newjerseynewsroom.com

BY ADELE SAMMARCO

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Police say 50-year-old Shawn Southerland of Bayonne strangled his girlfriend days before stuffing her body into a suitcase and then dumped it off the Henry Hudson Parkway in the Bronx.

And now four years after that gruesome act of violence, Southerland's request for a non-jury trial has been granted, with Southerland prepared to defend himself, acting as his own attorney.

According to law enforcement, Southerland, whose last known address was 29th Street near Broadway, is charged with murdering his girlfriend, 36-year-old Christie Neely, in the apartment they shared with her 14-year-old son in Bayonne.

Hudson County prosecutors say the NYPD circulated a photograph of Neely and a picture of her jewelry throughout the press and within days, a friend identified Neely's jewelry, which led to the identification of the body by her father.

Police say they then discovered the store on Broadway where Southerland purchased the suitcase in Bayonne.

The Jersey Journal reports a store employee identified Southerland as the man who bought the suitcase on April 4, 2007, three days before her body was found.

According to the Journal report on NJ.com, Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Tim Moriarty said employees reported Southerland exchanging a smaller suitcase for a larger one. Moriarty revealed the results of DNA tests on the smaller suitcase were consistent with Neely having been inside it.

Police say the exact time of the killing is unknown, however the Hudson County prosecutor’s office noted Southerland as refusing to allow Neely's eighth grade son into her bedroom to say good-bye before leaving for school on April 5.

A tip to New York City police led to Southerland’s arrest in Philadelphia in 2008.

This is not the first time a New Jersey man accused of murder has planned to represent himself at trial.

Just last month, a 58-year-old brick mason who acted as his own attorney at trial, was acquitted in the 1978 murder of five teenagers in a case that went unsolved for decades.

After defending himself, Lee Anthony Evans of Irvington was acquitted on all murder counts in the deaths of the boys who disappeared from a Newark street on August 20, 1978.

The Star Ledger reports the not guilty verdict marked a significant defeat for the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, which charged Evans and his cousin, Philander Hampton, with the decades-old, mass murder in 2010.

Police say Hampton confessed to the crime in 2008, but called Evans the mastermind. He pleaded guilty to felony murder and accepted a reduced sentence in exchange for his testimony against Evans at trial. The defense hammered away at Hampton’s credibility while prosecutors had no DNA evidence or fingerprints to link Evans to the crime, and no bodies of the victims.

However, in the case of Christie Neely, her body was recovered and DNA evidence was extracted from the suitcases used in transporting her body.

Neely was one of six siblings and worked as a telemarketer in Manhattan.

Southerland’s trial is expected to begin January 10th in Jersey City before a state Superior Court Judge.