Crazy for You

by Michael Fleeman

  Sergeant Gary Cortellino called it on December 26. Hemy Neuman answered.

  CHAPTER 6

  For all the discussion of Hemy Neuman, he had not become a priority of the investigation. Nobody went looking for him. Nobody tried to call him or compared the sketch to Hemy. Nobody looked into whether he drove a silver Dodge Caravan or even wondered where he was the morning that Rusty Sneiderman was murdered or if he had an alibi, despite Thompson’s assertion to Andrea that due diligence would require investigating Hemy

  Instead the investigation went in other directions, primarily back to Rusty’s career history and business dealings. Why it happened this way would become a nagging question for the police department and one they would have to answer for in court. “Well, if you could go back in time, immediately when we’d had his name, we’d have went and talked to him, but that’s hindsight,” Chief Grogan would later tell WSB-TV in Atlanta. “We have practices in place so the right hand knows what the left hand is doing, and we certainly learned from that.”

  Thompson would later acknowledge he should have taken down Hemy’s contact information from Andrea as he had that of the exterminator and various business associates of Rusty’s. “I made a mistake,” he said. But he would lay much of the blame on Andrea. He interpreted her comments to mean Hemy’s romantic advance was a fleeting moment that they both quickly put behind them. Had she made more of it, “I would have, as soon as the interview was done, found him and got him for an interview,” Thompson would say. She didn’t, so he didn’t.

  At Thompson’s instruction, a routine background check was run on him on December 15, as was done with all the names that arose in the investigation. It raised no red flags; Hemy’s record was spotless. He had no arrests, no lawsuits, nothing that would draw any attention to him. He was put on the back burner.

  The hand-wringing would come months later. For now, police had the biggest break in the case.

  When Hemy answered, Cortellino introduced himself as a Dunwoody police detective. “I told him that I was investigating a hit-and-run accident occurring in Dunwoody involving a silver van and I had traced that van back to him and that I had some questions I’d like to ask him in person,” Cortellino later said.

  If Hemy caught on to the deception, he said nothing about it. Calm and cooperative, Hemy said he would be happy to meet with the police but that he was in Florida for a few days to attend the funeral of his father’s wife.

  “I’ll call you when I get back to Georgia,” he said.

  Cortellino waited about a week. It was a calculated risk. Police could have swooped in immediately to prevent him from fleeing or they could take their time, learn more about Hemy, and see if he crossed himself up. They chose the latter. Cortellino would later claim that all he knew about Hemy at the time came from the background check: that Hemy was clean and that he worked at the same GE office as Andrea. Though he had sat at the Sneidermans’ dining room table the night Andrea was first interviewed, he later said he never heard her mention Hemy and that she may have brought him up when Cortellino was outside the house; due to a communication breakdown at the police department he didn’t learn what Andrea had told Thompson in the follow-up interview. Cortellino left a message on Hemy’s voice mail asking if he was back in town.

  On the morning of January 4, 2011, Hemy did call back. After Cortellino thanked him for returning the call, Hemy affected the same anything-I-can-do-to-help tone. He said he had returned to Georgia and was willing to set up a time to talk to police. Cortellino said he wanted to do it that day. Hemy had a doctor’s appointment, but thought he could reschedule that. He provided an address in the tony Buckhead community south of Dunwoody.

  It had been decided that Cortellino and his boss, Lieutenant David Barnes, would approach Hemy. They were among the most experienced members of the Dunwoody PD, Barnes with twenty-five years of experience before joining the department as a lieutenant, Cortellino with thirty years, all of it with the DeKalb County police. While Barnes had come from the South and spoke that way, Cortellino was a native New Yorker—and he still sounded like one, three decades in Georgia failing to penetrate his eastern accent.

  They would drive separately, Cortellino heading to an address provided by Hemy, while Barnes inexplicably went to an address listed on the background check in East Cobb, an Outside the Perimeter suburb not far from Dunwoody. It would never be clear why they didn’t have the same address, if this was another instance of a communication breakdown. Also, Barnes would later say that he learned Hemy was Andrea’s boss when a Google search turned up his résumé, not from any reports or word from his own detectives. Either way, while in his car, Barnes got a call from Cortellino telling him to turn around and meet him south in Buckhead. Barnes got there first.

  About seven miles south of Dunwoody, Buckhead is the jewel of Inside the Perimeter living, often called the Beverly Hills of the South. Mansions and sprawling country estates house the titans of business, music, and sports. The address provided by Hemy turned out to be more modest accommodations, a condominium building on Andrews Place. Barnes went to Unit 139. The man who came to the door bore little resemblance to the bearded killer in the police sketch. Hemy Neuman looked very much like the GE Energy executive of his résumé and Andrea’s description: shortish, middle-aged, with mostly gray hair and glasses. He let the detectives in and they made “casual conversation,” Barnes said later, while they awaited Cortellino. Hemy said the apartment was owned by a longtime family friend named Ruthy whom he knew as far back as when he was attending Georgia Tech. When she still had a house, she’d give him a place to go for the Jewish holidays. Repeating what he’d said on the phone, Hemy noted that his doctor’s appointment that day was a follow-up for recent minor surgery and that he wasn’t feeling 100 percent. When Barnes asked if he could try to postpone it, Hemy agreed.

