Crazy for You Page 4

  “He thought he was sleeping,” Andrea told Thompson and Cortellino. “But then the person stood up, and Rusty asked him some questions. One, he asked this person, ‘Are you okay?’ And two, ‘Are you supposed to be here?’ Like he would ask a two-year-old. There was no response. Rusty got smart, ran into the car in the garage, backed up the driveway into the street, and called 911.”

  Andrea was at her desk at GE at the time, having dropped off Sophia at the elementary school on the way to work. Recounting what Rusty later told her, she said that the man appeared to be Hispanic. The man fled across the lawn and into the woods behind the house. As he ran, he held something in the small of his back. Rusty didn’t see it but feared it was a gun.

  Their concern was deepened by the fact that the man seemed to know the layout of their property. Had the man run down the other side of the house, he would have plunged into a deep gully. Instead, he went toward a pathway so secluded that only people who lived there knew it existed. Rusty later took Ian to daycare and returned to talk to police and firefighters who had come to make sure there was no danger from the leak. Gas had in fact been released, though it appeared to a gas company employee that the meter had only been falling apart through age and manufacturing defect and not from tampering.

  “The gas guy, when Rusty told his story, said the [man] was probably not just looking for a place to sleep but was stealing copper,” Andrea said.

  Thompson asked if her neighbors had a similar problem with a suspicious person.

  “The neighbors didn’t even know it happened,” Andrea said. “I don’t talk to these neighbors. I’m not a chatty individual. I didn’t go out that night and say, ‘Guess what happened.’”

  Assuring Andrea that he’d follow up on the reports, Thompson next asked Andrea about Rusty’s business dealings.

  “From what I understand Rusty decided to stop working for a paycheck so he could focus solely on getting his own business started?”

  “That’s not what happened,” Andrea said. “Rusty was fired from his last job.”

  “Which job was that?”

  “He worked at Discovery Point.”

  “What was he fired for?”

  “The bosses were assholes,” said Andrea. She spoke at length about Rusty’s rocky stint at Discovery Point—how the owners didn’t appreciate his ideas, how he clashed with them over the future of the company, how the bosses came to distrust Rusty. He was let go in April but able to collect unemployment. Thompson took down the names of the bosses and other contacts at Discovery Point. Andrea portrayed the firing as a blessing in disguise.

  “He finally agreed he can’t work for anybody else,” she said. “He’s the kind of guy who needs to do it for himself. He’s tried many times to work for companies and it’s never really worked out for him.”

  Rusty spent the next several months looking for a business to buy, including the police radio company deal, before plunging himself into the Star Voicemail project. Andrea spoke about the project, saying it had the usual fits and starts. One potential investor didn’t work out, and Rusty and his business partner were pursuing other money sources. Rusty and his primary partner also parted ways with another partner.

  As Andrea appeared frustrated at the extent of the questions, Cortellino said, “We’re going in every direction we possibly can.”

  “I want you to do that,” Andrea said, “but I want you to understand where I’m coming from and this is: I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. The people that Rusty deals with and the way we do business is not what you’re thinking, it’s not what maybe the movies have in it, or all this other shit is.”

  Instead, she reminded them of “this Mexican,” as Andrea described the man whom Rusty saw behind the house. “This man on the side of my house, yes, I could see that man wanting to kill Rusty because he saw his face and he was worried that he might get in trouble. I can see that. That makes sense to me,” she said. “Do you understand? I have no problem with you looking into all this [business]. That’s lovely. You want to ask fifty people looking into our business dealings, great. It kind of makes me feel better. Rusty has done such great work.”

  “We’re going to look into that,” said Cortellino.

  “I see you sitting there,” Andrea continued, “and I want to help you, but I want to know that that other thing is being investigated with the same amount of—”

  “Energy?” offered Cortellino.

  “Energy,” Andrea agreed, “because if you’re not then I think you’re barking up the wrong tree and you’re wasting time. So you understand where I’m coming from?”

