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Thread: Marni Yang Gets LWOP in 2007 IL Murder of Ex-Bear Sean Gayle's Girlfriend Rhoni Reuter

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    Marni Yang Gets LWOP in 2007 IL Murder of Ex-Bear Sean Gayle's Girlfriend Rhoni Reuter




    Arrest in slaying of ex-Bears' girlfriend

    A break in the 2007 shotgun slaying of a pregnant Deerfield woman who was the girlfriend of former Chicago Bears safety Sean Gayle came in early March with the arrest of a Chicago woman.

    Marni Yang, 42, of Chicago, was indicted on nine counts of first-degree murder and three counts of intentional homicide of a child and could face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted in the murder of Rhoni Reuter.

    Authorities say Yang carried out an intricate murder plot because she was jealous of Reuter, 42, who was dating Gayle.

    Gayle has denied that he and Yang were anything beyond friends at the time of the shooting.

    Police said Yang shot Reuter numerous times, including a shot to the head and a shot to the abdomen intended to kill Reuter and her unborn child conceived with Gayle.

    In October, attorneys for Yang unsuccessfully moved for a change of venue for their client, citing extensive publicity surrounding the case, including a "Dateline" NBC special on the murder.

    Circuit Judge Victoria Rossetti denied the motion to take the trial outside of northern Illinois, as well as a gag order requested by defense attorneys.

    "If you move a trial, publicity seems to move with it," Rossetti said.

    Yang, who remains in Lake County Jail, is scheduled for a pre-trial hearing Jan. 22.

    http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/newssun/news/1966794,5_1_WA31_TOPTEN6_S1-091231.article

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    Victim’s family to attend Yang murder trial

    By Beth Kramer
    The Chicago Sun-Times

    Relatives of Rhoni Reuter plan to attend the Marni Yang murder trial next week, according to the family’s attorney.

    Christopher Stombaugh is representing the Reuter family in a wrongful-death lawsuit pending in Cook County Circuit Court, he said.

    Reuter, 42, was found shot to death in her Deerfield home in October 2007. She was seven months pregnant with the child of former Chicago Bears player Shaun Gayle.

    Reuter is survived by two brothers and her parents, who reside in Wisconsin.

    “They are going to be at the trial,” Stombaugh affirmed.

    Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday at the Lake County Courthouse.

    In anticipation of public interest in this case, the trial was moved from courtroom 221 to room 201, which has about double the seating capacity.

    Gayle is expected to testify during the trial.

    http://newssun.suntimes.com/news/cri...der-trial.html

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    Marni Yang Murder Trial: Judge bars Gayle allegations

    By Dan Rozek
    The Chicago Sun-Times

    A claim that ex-Bear Shaun Gayle pushed his pregnant girlfriend weeks before her 2007 murder won’t be presented to jurors when Marni Yang stands trial for the slaying, a Lake County judge ruled Monday.

    Nor will Yang’s attorneys be allowed to tell the jury that Gayle allegedly had pressured long-time girlfriend Rhoni Reuter to end two prior pregnancies, Judge Christopher Stride said.

    Before Yang’s murder trial opens today with jury selection, Stride ruled on a handful of key last-minute issues — including agreeing jurors could see a picture of Reuter’s bullet-riddled unborn daughter.

    Yang is charged with first gunning down the 42-year-old Reuter on Oct. 4, 2007 because she allegedly was jealous of Reuter’s relationship with Gayle.

    When Reuter was shot to death in her Deerfield home, she was seven months pregnant with a child she and Gayle already had named Skylar Reyne.

    Yang also had contended she also was involved in a sexual relationship with Gayle, though Gayle has denied that claim.

    Defense attorneys had sought to tell jurors that Gayle purportedly was unhappy Reuter had become pregnant and that he had pressured her to end two earlier pregnancies by threatening to sue her and to take custody of the baby. Reuter also allegedly said shortly before her death that Gayle had pushed her during an argument, defense attorney William Hedrick argued.

