A remorseless East Harlem teen confessed yesterday that she and her boyfriend killed her Chinese immigrant parents and dumped them in the East River because they disapproved of her interracial romance, cops said.
Police arrested Connie Leung, 17, and Eric Louissant, 20, and charged them with the chilling murder of her parents, Stephen and Chilin Leung, who were 55 and 41.
The pair attacked and killed Connie’s parents at the Leungs’ apartment early on Nov. 2 – then lived with the bodies for several days before getting rid of them, said Assistant Chief William Taylor, head of the Manhattan Detective Bureau.
Police said Connie’s father took her to see a counselor at her school, the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, on Nov. 1 – because he was upset she’d been missing classes to spend time with Louissant, who is black.
“The parents were unhappy that Connie was dating Eric,” Taylor said. Investigators said the parents did not want their daughter dating someone who wasn’t Chinese.
The next day, he said, the young lovers plotted the murders at the family’s apartment on First Avenue at 110th Street.
Taylor said Connie and her boyfriend attacked Stephen Leung about 7 p.m. as he sat in a chair in his bedroom watching TV after returning from his job as a waiter at Norma’s restaurant in the posh Parker Meridien Hotel.
With Connie’s help, he said, Louissant used the belt from Leung’s raincoat to strangle him.
Shortly after 10 p.m., Chilin Leung came home from her job behind the counter at the New Good Taste Restaurant, a Chinese take-out restaurant on Second Avenue.
Taylor said the pair grabbed her and Louissant strangled her with a leather belt.
They then locked the bodies in a bedroom and lived in the apartment for several days, he said.
Connie’s 19-year-old brother was also living there, but was apparently unaware his parents were dead, cops said.
“It was not unusual for the parents not to see him for a week or so due to their hours and his hours,” Taylor said.
Finally, on Election Day, Nov. 7, Connie and Louissant stuffed the 5-foot-3 mother into a laundry sack, put her in a shopping cart and pushed it into the East River at 106th Street, cops said.
They waited three more days, and then, at 2 a.m. last Friday, they allegedly put the father’s body into another laundry sack, carried it to the same spot and threw it in the water.
Nine hours later, a passerby spotted the bag floating near East 61st Street and called cops.
The father’s body was found clad in pajamas, with the raincoat belt wrapped around the neck. Cops were unable to identify it.
Police say Connie and her boyfriend took $1,000 cash belonging to her parents and some jewelry, which they pawned, and moved into a YMCA on West 63rd Street.
The crime was finally uncovered when Connie’s sister Teresa, 34, who lives in Brooklyn, went to police at the 23rd precinct and told them she hadn’t heard from her parents in days and she feared Connie had run off with her boyfriend.
Cops concluded the body found in the river last week was Leung’s and began to hunt for the young lovers, finally tracking them down at the Y.
Taylor said the pair confessed, but showed no remorse over what they’d done.
They were charged with murder.
Police divers were still searching for Mrs. Leung’s body.