O.C. Woman, 81, Gets 25 Years in Prison
An 81-year-old Lake Forest woman who pleaded guilty to murdering the father of her great-grandson was sentenced Thursday to 25 years to life in prison.
“She’ll be in her hundreds before she’s eligible for parole,” said Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office, following Jeane Ellen Allen’s sentencing in Orange County Superior Court.
Allen had been charged with first-degree murder, with an enhancement for use of a firearm, in the Jan. 28 shooting of Alex L. Reyes, 26, on the porch of her home. Authorities said she shot Reyes, the former husband of her 24-year-old granddaughter, after he arrived on a Saturday morning to visit his 18-month-old son. The granddaughter and the boy lived with Allen in the 25000 block of Coral Wood Street.
Reyes, Allen and his former wife, Leslie Bieg, were talking on the porch while his parents waited in a car at the curb, prosecutors said. The court-appointed observer who monitored the visits had not yet arrived when Allen pulled out a handgun and opened fire, they said.
In a jailhouse interview, Allen told The Times that she gunned down Reyes because she feared he was harming her great-grandson, Anthony Reyes.
The conversation on the porch turned to accusations she had made against him in divorce proceedings, Allen said, and he asked her for a letter of apology.
“I’m sorry,” Allen said, “but at that point, that makes me look like a liar, and I just had it.”
She then opened fire.
Both Allen and Bieg had alleged in papers filed in 2004 claiming custody of the boy that Alex Reyes had molested his son, a charge he and his family vehemently denied.
“He was a good father,” Reyes’ father, Gilbert, said after the shooting. “He was a good son.”
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