Son Indicted for Murder in Stabbing Death of His Mother in Tribeca

Jared Eng is led from the 1st Precinct on Feb. 6 following the discovery of his mother's body on her property in Morristown, NJ. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

A new indictment charges Jared Eng with the murder of his mother, Paula Chin, a longtime Tribeca resident and businesswoman.

As expected, a grand jury indicted Eng, 22, following the completion of an autopsy on Friday that determined that Chin, 65, was murdered, the result of “multiple impacts of head and stab wound of neck.”

The indictment is yet to be unsealed, pending Eng’s arraignment on the murder charge, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan DA’s office said.

Before the indictment, Eng and two women said to be his girlfriends, Jennifer Lopez, 18, and Caitlyn O’Rourke, 22, had been charged with hiding the dead mother’s body by disposing of it, in a garbage bag, on her Morristown, NJ, property. They were also charged with tampering with physical evidence. Lopez, who is free on $100,000 bail, appeared Monday in Criminal Court, where she was indicted on the charges. O’Rourke remains in custody on $50,000 bail.

According to the criminal complaint, O’Rourke told detectives that Eng admitted on the phone to killing his mother and, with Lopez, transporting the body to New Jersey. She said she returned with them to Chin’s New Jersey home, where the trio “stuffed the body in a garbage bag, and removed it to an outside garbage container” on the mother’s property, the complaint said.

In an interview with the Daily News on Rikers Island, Eng, who along with the two women was arrested last week, denied killing his mother. “She gave me everything,” he told the News. “If I needed anything, she gave it to me. Money? She gave it to me.” Eng had dropped out of SUNY New Paltz last semester and was attending Borough of Manhattan Community College, the News reported. O’Rourke was a student at SUNY New Paltz when she was arrested.

Video surveillance from early in the morning of Jan. 31 showed Chin’s 2004 Toyota Land Cruiser backed up to the curb of the Vestry Street building, and Lopez getting out. Nearly an hour-and-a-half later, the complaint continued, “an individual” came out of the building with a “duffle bag-like container” and put it in the trunk. Detectives later inspected the trunk and found blood on the carpet and a blanket, and clothing that belonged to Chin, the complaint says.

In a text obtained from O’Rourke’s phone, the complaint says that Lopez “stated in substance, 'It's all clean, the hardest part was backing up the car.'”