    But calling those claims “too speculative,” Stride ruled they wouldn’t be admissible during Yang’s trial — unless Gayle brings up the alleged incidents during his testimony.

    Yang allegedly shot Reuter at least six times — and intentionally fired two bullets into her abdomen in an attempt to kill her unborn child, prosecutors have contended. Stride agreed to allow jurors to see an autopsy photo showing the infant had been hit twice by bullets.

    Stride also again denied requests that the 43-year-old Yang, who has been jailed since her March 2009 arrest, be allowed to wear makeup during the trial and have her long, graying hair cut and dyed. Her attorneys have contended that her appearance otherwise makes her look “like a crazy woman.”

    “Her appearance has declined,” said Hedrick. “She looks like a crazy woman. She does not look like anybody who Shaun Gayle would ever have a second of interest in.”

    Defense attorneys said they still may try to appeal Stride’s ruling on Yang’s appearance to the Illinois Supreme Court.

    http://newssun.suntimes.com/news/cri...legations.html

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    Jury taking shape in trial for woman accused of murdering ex-Bear Shaun Gayle’s girlfriend

    A municipal worker, a retiree and a soon-to-be retired food company executive were among five men selected Tuesday to serve as jurors in Marni Yang’s Lake County murder trial.

    Also chosen for the jury was the first person questioned — a 36-year-old website manager for a retail company — and a civilian carpenter who works at the Great Lakes Naval Station in North Chicago.

    Yang is accused of gunning down 42-year-old Rhoni Reuter, the pregnant girlfriend of ex-Chicago Bear Shaun Gayle. The Deerfield woman was seven months pregnant when she was shot to death inside her home on Oct. 4, 2007.

    Prosecutors contend Yang, now 43, committed the killing because she was jealous of Reuter’s relationship with Gayle, whom Yang also has claimed to been involved with at the time of the slaying.

    Gayle is likely to be a key witness in the trial, which could last up to three weeks, attorneys said.

    Charged with first-degree murder and the intentional homicide of an unborn child, Yang could receive a life sentence if she is convicted.

    Prospective jurors were told by Judge Christopher Stride that Yang won’t face the death penalty.

    Yang, who has been jailed since her March 2009 arrest, stood up and politely greeted the pool of about 50 prospective jurors when she was introduced by Stride.

    “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,”said Yang, who wore a blue-green shirt, gray pants, wire-rimmed glasses and had her nearly waist-length hair in a ponytail.

    A number of women were questioned Tuesday as potential jurors, but none was selected.

    One woman was excused after she told Stride and the attorneys in the case that a Facebook posting she received Tuesday — before she was questioned about sitting on the jury — mentioned the Yang trial.

    Before jury selection began, Stride rejected a request by Yang’s defense team to delay her trial so she could have her graying hair trimmed and dyed by a stylist.

    Stride previously had refused to order Lake County Jail officials to give Yang access to a stylist to improve her appearance before her trial.

    “I’m not going to order the jail treat Ms. Yang any differently than they treat anyone else,” Stride said Tuesday even as he noted that Yang appeared to be “very well groomed.”

    http://www.suntimes.com/news/4083454...irlfriend.html

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    Ex-Bear Gayle says he had sex with Yang night before killing

    Former Chicago Bear Shaun Gayle testified Tuesday that he had sex with Marni Yang at his home the night before she’s accused of gunning down his pregnant girlfriend.

    Testifying for the prosecution, Gayle confirmed for the first time that he had a sexual relationship with Yang, who’s charged with murdering 42-year-old Rhoni Reuter on Oct. 4, 2007.

    Reuter was nearly seven months pregnant with Gayle’s unborn daughter when she was shot to death inside her Deerfield condominium.

    Gayle told jurors that he had been involved with Reuter since 1990, but said their relationship wasn’t exclusive.

    He testified he met Yang in 2005 and they at first had a solely business relationship because she was involved in some of his real estate ventures.

    But Gayle also acknowledged that he and Yang sometimes would have sex.

