Left: Jared Eng at his February 2019 arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court. Right: Paula Chin, Eng's mother, in an undated photo. Photos: Pool (Eng); Facebook (Chin)
Jared Eng pleaded guilty on Friday to second degree murder in the January 2019 beating and stabbing death of his mother in the Tribeca apartment that the two shared.
Eng, 25, faces a minimum of 18 years to life and a maximum of 22 years to life in the gruesome slaying of Paula Chin, 65, who had lived at 17 Vestry St. since 1980, where she had operated two businesses.
Eng is due to be sentenced on Oct. 18.
After killing his mother, Eng “sanitized” the apartment, prosecutors say, and transported the body to the family home in Morristown, NJ, where he stuffed the corpse in a garbage container. Prosecutors charged two women, both reportedly his girlfriends, with helping to cover up the crime. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office says the cases against the women, Jennifer Lopez and Caitlyn O’Rourke, are still ongoing. Lopez was 18 at the time, O’Rourke was 22.
According to the 2019 criminal complaint against Eng, 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 said. Authorities said Chin was stabbed multiple times in the neck and suffered "blunt impact" to her head.
Several days after the murder, Eng reported his mother missing. He originally pleaded not guilty, and told the New York Post in a jail interview that his mother had as much as $11 million in the bank, but he denied the murder. The Post reported that Eng and his older brother would inherit cash from his father, who died of cancer in 2008, when they turned 35. His will specified that his entire estate would be left to the mother, according to the Post, but go to his sons if she died. Prosecutors said Chin murdered his mother “in an attempt to accelerate his inheritance.”
“In a series of text messages after the murder, Eng reported ‘It’s done,’ ‘I’m free,’ and that he ‘got rid of [his] problem,’” the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said in a statement, adding that days after the murder, Eng began changing the passwords on his mother’s bank accounts, searching for inheritance lawyers, and researching for ways to dispose of his mother’s body, “including a Google search for ‘diy bone meal.’”
Eng, a graduate of the selective Brooklyn Technical High School, had reportedly dropped out of SUNY New Paltz the previous semester and was attending Borough of Manhattan Community College at the time of the murder. O’Rourke was a student at SUNY New Paltz when she was arrested.
Eng’s lawyer, Joel Cohen, did not return messages requesting comment.
During the nine years before her death, Chin volunteered for the Tribeca Film Festival, and for the past seven years she served as a course marshall for two charity bike-a-thons, according to her Linkedin.
“This was a brutal and shocking murder of the defendant’s own mother, and while nothing can undo this tragedy, today’s guilty plea represents an important step towards justice. My thoughts are with those who continue to mourn Ms. Chin’s loss,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.