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09-14-2010, 11:20 AM
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Man Gets Life in Pearland Cadillac Killing
Nicholas Michael Jean, 22, was sentenced to life in prison without parole after pleading guilty to capital murder in the gunpoint abduction and killing of Susana Puente De Jesus, 37, outside a Pearland, Texas, shopping center on February 2, 2009. De Jesus had just finished a shift at a women's clothing store when a masked gunman approached her near her Cadillac about 9:15 p.m., according to the Brazoria County Sheriff's Office. A co-worker saw the man order De Jesus into the car and drive away, then stayed in her own vehicle until she felt safe, investigators said. The report reached authorities secondhand, according to the account on the 911 recording. The shaken co-worker had contacted a relative, who relayed the report to Brazoria County dispatchers. De Jesus's Cadillac was later located through its OnStar system, but she was not with it. News coverage of the case said De Jesus managed two brief cell phone calls after she was taken, one to a relative saying she would be late and another to a friend asking whether the car could be tracked. Then her trail went cold. The case broke weeks later, when Jean was arrested in an unrelated carjacking. Jean, an Army veteran discharged only weeks earlier after a short and troubled stint at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, told investigators he had singled out De Jesus for her Cadillac and her cash, a motive police called one of "straight-up greed." He led detectives to her body. De Jesus's remains were found March 10, 2009, inside an abandoned tractor-trailer parked in a field near Reliant Stadium in Houston, according to police. She had been shot. Jean pleaded guilty to capital murder on May 26, 2010. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but a Brazoria County jury rejected it on June 25, 2010, and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A second man, Wallace Ledet IV, a high school friend who had driven Jean to the shopping center, pleaded guilty to aggravated kidnapping that September and was sentenced to 13 years.
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