'Hot felon,' son of a Tacoma murderer, is about to marry a British billionaire's daughter
A felon who became a top model after his police booking mugshot had thousands swooning is the son of a man convicted of killing a Tacoma woman.
After serving a decades-long prison sentence for his crimes, the father of Jeremy Meeks is set to attend his son's wedding to the daughter of a British billionaire.
Meeks, 34, went from jailhouse bad boy to international model when the Stockton, California, police department posted a mugshot of him on its Facebook page in 2014.
The younger Meeks was released from prison in 2016. Since then, he’s walked the runway in Milan and signed a modeling contract. His Instagram account shows him all over the world, posing with celebrities.
His father, Raymond Emerson Meeks, did time for the October 1984 murder of Laura Dawn Leon-Melara, 20, and two drug convictions. She was found dead in her Narrows Drive apartment by her mother.
Raymond Meeks, then 35, was being held on an unrelated rape charge when he was charged with the slaying, The News Tribune reported in November 1984.
Leon-Melara had been stabbed 34 times. An affidavit alleged that Meeks killed her because she had helped hide another woman he had been seeking.
Raymond Meeks was released from the Monroe Correctional Complex on Sept. 17, 2017, according to the Washington State Department of Corrections.
According to British newspaper The Sun, Raymond Meeks, now 68, moved to Kansas and then Texas after his release.
He told the paper his son will soon marry Chloe Green, the daughter of Sir Philip Green. She is allegedly pregnant.
Raymond Meeks met and married Jeremy’s mother, Katherine Angier, in Tacoma in 1983, according to The Sun. Jeremy was born at St. Joseph Medical Center.
“My dad got a life sentence for murder when I was only nine months old,” Jeremy is quoted as saying in The Sun. “Things were hard money-wise and I was always searching for that father figure, that person to look up to and take me under their wing, so I ended up in the gang life.”
Jeremy has numerous tattoos, including a tear drop under one eye. He was incarcerated for grand theft and gun possession.
Philip Green is the owner of several retail companies. The Mail calls him Sir Shifty. In 2015, he sold one of his companies for one British pound. It eventually was revealed that the company had an $800 million pension shortfall.
This story was originally published April 12, 2018 at 8:00 AM with the headline "'Hot felon,' son of a Tacoma murderer, is about to marry a British billionaire's daughter."