    “From time to time, it would change into a personal relationship,” Gayle said, describing their sexual encounters as occurring “roughly two to three times in the course of a year.”

    One of those encounters occurred the night before Reuter was killed, Gayle said.

    Yang came to his Chicago home on the evening of Oct. 3, 2007, telling him she wanted to discuss a “time-sensitive” real estate issue, Gayle said.

    She picked up dinner on the way over and the two spent about two hours together — and had sex, Gayle said.

    Yang left his home by 9:30 p.m., said Gayle, who testified Yang visited his house 10 to 15 times from the time they met until Reuter was slain.

    Lake County prosecutors contend Yang, a Chicago resident, killed the 42-year-old Reuter because she was jealous of Reuter’s relationship with Gayle.

    Reuter was shot to death just before 8 a.m. on Oct. 4 as she left her condominium to go to work, authorities have said.

    Following his testimony, Gayle was escorted out of the courtroom by sheriff’s deputies and left without speaking to the media.

    When questioned by Deerfield police after Reuter’s death, Gayle said he told investigators about another woman he previously had dated and had obtained an order of protection against in 2006.

    Gayle, who remained composed during the nearly two hours he spent on the witness stand, said that woman had come to his home and harassed him in May 2006 after their breakup.

    He also suspected her of writing two harassing letters to as many as 18 women he knew, Gayle testified.

    Gayle said he was getting a haircut in North Chicago when he first received a telephone call from a friend telling him about a shooting in Deerfield in which his name had been mentioned.

    After calling several friends to get more information, Gayle said he learned the shooting had occurred in Reuter’s condo complex.

    Worried, he left messages on both her cell phone and her home phone, he said.

    “I started to panic with the information I got,” Gayle said.

    As he started driving to Deerfield, he called police, who confirmed Reuter had been slain and told him to come to the police station.

    But a tape of the emotional 911 call he made to police — which included Gayle breaking down when he learned Reuter was dead — wasn’t played for jurors.

    Yang’s lawyers have argued that police prematurely focused on her as a suspect, ignoring other women with whom they contend Gayle had relationships.

    Reuter was shot at least six times, with two of the bullets also striking her unborn daughter, authorities have said.

    Yang is charged with first-degree murder and the intentional homicide of an unborn child.

    http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/4...e-killing.html

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    Key witness in Marni Yang murder trial admits she lied to police

    She initially lied to police investigating the 2007 murder of Shaun Gayle’s pregnant girlfriend, claiming to know nothing even though Marni Yang allegedly had described the slaying to her, Christi Paschen admitted Friday.

    “You didn’t tell them Marni Yang had shot anybody, did you?” defense attorney William Hedrick asked.

    “No,’’ replied Paschen, a crucial prosecution witness who a day earlier testified that Yang had described in detail the Oct. 4, 2007, slaying of Deerfield resident Rhoni Reuter.

    Paschen also secretly recorded for police two conversations in March 2009 in which Yang claims she gunned down the 42-year-old Reuter — who was nearly seven months pregnant — and her unborn daughter.

    Yang, 43, had been involved in a sporadic sexual relationship with Gayle, a former Chicago Bear, but has denied committing the murder. Prosecutors contend Yang carried out the killing because she was jealous of Reuter’s pregnancy and long-time relationship with Gayle, a member of the 1985 Super Bowl-winning team.

    Prosecutors on Friday also highlighted critical testimony from Paschen that was confirmed by other witnesses.

    Yang claimed she took a bracelet inscribed with the word “pregnant” from Reuter’s condo during the killing, Paschen testified, saying she saw Yang bury something behind an Arlington Heights banquet hall hours after the slaying.

    Deerfield police officer Chris Fry told jurors that on March 1, 2009, he and other officers dug up a similar bracelet bearing the word “pregnant” from behind that banquet hall.

    Reuter’s former co-worker, Valerie Hicks-Thomas, testified she recognized the bracelet as one that Reuter frequently wore before her death.

    During her testimony Friday, Paschen also claimed she is a psychic who was recruited in the 1970s by an Army general into a secret military unit.