  Thompson said, “Yes, absolutely.” He told her that “everything is being done at the same time” in the investigation and warned her against drawing conclusions based on their questions. It was at this point that Thompson spoke of how her family was prominent and how he wanted to get to know them to thwart a smear by a defense attorney later on. He assured her another detective was well positioned to follow up on the mysterious man lead.

  “Our gang officer knows a lot of good snitches … He’s going to help out with anything with the Hispanic side of it.”

  Andrea repeated that the man “had to know” the neighborhood, had to “have been here before.” She suggested it may have been a construction worker from a project on a house behind theirs. Thompson said her information was helpful and he’d pass it on to the gang officer, then asked her more about Rusty’s businesses. They talked more about his wealth management jobs, Discovery Point, and Star Voicemail.

  “Is there anybody in Rusty’s past that you could imagine would want to do this to Rusty?” Thompson asked. As Andrea paused, he added, “Even if you can’t imagine that person doing it himself or hiring someone?”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “He had a lot of wealthy clients—someone with that kind of money?”

  “I understand, but Rusty had the best relationships with all of these wealthy people he’s worked with. Really, I can’t think of one person. I will definitely think about it, but there’s not one—not one—person that comes to mind that could—in his life—that he’s ever rubbed the wrong way like that.”

  As Thompson asked who would know about Rusty’s daily routine, Andrea drew a blank. In the background, a family member said, “We do,” but nobody else came to mind. Then her phone rang.

  “By the way, this is my Baco exterminating guy,” she said reading the number. “He comes into my house frequently, sprays for bugs. I mean I love him, he’s actually great, but I’m telling you that he knows our schedule.”

  Thompson spoke on the phone with the exterminator and set up a time to talk to him before hanging up.

  They were more than an hour into the interview when Thompson broached a subject he had stayed away from because of its sensitivity. The group at the table had now grown to include Rusty’s brother, Steven, a civil lawyer from Ohio. The voices of children and adults could still be heard in the background.

  Thompson asked, “Has there been anybody recently, and when I say recently, within the past year, that has expressed interest in you?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation.

  “Who?”

  “My boss.”

  “Your boss?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Hemy,” she said, and she began to cry.

  “How do you spell it?”

  She spelled his name and Thompson asked, “You know what his last name is?”

  “Neuman,” she said, and spelled that.

  “How old is he?”

  “Forty-six. I have no idea. In his late forties.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Shortish,” she said. “Todd’s height.” She gestured to her brother, who gave his height.

  “How much did he weigh? Is he fat or is he thin? Is he healthy looking?”

  “Todd’s size,” she said.

  “Does he have white hair, black
hair?”

  “Gray and black.”

  “Is he balding?”

  “No.”

  “Does he wear glasses?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anything real distinctive about him?” She shook her head. “No? Now, how is he trying to—”

  “He expressed his feelings for me,” she said.

  “Has it been as a flirtation or has he specifically said: ‘I’m interested in you’?”

  “He specifically said that, yes.”

  As Andrea became upset, Cortellino asked, “You want to continue in private?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s fine. Go ahead.”

  “Has there been anybody else?” asked Thompson.

  “No.”

  “Has there been anybody that’s been interested in Rusty in the same way?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so,” Thompson said. “Okay, anything else to add?”

  Andrea’s mother said, “You didn’t ask if that was reciprocated?”

  “Was it reciprocated?” asked Thompson.

  In a quiet voice barely audible above the household din, Andrea said, “I made it clear that I am not an individual that would do something like this.”

  After Andrea gave Hemy’s title as an operations manager, her mother added, “I just want to explain that she [was] one of the only females amongst a group of males.”

  “That’s not necessarily true,” Andrea told her mother, appearing embarrassed by her interjection.

  Her mother continued, “She’s conducted herself aboveboard. She’s extremely professional.”

  The detectives looked at the woman questioningly.

