It had been a long, tiring day for smokin' hot Corrie Besse.
After her iPhone had been snatched out of her hands on the subway, she chased the robber — helping to catch him — then sat at a Near North Side police station in May while authorities secured charges against him.
What Besse didn't know then was that she had helped nab a suspect in a killing, a teen who two months earlier had shoved a 68-year-old woman to her death down stairs at a Chicago Transit Authority station as he fled another iPhone robbery, according to police.
On Wednesday, Prince Watson, 17, was charged with robbery and murder in connection with the death of Sally Katona-King, the mother of three and church deacon who suffered a fatal head injury after Watson allegedly crashed into her.
Besse said that moments after learning from a Tribune reporter that Watson had been accused of Katona-King's slaying, she told her boss — who noticed she was physically shaking.
"It just hit me so hard out of the blue," Besse, 31, said at a coffee shop.
Authorities charged that Watson didn't learn his lesson after Katona-King's death, robbing Besse and a third victim of their iPhones in the weeks after Katona-King fell down the stairs at the Fullerton Avenue CTA train station.
Watson was also charged Wednesday in an April 17 iPhone robbery at the Sedgwick Avenue Brown Line station.
He had already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to four years in prison for Besse's May 15 robbery at the Clark/Division Red Line stop.
Watson, who has been serving his sentence at a juvenile facility, is expected to be transferred Thursday to Cook County Jail on the murder charge — where he will join his twin brother, Rico, who was charged in September as acting as a lookout in the armed robbery of a taxicab driver, according to court records.
According to their grandmother, the twin brothers have been in and out of trouble since their early teens.
"They were good up to about 14," said Mattie Ashford, 77, who helped raise them after their mother died when they were 3. "Then they started running with the wrong crowd, getting into trouble."
At a news conference at Belmont Area police headquarters, detectives said that after Katona-King's death, they pored over records and surveillance video of similar iPhone robberies on the North Side.
"Store owners and homeowners opened their doors and let us in to watch surveillance video and look at pictures," said Detective John Korolis.
While Watson had come to detectives' attention after the April 17 robbery, police zeroed in on him after his arrest for robbing Besse in May.
Belmont Area Detective Michele Wood said police were aided by an alert officer who saw a video clip of the suspect and thought he recognized Watson from a previous case, she said.
Watson "made a statement regarding his involvement" in the fatal robbery, said Wood, declining to elaborate.
In the interview Wednesday, Besse said she first noticed Watson when they boarded a Red Line train on May 15 at the Chicago Avenue subway stop and sat across the aisle from one another.
Heading to her North Side apartment from a stage management job at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Besse said her attention drifted as she checked email on her iPhone.
As the train pulled into its stop at Clark/Division, Watson got up from his seat and snatched her phone, she said.
"I tried to grab it," Besse said as she acted out how the robbery unfolded. Instead, she was able to pull Watson's New York Yankees baseball cap from his back pocket with her other hand, she said.
Besse said Watson ran from the train car, sprinting through the station as she dashed from behind, screaming, "Somebody stop him! That guy took my phone!"
Two passers-by helped Besse chase Watson up the stairs to the street level, but they lost sight of him. Outside the station, a Chicago police officer on bicycle patrol noticed the commotion.
Besse gave the officer a quick description of the Watson — 6-foot male wearing a dark blue hooded sweatshirt — and pointed west to where he fled. The officer radioed the description to other patrol officers, and Watson was apprehended a few blocks away.
As she sat in a squad car, Besse said, officers approached with Watson, and she identified him as the robber.
"He was feisty with the police," she recalled. "He was like, 'I didn't do this! Let me go!'"
Police said they investigate 30 or more CTA train robberies a month on the North Side alone, mainly along the Red and Brown lines. IPhones are by far the most popular targets, police said.
Police suspect Watson was selling iPhones, which can go for about $300 apiece, for cash on the street.
Watson's grandmother, who worked for the state unemployment office for almost 30 years, sat on her sofa Wednesday and ate an ice cream bar as she talked in a matter-of-fact tone about the tragedy of her youngest grandsons' lives.
After their mother's death in 1997, Prince and Rico were often left in the care of older siblings, including their sister, Marshalla Johnson, Ashford said. The siblings — all college graduates — tried their best to mentor the twins, but it fell on deaf ears, she said.
"They would give them good advice, tell them to stay in school," Ashford said. "But they just took a wrong turn."
In August 2010, Johnson, 28, a day care worker and former standout basketball star at Marshall High School, was fatally shot in her West Side apartment, allegedly by her husband, Simon Simmons. He is being held without bond in County Jail while awaiting trial, records show.
A month after his sister's murder, Rico Watson was charged as an adult in the cabbie's armed robbery.
"They had money; I don't know why they did those things," Ashford said of the twin brothers. "I guess they wanted more money."
Ashford said she knows that Prince Watson did not mean to kill anyone.
"I saw the story about the lady's death, and I thought it was horrible," said Ashford, shaking her head. "I just never thought someone in my family could be involved in that."