    “He recruited me for a program they were working on that included psychics,” Paschen said, adding the purpose of the purported unit was to “look for intelligence information.”

    She testified that in a final Middle East mission with the unit, all its members were killed except her — and that the Army “erased” most of her memories of the purported incident.

    http://www.suntimes.com/4264120-418/...to-police.html

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    Marni Yang guilty in murder of ex-Bear Shaun Gayle’s girlfriend

    Marni Yang methodically plotted to murder Rhoni Reuter, then gunned down the pregnant girlfriend of former Chicago Bear Shaun Gayle to eliminate her as a romantic rival, Lake County prosecutors told jurors Tuesday.

    Jurors quickly agreed, deliberating for four hours before convicting Yang of first-degree murder in Reuter’s Oct. 4, 2007 slaying. The nine-man, three-woman jury also convicted the 43-year-old Yang of a second charge: the intentional homicide of an unborn child.

    Yang stood between her attorneys as the verdicts were being read but showed no emotion. Gayle also showed no emotion. A couple of Reuter’s relatives wiped tears from their eyes.

    Reuter, 42, was nearly seven months pregnant with Gayle’s daughter — a baby she already had named Skylar Reyne — when she was shot to death in her Deerfield condominium.

    Yang was a real estate agent who also had carried on a sporadic sexual relationship with Gayle and — according to prosecutors — killed Reuter because she had become “obsessed” with the former Bears’ star.

    “The defendant was obsessed with eliminating the competition,” prosecutor Ari Fisz told jurors before they began deliberating.

    More than a dozen of Reuter’s relatives were in the jammed courtroom when the verdicts were delivered, sitting separately from Gayle, his mother and his attorney.

    Yang, who didn’t testify during her trial, faces a minimum 45-year prison term when she is sentenced later this year by Judge Christopher Stride.

    Fisz urged jurors to convict Yang, saying there is “an overwhelming amount of evidence” tying her to the murder, including two secretly recorded conversations in which Yang calmly describes the killing in detail.

    “She is absolutely, clearly, completely guilty,” Fisz said, pointing across the courtroom at the petite Yang, who sat between her attorneys, wearing glasses with her long graying hair neatly tied in a braid.

    He played two snippets of the 2009 recordings between Yang and a friend, Christi Paschen, including one in which Yang says she repeatedly shot Reuter until she collapsed to the floor. Yang then describes firing one additional bullet into the dying woman.

    “I took one last shot in the head — finished her off,” Yang can be heard saying on the tape.

    But defense attorney William Hedrick said prosecutors had no physical evidence or eyewitnesses linking Yang to the slaying.

    “This case is best characterized as a theory searching for evidence,’’ Hedrick said, contending police focused on Yang as the only suspect within four days of the killing.

    “Marni Yang became suspect number one to the exclusion of every one else in the world,” Hedrick said.

    Hedrick also denied that Yang was obsessed with Gayle, instead contending the divorced mother of three had a long-term boyfriend and was busy living her own life.

    “She had a full life,” Hedrick said of Yang, though he acknowledged she knew Gayle.

    “That she liked Shaun Gayle and was a victim of Shaun Gayle, there can be no dispute,” said Hedrick during his closing argument, though he declined outside the courtroom to expand on those comments.

    He and co-counsel Jeffrey Learner argued during the trial that Gayle had been involved with as many as 18 or 19 women at the time of Reuter’s death — a claim denied by Gayle’s attorney.

    He ripped Paschen — a self-described psychic who had claimed to be in a secret military unit because of her mental abilities — as lacking “an ounce of credibility.

    “She lied from the moment she hit the witness stand, and she never stopped,’’ Hedrick said.

    He painted the recorded conversations between Paschen and Yang as two friends trying to “one up” each other in telling wild tales.

    “We know truly that Marni Yang is making this up,’’ Hedrick said, noting that Yang never mentioned key details of the killings to Paschen, including that she allegedly used a homemade silencer on her 9 mm pistol, or that the gun repeatedly jammed.