  “This is Andrea’s mother,” she said, identifying herself for the tape recorder. “I just need for you to know that as soon as that happened she said that to me. She said: ‘I made it very clear to him that I wasn’t interested in him, that this wasn’t going to go anywhere.’”

  Cortellino asked, “You knew about this?”

  “I’m close,” said Andrea’s mother. “She said, ‘I’m going to handle this.’ What are you going to do? Go to someone in HR?”

  A man’s voice, apparently that of Andrea’s father, said, “We don’t need to talk about it as a family now, okay?”

  Her mother continued, “She was just a professional.”

  “I’m not judging,” her father said.

  Thompson made a mental note to continue this line of questioning in a follow-up, one-on-one interview with Andrea at the police station later.

  Thompson and Cortellino segued to the search warrants. The detectives were authorized by the courts to seize the family’s computer and personal and financial papers. Andrea’s mother became particularly animated about it, as did Andrea. They worried about losing the computer and everything on it, including family pictures. They acknowledged that overnight they had already taken some pictures off the hard drive. The detectives said this would be a problem—one that that could be exploited by a defense attorney—and told them they’d have to sign a document saying that the photos were the only things removed.

  Rusty’s attorney brother joined in the discussion, saying that while he wasn’t a criminal lawyer he remembered from his law school classes that the search warrant did provide the power to take everything listed in it even over the objections of the owners. He suggested that the best course of action was for the family to cooperate. They grudgingly agreed, and the house was searched. As the detectives went through the couple’s papers in the upstairs office, they found a document that Donald Sneiderman—as the family accountant—recognized. It was for Rusty’s life insurance policy in the amount of nearly two million dollars, payable to his beneficiary, Andrea.

  When her father, Herbert, saw the bill, he told Donald that Andrea had no idea Rusty was insured for that much.

  CHAPTER 3

  Arlington Memorial Park covers over a hundred acres of rolling hills, nearly a century old and catering to all faiths, with Catholic and Jewish sections. With forested areas, two lakes, and streams, the cemetery is located just off Mount Vernon Road in Sandy Springs, next to Dunwoody. On Sunday, November 21, the casket was lowered into the rich Atlanta soil. Per Jewish custom, mourners took turns shoveling dirt onto the casket, a final sign of respect, though it’s not for everybody. “I can’t do it,” Rusty‘s father would later say, “because I don’t have the stomach for it.” He certainly couldn’t do it this day. He watched as others dropped dirt on his son’s coffin.

  For Donald Sneiderman, the last three days had brought a torrent of emotional upheaval, the events blurred. At the funeral, Donald would shake hands, accept offers of condolences, meet friends and business associates of his son, all the while remembering little if any of it in detail. The nightmare had begun that previous Thursday morning with a phone call to his Cleveland home from Andrea at about 9:30 a.m. “She called and said Rusty had been shot,” he would later recall in court. “She was so, so sorry, and … she was going to Dunwoody Prep to find out what had happened.”

  For the next fifteen to twenty minutes, Donald and his wife had waited anxiously for an update from Andrea. Finally, Donald called Dunwoody Prep. “I identified myself and asked them again what had happened, and the lady who answered the phone there said Rusty had been shot.” Donald was told that Rusty had been taken to the Atlanta Medical Center. Donald sent an email to Rusty’s older brother, Steven, who was traveling to Hawaii for vacation. Donald figured Steven’s BlackBerry would pick up the message faster than a phone call since he was in transit.

  “Rusty was shot outside Dunwoody Prep this morning,” Donald wrote. “We don’t know the details at this time other than he was shot.” He sent the message at 10:38 a.m., ending with: “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  Donald waited a few minutes for Rusty to arrive at the hospital, and then called. He spoke to a physician who at first wouldn’t tell him anything, but then got permission—Donald presumed it was from Andrea. The doctor told him Rusty had arrived with multiple gunshot wounds, that he had not survived.

  Numb, Donald sent another email to Steven at 11:06 a.m.: “Rusty passed away this morning. Don’t know anything else.”

