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Sun Times
September 20, 2014
Jason “J. Rock” Austin thought he got away with murder, authorities said.
But six years after prosecutors dropped state charges that he’d gunned down an off-duty Chicago cop and his female friend, the 32-year-old drug dealer was finally held to account Thursday in federal court.
Saying it was “very likely” Austin had killed Det. Robert Soto and social worker Kathryn Romberg on the West Side in 2008, U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow sentenced the high ranking Travelling Vice Lord to 35 years in prison.
“You destroyed two innocent lives and deprived their families of their loved ones, deprived children of their parents, friends of their friends,” Lefkow told Austin in front of a courtroom packed with police officers and relatives of Soto and Romberg.
Though they’d had asked for a life sentence, the 35-year term was a triumph for authorities. They in 2008 had failed to convict Austin of the murders after multiple witnesses recanted, but over the course of a week long hearing earlier this month, convinced Lefkow to take the slayings into account when she sentenced Austin for a drug conspiracy.
Lefkow — who found Austin responsible only “on the preponderance of the evidence,” not “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” as would have been required at trial — on Thursday said it was clear Austin had beaten the original state murder case by intimidating witnesses in his West Side neighborhood.
But she told him he “made a slip” in a recorded call from Cook County Jail, in which he criticized a police re-enactment of the murders, telling a girlfriend, “I ain’t have no damn hat on.”
The judge said she also was impressed by an emotional videotaped statement given to police by Terrance Scott, a low level drug dealer who said he was riding in Austin’s Buick when Austin jumped out and murdered Romberg and Soto as they sat in a parked SUV on the 3000 block of West Franklin.
Though Scott later recanted, saying he’d been beaten by police, Lefkow said the video made it clear he was “pouring his heart out.”
“Your lack of respect for the law means that I have little trust that you can change,” she told Austin, who showed no emotion as the sentence was announced.
Evidence suggested he shot Romberg and Soto after mistaking them for rivals in a deadly heroin turf war. But in a brief, barely audible request for mercy from the judge, he did not refer to the killings, saying only that he wanted “another chance to show my family that I’ve improved myself in the time I’ve been gone.”
His sister ran from the court sobbing as the sentence was announced.
Outside court, Soto’s brother-in-law Robert said Soto’s family was glad that “justice was provided.”
And Soto’s niece Amanda, who also asked that her last name not be used, thanked police for sticking with the case seen after the initial prosecution collapsed.
“It won’t bring back my uncle, but we finally have closure,” she said. “Our hearts will be broken forever.”
Chief Nick Roti, who heads Chicago Police’s organized crime bureau and who was chief of detectives at the time of Soto’s murder, was one of a dozen cops who met with Soto and Romberg’s families after the hearing.
“It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “We’ve known from the start of the investigation that Jason Austin was responsible.”
Austin’s attorney Richard Kling indicated that an appeal is likely. Though he said he respected Lefkow’s decision, he said she was wrong to hold Austin responsible for the murders.
The state case that collapsed in 2008 “was stronger then than the case they presented here,” he said.
