a terrible thing.”
According to the press release from the DA’s office, Eng texted: “It’s done,” “I’m free,” and that he “got rid of [his] problem,” after killing his mother. Days later, he began changing passwords on Chin’s bank accounts, searched for inheritance lawyers, and researched how to dispose of a body. One search, Bragg noted, was for “diy bone meal.”
In those efforts, he had a bit of help, investigators allege.
According to the February 2019 indictment the first woman, Jennifer Lopez was charged alongside Eng with three counts of first-degree hindering prosecution, three counts of tampering with physical evidence, and one count of concealment of a human corpse. The second woman, Caitlyn O’Rourke, was charged with one count each of concealing a human corpse, and tampering with evidence.
According to investigators, the three discussed the murder during a group phone call immediately after the fact. During that call, Lopez, allegedly admitted to helping Eng clean up the apartment.
“[A]ll clean, the hardest part was backing up the car,” Lopez allegedly told O’Rourke during one phone call.
The three allegedly traveled with the corpse to New Jersey, O’Rourke allegedly told police later, when Chin’s body, in a duffel bag, was stuffed into the garbage bin.
“This was a brutal and shocking murder of the defendant’s own mother,” Bragg said last month. “My thoughts are with those who continue to mourn Ms. Chin’s loss.”
[Image via selfie/Instagram]