  Within ten minutes, Cortellino arrived. Introductions were made, and the detectives asked Hemy if he would be willing to speak with them at Dunwoody Police Station so they could get his statement on tape. Once again agreeable, Hemy got in the passenger seat of Cortellino’s unmarked 2010 Ford Fusion and Barnes sat in the back—he would make arrangements for somebody to pick up his car at Hemy’s place later. Cortellino drove them north on Georgia 400 and crossed the Perimeter.

  * * *

  The Dunwoody Police Department is located at 41 Perimeter Center East, occupying the first floor of this office building about a twenty-minute drive from Buckhead. It looks nothing like a police station. Identified only by a sign outside the front door, Dunwoody Station has no bars or security windows. It doesn’t have a jail. The trio walked down a small hill and in through a side door hidden from view of the parking lot and Hemy was led into the same interview room where Andrea had given her second statement. Hemy was pinned in the corner flanked on both sides by the detectives.

  “There’s no beating around the bush,” Cortellino began. “You know why we called you in. I’ve been trying to get you.” Cortellino asked for his driver’s license and wrote down his full name.

  “You don’t have any weapons on you, do you?” he asked.

  Hemy fidgeted.

  “You okay?” asked the detective. “You all right?”

  “It’s unnerving to be in a room like this,” he said.

  Cortellino tried to put him at ease. “I hope I don’t make it unnerving for you because I’m not the nervy type,” he said. “It’s not you, it’s the situation.”

  The detective expressed his appreciation for Hemy calling back after returning from Florida. “I mean that was nice of you,” he said. “Some people don’t like calling back. As you said, it’s unnerving but I thought you seemed to be okay with it because you called me back.”

  The detective explained that talking in the apartment “didn’t seem conducive with Ruthy there so I thought coming here would be better.” Seeking to build a rapport, as Thompson had done with Andrea, Cortellino asked Hemy about his background. Hemy related how he’d gra
duated from “Tech,” as locals call Georgia Tech, with a degree in aerospace engineering. He spoke of working for General Dynamics in Israel, then another company in Israel that was bought by GE, “so that’s how I ended up at GE.”

  The interview began pleasantly enough despite the claustrophobic confines of the room. Hemy was dressed casually in a dark long-sleeved shirt or sweatshirt and jeans. A cup of water sat in front of him. The detectives both had on sports coats and were heavier-built than he was. Cortellino sat to his left and would lean forward and increasingly push closer to him, and ask most of the questions. Across the table sat Lieutenant Barnes, reviewing documents and rarely making eye contact with Hemy, seemingly preoccupied with paperwork while Cortellino asked the questions.

  Cortellino urged Hemy to call him Gary, which Hemy did. They joked about Cortellino’s New York accent. Cortellino made self-deprecating remarks about not being as smart or highly paid as Hemy, and affected a wide-eyed interest and envy in Hemy’s corporate world. All the while Barnes loomed silently across the table, poring over papers with a seriousness that suggested he knew a lot more than he was letting on.

  “So General Dynamics was GE at one time?” Cortellino asked. “My cousin worked for them in New York.”

  Hemy squirmed again.

  “You okay?” asked Cortellino.

  Hemy looked around. “Again, I’m feeling great. The setting is just—”

  He didn’t finish the thought. Cortellino jumped in with more questions about Hemy’s time at GE, and Hemy reluctantly answered them, recounting his rise through the executive ranks. Now a quality and operations manager, he supervised twenty-two employees who in turn oversaw a total of thirty-five hundred engineers.

  Cortellino then asked, “Andrea is one of your employees there?” The question came out of the blue. Up until now Cortellino had said nothing about Rusty’s murder.

  Showing no surprise at the question, Hemy said only, “Uh-huh.”

  “How long she been with you over there?”

  “Since April.”

  “What is her title?”

  “She’s the quality manager for our software team.”

  “Pretty good employee?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s got the credentials to do that?”

  “She’s doing great work.”

  Hemy explained that he knew not only Andrea but also her late husband, Rusty. He said he had visited their house.

  “How long have you known the family?” Cortellino asked, all this information new to him.

  “I met Rusty in, I think it was August. We ate lunch. Went to their house. And then went to their house again.”

  “What is the reason? Just socializing?”

  “Yeah, they’re Jewish. Good guys.”

  “What about the other employees? Did you do the same for them? Or was Andrea just because she’s Jewish and you tend to follow—”

  “Yeah, pretty much—again because of tradition and everything.”

  “You said you saw Rusty a couple of days before he was shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where was that? What were the circumstances?”

  “We were working on a project and we had a deadline,” Hemy explained, “and Andrea needed to go home to take care of the kids, so we agreed that we would break it up. She would go home and basically put the kids to bed and I would come.”

