Lamont Stephenson, listed on FBI “Most Wanted,” gets 31 years – NorthJersey.com
A former Essex County man was sentenced to 31 years and six months in prison for the 2014 murder of his fiancée after five years on the lamb, and is accused of killing a second girlfriend before his capture, prosecutors announced on Thursday.
Lamont Stephenson, 46, was sentenced to 30 years for suffocating his fiancée, Olga DeJesus, in her Newark home, and a separate 18-month sentence for then strangling the couple’s dog, according to the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.
Those sentences are to be served consecutively without the possibility of parole, according to a plea agreement Stephenson signed with prosecutors.
He was charged in the killing but fled and spent the next five years living under assumed names and was eventually added to the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list as authorities searched for him.
Sadly, it was the suspicious death of a 40-year-old woman in Maryland that eventually led law enforcement to Stephenson in March 2019.
Natina Kiah was discovered dead of a stab wound in her Washington D.C. apartment, and investigators identified Stephenson as her boyfriend with the help of her daughter, Jenn-A.
Prosecutors said Kiah met Stephenson when he was living in a homeless shelter where she was employed.
“I sat down and had dinner with this man with my child and my sisters and my mom,” Jenn-A told the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey in 2019.
She said a homicide detective contacted her after her mother’s stabbing, asking her to search online for the name “Lamont Stephenson” and identified the man she saw as her mother’s boyfriend.
Local:Newark NJ man arrested in connection with Belleville bank robbery
Jenn-A said he used names like “Bishop Hollywood” and “Leon Jackson,” however, there wasn’t a sign of trouble in their relationship.
“She was happy, she was smiling, everything was great,” she said. “We didn’t think anything would happen until we didn’t hear from her.”
The case against Stephenson in Kiah’s death is still pending.
In June, Stephenson admitted to Essex County prosecutors that he killed DeJesus in 2014 because he was ashamed to tell her he lost his job at an auto parts store, adding that leading up to the murder, he had been pretending to go to work to keep up appearances.
Nicholas Katzban is a breaking news reporter for NorthJersey.com. To get breaking news directly to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.
Email: katzban@northjersey.com
Twitter: @nicholaskatzban