GUILTY IL - Rhoni Reuter, 41, pregnant, shot to death, Deerfield, 4 Oct 2007

[ChicagoChic]

Marni Yang's lawyers question former Bear Shaun Gayle's alibi in pregnant girlfriend Rhoni Reuter's 2007 murder

 

[ChicagoChic]

Marni Yang's lawyers question former Bear Shaun Gayle's alibi in pregnant girlfriend Rhoni Reuter's 2007 murder

 

[ChicagoChic]

Dueling motions, subpoenas at hearing to overturn Marni Yang’s murder conviction of ex-Chicago Bear Shaun Gayle’s pregnant girlfriend

 

[ChicagoChic]

From what I have read in the above pieces, it doesn't sound like there is a time frame for the judge to decide whether or not to grant a new trial to Marni Yang.
It certainly sounds like her defense team is doing a great job and asking a lot of questions that if they were addressed before, never were made public, such as the surveillance video from the barber shop where Shaun was the day of the murder. I always thought it was odd that he was in North Chicago, an area about 40 miles north of the city seemingly closer to WI when he lived in the city, but I seem to remember that apparently it is a barber shop frequented by Bears players. North Chicago isn't real far from Deerfied, IL where the victim resided and was killed. (maybe 15 or so miles away)

Since there isn't any physical evidence that links Yang to the crime, there are holes and the investigation into that medical bracelet found over a year later does seem flimsy especially given that many people didn't remember the victim wearing it (her own family and close friends)

I think that they may get a new trial--I don't know that they will get a different result, but its possible

 

[ChicagoChic]

"Stone had a lot of questions about the bracelet, because he said its manufacturer claims very few were sold in northern Illinois, and none to Reuter or Yang.

“Just a word about this bracelet. This bracelet was found 17 months after the murder — in an empty lot behind a banquet hall in Arlington Heights, many, many miles from the murder location,” he said.

Stone said police went there because Christi Paschen claimed she and Marni had buried a clip from a gun there and police searched with a metal detector and found nothing.

“Then they went back to look again and there on top of leaves and grass — having survived a fall, a winter, a spring, the sun scorch of the summer, another fall, another winter, snow, ice frost, defrost — there on top of the grass was a pristine bracelet,” he said, adding there was no rust, wear or damage.

“We think the bracelet is a distraction,” Stone said. “There isn’t a single piece of scientific evidence that links this crime to Marni Yang, and that’s significant. This woman is innocent."

 

[Foxone1]

Marni Yang’s bid for new trial clears first hurdle

This case was very high profile in Chicago and even made some national news. There are wrongful convictions, but this certainly doesn't seem like it could be one of them.

I think I watched this trial, since I remember Shaun's testimony and the Friend Psychic...this gunshot evidence is crazy since Rhoni wouldn't have just been standing there she would have been moving around

 

[ChicagoChic]

Was

I think I watched this trial, since I remember Shaun's testimony and the Friend Psychic...this gunshot evidence is crazy since Rhoni wouldn't have just been standing there she would have been moving around

Was this trial televised? I don't remember seeing any videos of it.

 

[ChicagoChic]

This woman's lawyer sought clemency for her due to COVID (which I believe has been denied--I haven't read the response if there was any at all) Now she is said to have COVID. Convicted Murderer Yang Contracts Coronavirus In Jail

 

[ChicagoChic]

Her lawyers say that their forensic "experts" say that she is too small to have fired the bullets that killed a pregnant woman, that the gun that she says on tape that she dumped into a bucket of cement was actually stolen from her home by a friend of her son, that the medical alert bracelet belonging to the victim that the police found that she is said to have buried did not actually belong to the victim and is just a distraction. They said that the car that she rented to drive to the victims home to take her life was one that she actually rented for a "modeling shoot" and she decided on the black sedan instead of a "bring honking blue" that she returned to the car rental place was to please her photographer, not avoid detection. They said that she already knew the details of the crime that she confessed to on tape from having been interviewed by the police but that some of them don't actually match with the crime scene. They say that their is a finger print on the door that doesn't belong to her--but she said on tape that she was wearing gloves. They say that the books on how to make a disposable silencer were a joke and that she didn't know what happened to them--and that there isn't any evidence of a silencer being used at the scene. They are making a big deal over the football star not having called the police for over a half hour after hearing of the incident--he didn't know what had happened. How could he have expected that he was going to learn that?
They claim that she was trying to save her son from being arrested by confessing to the crime herself--then WHY didn't her lawyers spell that out before? A decade later they come forth with this story?
Does anyone believe that she is innocent? Do you think that she will get a new trial?

 

[ChicagoChic]

The woman who is in charge of the attempt for exoneration or a new trial spent 30 years in prison for murder. This case couldn't be anymore odd.
We are supposed to believe that :
1)she bought two books on how to make a disposable silencer as a joke present for her Chicago cop boyfriend and that there isn't any evidence of a silencer being used (but the way that she describes the gun jamming on her confession tape accounts for the silencer)
2. That she knew that she was being recorded when she told her best friend at Denny's how she killed the pregnant lady and how she disposed of the weapon.
She was confessing to take the heat off of her son who the police were harassing for over a year as a possible perp of the crime, but her original legal team never mentioned this in her first trial?
3. That she rented a car for a "modeling photo shoot" but can't remember the name of the man who was the photographer and he won't come forward because he raped her and doesn't want to be held accountable.
4. That she didn't write the letters to all of the other football players girlfriends even though they found evidence of looking all of them up on her computer and now her daughter is saying that she lied about seeing the mailing labels to the police? That was just planted evidence? Why didn't her children speak up at her trial? They must be guilty now that their mom has been in prison for over a decade and are trying to save her now. They would have said something at the first trial.

5. That she never made a disposable silencer even though she bought the books and that there isn't any proof that a silencer was used in the killing. Conveniently, the items that were purchased to make the silence were supposedly returned for cash by a day laborer, whose name they cannot locate.
6. That the gun that she owned that was the same type as used in the murder was stolen by a friend of her son months prior to the murder and she never reported it.
7. That everything that she says on the tape was made up in order to keep her son from being arrested even though it was already substantiated by her best friend (who they are roasting as being nutty and unstable)
8. She says on the tape that she "didn't think that 'they' (the police) were going to find out about the rental car which she returned because it was a bright "honking blue" and she exchanged it for a black rabbit to avoid detection was really because the photographer wanted a different car for the photo shoot.
9. That she was too short to have fired the weapon in the way in which the shots appear on the pregnant women's body--but the victim wasn't standing still while she was being shot and she acknowledges in the tape that the kill shot was to the head which is exactly what she says in the tape--she took one last shot at her "in the head to finish off the job"
She called the killing a "job"

 

[ChicagoChic]

Its also really, really sleazy of her defense team to be digging up dirt on the personal life of the victim.
Her family has suffered enough--more than anyone ever should. They didn't want those details coming out because it was their daughters private business and didn't have any bearing on the case.

 

[Panniniclaus]

There cannot be any way this defense was taken seriously.. It's laughable.