  When Cortellino asked the date that Hemy visited the Sneiderman house, Hemy checked his iPad and said it was November 16—two days before the murder.

  “Was Rusty there?” the detective asked.

  “He came around nine,” said Hemy. “We were working at the kitchen table and he did some work at the kitchen table. Half an hour later, he went upstairs. I left there about ten thirty.”

  “What did he do?”

  Hemy described the same celebrity voice-messaging project that Andrea had sketched out for Detective Thompson. Hemy revealed that he, too, was involved in Rusty’s enterprise, if only tangentially. Cortellino and Barnes would later find out this was just one of many things Andrea had not mentioned to Thompson. Hemy said Rusty would bounce ideas off him about the business plan. Rusty had also talked to Hemy about another possible project, something involving communications for police cars.

  As Barnes listened and took notes, Hemy shot him nervous glances. Cortellino inched closer, pushing Hemy tighter into the corner. He asked how many times Hemy had spoken with Rusty.

  Hemy said it was maybe twice in person, other times by phone. He described Rusty as a “really, really smart guy—Harvard Business School.” Rusty had told him about a meeting with business partners in the messaging service who met in Atlanta, one from California—Nate somebody, Hemy didn’t know the last name—who was in charge of the technical end. Rusty told Hemy that the other partners didn’t like this Nate. After the meeting, Nate got kicked off the project.

  “Did Rusty have a lot of money involved in that?” asked Cortellino.

  “I don’t think he did. I don’t know. I have no idea.”

  “Did you put money in it?”

  “Oh, no,” said Hemy. “I’m broke. I’m bankrupt.”

  When Cortellino was asking Hemy about his job, he described himself as an upper manager pulling down $170,000 a year, Cortellino joking that this was a lot more than a small-town detective made. The detective would return to the subject of Hemy’s finances, but first asked how much money Andrea was making.

  Hemy said $125,000.

  “So you and Andrea were working for GE. GE’s all over the world, right?”

  “Right,” said Hemy, explaining that the company had one hundred sites under Hemy’s supervision alone. Hemy spent a lot of time on the road—“It’s part of connecting with people,” he said—while also keeping close tabs on GE’s empire.

  “Does she go?” Cortellino asked.

  “Her team has eight different locations so she might go,” Hemy said.

  Cortellino asked how frequently she traveled with Hemy.

  “We went a few times,” said Hemy, listing plants in Florida, Nevada, and the United Kingdom. He said that he and Andrea had made the UK trip together in September.

  “So how long are these trips usually?” asked Cortellino.

  “The ones here in the US, it depends.”

  “Could it be two, three days?”

  “Nevada, she went for three days. I didn’t go. I went—I had another trip with my boss at that time.”

  “You hired her in April and in September she’s traveling?” asked Cortellino. “You felt that comfortable she can go handle what she had to do?”

  “She’s good.”

  “She’s that sharp?”

  “She’s very sharp,” Hemy said. Her listed her qualities as being able to quickly develop contacts and connect with people, just like him. For the most part she did this on her own without supervision.

  “I did a couple of trips with her as an introduction,” Hemy said, “and get her up to speed, show her the facilities.”

  Cortellino asked, “You were still with your wife at the time? Was everything going all right with you or were things happening with you at home?”

  Hemy said, “There’s conflict,” without elaborating.

  “Did it interfere with your work performance?”

  “No.”

  “Not at all?”

  “No.”

  “How long has that been gong on?” asked Cortellino. “Home-life problems?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say problems,” said Hemy. But he did say he had moved out in October.

  Cortellino asked: “When was the last time you guys traveled together, you and Andrea?”

  “In October,” said Hemy. “I don’t remember the exact date. We went to Greenville, South Carolina.”

  “Was that a day trip?”

  “It was overnight because the meetings were early in the morning.”

  Barnes interjected a rare question. He asked where they stayed in Greenville. H
emy said the Hampton Inn.

  “In your name or Andrea’s?” asked Barnes, writing notes.

  “Each of us has our own,” Hemy said. “She had a room in her name and I had one in mine.”

  Cortellino asked: “Are these trips planned or do they just happen?”

  “They’re typically planned. I mean, that one was ten days before, something like that.”

  “Why did she have to go? Was it concerning her aspect of the company?”

  “Right, what we’re doing, we’re developing a new process, we were developing a new process for developing product, how we develop a product,” Hemy said. “And it was very integral with work that she was doing with that process. So we had to tie that together and so we went to Greenville to work with a team over there.”

  Cortellino asked the question that had been floating out there: “And what’s your relationship? Be honest. What’s your relationship with her? It sounds like more than business.”

  “Not that close,” Hemy said.

  “Did you call each other after work, before work?” pressed Cortellino. “Did you talk to each other on weekends other than work? She must be concerned about your well-being.”

  “My job is 24/7,” he said.

  “Does the rest of the group know you’ve got problems at home?”

  “They know now,” he said, naming a couple of employees in his working group, his boss—and Andrea. “My performance didn’t slip.”

  Barnes asked, “What was the decision to actually step out and get out on your own? What was the catalyst for that?”