A woman accused of killing the pregnant girlfriend of an ex-Chicago Bears player confessed the crime to her long-time friend, it has emerged.
Marni Yang, who is currently standing trial for the killing of Rhoni Reuter in 2007, allegedly told Christie Paschen that she had killed Reuter because she saw her as a rival for football star, Shaun Gayle’s affections.
Paschen, a self-proclaimed psychic, yesterday testified against Yang, 43, at the Lake County court house in Waukegan, Illinois.
The court also heard recordings taken from a wire Paschen was wearing when she met the defendant at a Denny’s Restaurant in Arlington Heights days before her arrest in 2009.
Yang met football star, Gayle, who was on the 1985 Bears Super Bowl team, in 2005.
Their business relationship had turned sexual, Gayle told the court on Tuesday.
He admitted having sex with Yang at his home the night before Reuter was killed.
Yang is accused of putting on a disguise and waiting for Reuter to emerge from her home in Deerfield, Illinois, in 2007.
She then allegedly shot Reuter six times. Reuter was six months pregnant with Gayle’s daughter at the time. Two of the bullets hit Reuter’s womb, authorities said. The unborn child did not survive the attack.
Yesterday the court heard a wire recording of Yang telling a nervous Paschen the gun had ‘gone’ and that the police were not going to ‘dig it out from under a year and a half of Chicago trash’.
Yang was also heard saying: ‘Nobody could identify me driving away from the scene.’
Earlier yesterday Paschen testified that Yang had been at her house, talking about her plans to kill Reuter.
‘I was trying to talk her out of doing it,’ Paschen told the court. ‘I really didn’t believe she would do it. I didn’t think she could.’
Yang had also asked Paschen to do a tarot-card reading for her the same night, the court heard.
‘She wanted me to tell her what the cards said – would she be successful in killing Miss Macy’s,’ Paschen said, giving the nick-name Yang had given Reuter, who worked part time at Macy’s.
Paschen said Yang drew the ‘sun card’ which signifies ‘success in achieving a goal,’ the court heard.
Today defence lawyers questioned Paschen’s credibility as a witness.
From the witness stand she told jurors she had been recruited to work in Army Intelligence for a programme Called Gondola Wish, in 1976.
She described a final mission in the Middle East where all the men were killed. She then said the military erased some of her memories before she was discharged in 1979.
Defence lawyer, Bill Hedrick, then asked Paschen if she understood she had taken an oath to tell the truth to which she responded yes.
Paschen also admitted that she had denied knowing anything about Reuter’s death on two occasions while talking to police in January 2008.
She finally agreed to wear a wire so her conversations with Yang could be taped in February 2009, after police told her they could tie her and Yang to the crime scene, according to a previous testimony.
In his opening statement Hedrick last week accused the Lake County Task Force of focusing on Yang and not following up other potential leads.
‘She’s a victim. She is a single mother of three small children. And they don’t have the evidence to back up their charges,’ he later told reporters.
Prosecution lawyers meanwhile described the killing as ‘cold, calculated and premeditated’.
Yang has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and intentional homicide of an unborn child.
The trial continues.