    But prosecutors said Yang’s description was corroborated by other witnesses, including a pathologist who testified that Reuter died of a fatal gunshot wound to the head.

    And it was Yang, not Paschen, describing the murder on the secret recordings, Fisz reminded jurors. “You might think she’s goofy,” Fisz said of Paschen. “Whatever you think of her, she can press record.”

    Fisz described the murder as “an execution.

    “It was a very well-planned, carefully thought-out execution,” he said. “For months, the defendant planned how she was going to carry out this murder.”

    Fisz put on rubber gloves and took out six bullets that had struck Reuter and been recovered from the crime scene.

    Then, one by one, he slowly dropped them onto a metal cart, where they echoed loudly in the courtroom.

    “We have six bullets that hit Rhoni,” he said.

    Two of the bullets also struck her unborn child causing wounds that a pathologist testified would have killed the baby even if Reuter had survived.

    Fisz finished his closing arguments by recounting how Yang said that as Reuter was dying, she had only the strength left to kick Yang.

    “You have the power to do more,” Fisz told jurors. “With your verdicts, tell Rhoni you know who did this. With your verdicts, tell Rhoni you’re going to give her justice.”

    http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/4...irlfriend.html

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    May 20, 2011

    Marni Yang sentenced to life for murdering girlfriend of Shaun Gayle, ex-Chicago Bear

    By KEVIN HAYES
    CBS NEWS

    (CBS/WBBM) WAUKEGAN - A judge in Waukegan sentenced former real estate agent Marni Yang to life in prison Friday for the murder of the pregnant girlfriend of ex-Bear Shaun Gayle.

    Before the sentencing phase of the hearing began, Yang's attorneys asked for a new trial, contending that the wiretaps that caught Yang on tape describing the killing were illegal. They also said Yang was denied the opportunity to get a haircut or wear makeup during the trial, which made her appear guilty in the eyes of the jurors.

    Lake County Associate Judge Christopher Stride rejected that request, reports CBS station WBBM.

    "It's frankly a little bit remarkable to me that we have spent 45 minutes talking about Ms. Yang's hair on the day that she is to be sentenced for the murder of a pregnant woman and her unborn child," Stride said, according to the Chicago Tribune.

    Stride had only one option when sentencing 43-year-old Marni Yang in the 2007 murder of Rhoni Reuter - life in prison. She is not eligible for parole.

    That is because jurors March 15 found that Yang had committed the murder in a "cold and calculated" fashion. Before that happens, members of Reuter's family are expected to address the court.

    The jurors weighed Yang's fate for only four hours, after a trial in which prosecutors outlined a tale of deadly obsession. They said Yang became obsessed with Gayle upon meeting him at a 20th anniversary Super Bowl party in 2005, and soon became Gayle's real estate agent and an occasional sex partner.

    Prosecutors said Yang decided to kill Reuter when she learned that Reuter was pregnant with Gayle's child. Gayle admitted on the witness stand in court that he engaged in sex with Yang the night before the murder.

    "I can't find the words to convey the regret I'll have for the rest of my life even knowing her," Gayle said after the verdict.

    Yang's mother and members of Reuter's family are both expected to be in court for sentencing.

    Reuter's brother, Thad, said in March that the verdict and sentencing provide some closure for his family.

    "Knowing that someone is behind bars for life for what they've done for my sister will help in the healing process for us," he said, even though he said the verdict will "not bring back" Reuter or the unborn child, whom Gayle and Reuter had decided to name Skylar.

    Reuter was shot six times as she opened her kitchen door to leave for work. Two of the bullets struck the baby.

    Key to the conviction were two secretly recorded conversations, made in March 2009, in which Yang described the killings to her friend Christi Paschen, even describing how she fired the final bullet into Reuter's head as she lay dying.

    Assistant State's Attorney Patricia Fix said she found Yang's actions "colder than I've ever seen in my life."

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marni-y...-chicago-bear/

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