  Plunged into a fog of shock, Donald and his wife made arrangements to go to Atlanta. He called a friend asking to pick up the mail. He called to cancel newspaper delivery. He sent an email to his brother, a teacher, telling him Rusty had died. In the middle of everything his stockbroker had called. An emotional Donald hung up on him when the stockbroker was in midsentence. Donald called back later to apologize.

  At one point, Andrea called him asking for permission to bury Rusty in Atlanta so she and the children could visit the grave. Donald said that would be okay.

  When they first heard something had happened to Rusty, Donald and his wife started packing. Now they repacked to include funeral clothes.

  They took an afternoon flight to Atlanta, rented a car and drove to Andrea and Rusty’s house in Dunwoody, and stayed there for a time with Andrea and the children before checking into the Marriott Perimeter Center, where Steven’s wife, Lisa, had made a reservation. The next day they returned to the house for the police interview and search. Steven canceled his Hawaiian vacation and flew back with his wife to Atlanta.

  Jewish tradition calls for the body to be buried quickly—but the police investigation trumped tradition. Rusty’s body was released to the funeral home within days and Donald placed funeral notices in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Cleveland Jewish News. The notices said that Rusty Sneiderman, a “devoted and loving husband, father, son and loyal friend,” had “died unexpectedly.” The obituary cited his educational and professional accomplishments and charity work. It noted that he was an entrepreneur “in the process of developing a new product for the entertainment industry.” Mourners were asked in lieu of flowers to send donations to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. “Rusty was known for his big heart, and large c
ircle of friends,” it said. “We miss him dearly.”

  His death sent shock waves through the Jewish communities in Atlanta and Cleveland. His murder garnered regular coverage in Jewish publications and become a hot topic of discussion on message boards. Remembrances flooded an online guest book for the funeral. A Harvard Business School classmate remembered Rusty as “being a happy, upbeat, friendly, thoughtful contributor to the school experience.” A family friend described him as a “wonderful(!!) man with a huge warm smile and caring heart” and said his children would always feel their father’s love. One of Sophia’s teachers wrote that the child was “a living reminder of the great and powerful caring force” of Rusty and Andrea.

  Even those who didn’t know Rusty personally were moved by his death. “Please know that you are in my thoughts and that there are people in the Jewish community who are in grief with you,” said one post from the Hillel at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “May you be consoled with the other mourners of Zion and may Rusty’s memory be a blessing for our People and society at-large.”

  The funeral began at 11 a.m. Two rabbis, Rabbi Bortz and Rabbi Mario Karpuj, spoke to a crowd of hundreds. Several of Andrea’s co-workers came in carpools arranged by her boss Hemy, who had previously explained to the non-Jewish employees the customs and traditions at a Jewish funeral. Hemy was among those who shoveled dirt onto the coffin. Mourners then gathered at the Sneidermans’ house to sit shiva, the period of mourning that can last several days. People brought food and offered condolences. Hemy introduced himself to family members, including Rusty’s brother Steven, and spoke to Rusty’s father. “My wife introduced him to me,” Donald Sneiderman later recalled. “I talked to him for about thirty seconds. I recognized the name … It was about thirty seconds or so.” The family asked Hemy to sit up front and say a prayer, which he did. He shook hands and embraced mourners.

  Like Donald, a dazed Andrea would only recall some of the day’s events. Although a shiva is supposed to be a solemn and quiet affair—people are expected to speak in low tones—a house packed full of people and two confused children made for a more chaotic reality. “My children were running around like Indians during that time,” Andrea would later say in court, “not really sure what five thousand people were doing in their house. They were being cared for by most of my cousins and family and not being distracting.” She vaguely recalled Hemy being there, but didn’t know how long. Andrea described the days after her husband’s murder as being one long blur of activity and crowds and little time to properly grieve, much less process the surreal notion that she was in the middle of a murder case. “I was,” she later said, “in a fairly catatonic state.”