“Known to wear a white flowered nightgown and a purple grey jacket,” the missing persons bureau said in a tweet.
But by Tuesday, Chin’s body had been found stuffed in a garbage bag outside her family’s weekend home in Morristown, New Jersey. By Wednesday, her son, Jared Eng, 22, had been arrested and charged with concealing her body, with the help of his girlfriend and a friend.
Though Eng had not been charged with his mother’s killing, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has requested an autopsy of her body, telling the Manhattan medical examiner’s office in a letter that there was strong evidence that she was murdered.
Chin’s body will now make the return trip from Morris County to the medical examiner’s office, Christopher Foster, an assistant district attorney, wrote in the letter.
The motive for the killing appeared to be financial, a New York City police spokesman said.
It was a shocking turn of events for a Manhattan family that had seemed prosperous and stable. Eng attended the selective Brooklyn Technical High School and went on to study at SUNY New Paltz, according to his Facebook page.
Chin’s Facebook profile shows her smiling at a Tribeca charity gala, and on a family trip with her two sons, Jared and Brandon, 25, at Zion National Park in 2018. The boys’ father, Philip Eng, died 10 years ago, public records showed.
At the arraignment Thursday morning in Manhattan Criminal Court, three people were charged with tampering with evidence and concealment of a corpse: Jared Eng of Manhattan; Caitlyn O’Rourke, 21, of Patterson, New York, who was romantically involved with Eng; and Jennifer Lopez, 18, of Manhattan.
“The case is in its early stages and will ultimately be resolved in the courtroom, not in the media,” Eng’s attorney, Joel Cohen, said.
Eng was ordered held without bail. O’Rourke was held on $50,000 bail, and Lopez’s bail was set at $100,000. Like Eng, O’Rourke was a student at SUNY New Paltz, according to her Facebook page.
The criminal complaint described in grisly detail how Eng and Lopez allegedly transported Chin’s remains to New Jersey on Jan. 31 in Chin’s own car, a 2004 Toyota Land Cruiser.
The complaint said that security camera videos reviewed by police showed a woman, presumed to be Lopez, backing up the car in front of Chin’s apartment building early on Jan. 31. Someone resembling Eng put a large duffle bag in the trunk at 2:31 a.m.
When police searched the car, they found blood on the carpet and a blanket, clothing and duct tape, the criminal complaint said.
O’Rourke, the police complaint said, told detectives in an interview that Eng called her after he and Lopez had moved the body. She said Eng admitted to her he had killed his mother, telling her it had taken her “a while to die,” and asking for her help.
“It’s all clean, the hardest part was backing up the car,” said a text message between Lopez and O’Rourke, according to the complaint.
O’Rourke told police that the three friends then went to the weekend home on Bailey Hollow Road in Morristown again on Feb. 1, and moved Chin’s body, in a garbage bag, to an outside garbage container on the property. O’Rourke also said she attempted to wash clothing from the crime scene in the washing machine at the home.
Police said they found bloody rubber gloves in the garbage and bloodstains on the New Jersey residence’s garage floor. More bloody gloves, along with blood traces, were found inside the Manhattan apartment, the complaint said.
Chin’s building, sandwiched between converted lofts on Vestry Street, was quiet Thursday morning. The first floor is a commercial space with a large garage door, and the upper two residential floors — including the third, where Chin had lived with her family — were empty, a police officer at the scene said.
City property records showed that Chin had bought the building at 17 Vestry St. in 1987 with her late husband. They had also owned their Morristown home. She had listed herself on her Linkedin page as the chairwoman of C-E Property Management, the owner of record of the Vestry Street building, as well as the president of PYCECO Distributor Corp., a supply company.
Eng’s most recent Facebook profile picture shows him posing with a camera. “I’m an adult now?” he captioned the photo. On July 29, he posted a photo with O’Rourke. Both are in sunglasses, smiling.
“City kid stretching his wings,” he wrote as his Facebook introduction. “But first, he must prune his broken feathers.”
On Instagram, Eng describes himself as a “creative consultant, media enthusiast, gamer” and “cat dad.” In May, he posted a picture with his mother at the Frying Pan restaurant on the Hudson River.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.