Marni Yang Murder Tapes Released
CHICAGO (CBS) - Lake County prosecutors have released the tapes, played in court, of the secretly-recorded conversations in which Marni Yang admitted to the 2007 murder of the pregnant girlfriend of former Chicago Bears Safety Shaun Gayle.
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Yang's voice is barely audible in the tapes. Self proclaimed psychic Christi Paschen wore the court-authorized recording equipment to dinner at an Arlington Heights restaurant two nights running in 2009.
In the tapes, Yang said she had almost given up when victim Rhoni Reuter opened the door to her Deerfield condominium and spotted her in disguise. Yang said she immediately opened fire, causing her to fall back into her condominium.
"She was doing this screaming as she went down and then she took one good kick at me," Yang said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Restaurant loudspeaker music and other background noise make much of the tape difficult to understand. Jurors in court were provided with written transcripts.
Yang also tells her friend that she has fooled the homicide detectives, "They can't put the pieces of the puzzle together. That's what the problem is for them. They got a theory, they got a hunch, they got a strong hunch. They may be (damned) positive but they can't put the pieces of the puzzle together."
She also describes being questioned for "three days straight," by police. She says she was kept in what she called "a sweatbox" without sleep, food or water. She brags that police still have nothing to tie her to the crime scene. After hearing the tape, she was arrested and charged.
The nine-man, three-woman jury took three hours Tuesday to convict Yang, a mother of three and part-time real estate agent, in the murder of Reuter, Gayle's longtime girlfriend.
Gayle also wore recording equipment several times when speaking with Yang, and allowed police to set up eavesdropping equipment in the apartment when hosting Yang, but Yang did not implicate herself in those conversations.
He admitted to having had a sporadic sexual relationship with Yang but said, following the verdict Tuesday, that "justice has been done."
Yang faces a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. The sentence will be pronounced April 29.
