A judge delayed a ruling Tuesday on whether or not a wrongful petition conviction can move forward after attorneys for Marni Yang claimed new evidence cleared the convicted murderer in the highly-publicized case.
Attorneys last month revealed new forensic evidence and "never heard before recordings" they claimed proved Yang, a convicted murderer serving a double life sentence for killing the pregnant girlfriend of ex-Chicago Bear Shaun Gayle, could not have committed the crime.
The evidence follows what attorneys say was a three-year investigation involving a "team of pre-eminent forensic scientists, crime scene analysts, ballistic and firearm experts, investigators, audio and videotape analysis and DNA experts."
Yang was convicted of killing Rhoni Reuter, 42, who was pregnant with Gayle’s daughter when she was shot six times at her Deerfield condominium on Oct. 4, 2007. Her unborn child also died in the shooting.
Prosecutors said jealousy was the motive for the killing.
Gayle admitted in the trial that he had a sexual relationship with Yang and that they had sex the night before 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.
In court-authorized recordings, Yang purportedly told a friend she wanted to eliminate the competition.
Months before the shooting, Yang had purchased books with instructions on making a homemade silencer and then bought the materials to do so at a Home Depot store, prosecutors said.
A computer forensic agent also testified that a search of Yang's workplace computer revealed a MapQuest record of directions to Reuter's Deerfield home.
The trial and Yang’s conviction in 2011 drew national media attention and spurred a sensationalized TV “re-enactment” of the crime.
Yang's attorneys have been fighting the conviction for years, ordering DNA tests in 2014 on shell casings from the bullets used to kill Reuter.
“I know her trial was highly watched, and the evidence seemed overwhelming,” Stone said at the time. “But we are on a truth-seeking mission.”
According to the results of the recent investigation, Yang could not have been the shooter "based on the trajectory of the bullets fired," attorneys argued.
They say reconstruction and "previously unseen photos of the crime scene" indicate the shots were fired from someone "much taller in height than Marni Yang" and new testing indicates only DNA from a male was found at the scene. They also claim forensic evidence refutes a theory that a silencer was used in the shooting, claiming the suggested silencers could not have been mounted on the gun used to kill Reuter.
Attorneys also said newly-obtained audio of a phone call between Yang and a friend "indicate she was going to make up a story about committing the crime and why."
Yang's father and children said the mother confessed to the crime because police were pressuring her children.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Reuter's friend Michelle Ammentorp said the evidence in the wrongful conviction petition changed her mind on the case.
"When I see the crime scene photos and the autopsy photos there's absolutely no way somebody that small could raise a weapon of that size to that angle. It had to be somebody much taller," she said.
Yang is being held at the Dwight Correctional Center and is ineligible for parole if her remaining appeals prove unsuccessful.
