Hanison repeated that he should go to counseling and that he should be able to face his wife and children and tell them he’d done everything he could to save the marriage. As he had with White, Hemy didn’t respond.
The next day, Ariela Neuman called Hanison for an update on the dinner. Hanison told her said she had urged him to go into counseling, but Hanison couldn’t bring herself to reveal that Hemy admitted to an affair. Since Ariela never asked directly, Hanison never offered. “She and I were not the closest of friends,” Orna later said, “so I felt I would probably do more harm than good.”
After going over his personal issues with Melanie White and Orna Hanison, Hemy made a major life decision. On Sunday, October 3, while still in Houston, he sent an email to his wife, children, and fifteen relatives and friends including White.
“Dear Reli/Lee/Tom/Addie/Family/Friends,” he began. “I am writing this to everyone so as to prevent any confusion or misunderstanding. I know this hurts … I am sorry to everyone. I do love all of you very much.” He then addressed each person individually, starting with his wife. “Reli,” he wrote, “This morning I got up to yet another discussion about our future. Do you deserve to have an honest discussion … yes. But the truth is that I needed time to sort out my feelings, to understand, after all we went through, how I can make it happen.” He had come to the conclusion that while he tried to be more open about his feelings with her in the last month and had tried to be more affectionate—massaging her and holding her, kissing her and cooking for her—it still wasn’t enough for her, or him. Although he still considered her a “beautiful wonderful person,” and despite their “22 mostly wonderful years” together with three children, “this relationship is destructive.” The fault, he said, lay with him. Writing in staccato form with his thoughts separated by ellipses, he said, “I’m fucked up … probably … do I need help … probably.” Another trip to the therapist, he believed, would do no good. The children will be affected, he know, but he had to end it. “You have been a wonderful wife … no longer for me, unfortunately not anymore.”
To his children, he wrote, “Lee/Tom/Addie, I wish it was different. I wish you didn’t hate me right now. But you do.” Hemy insisted that he tried to make the marriage work but that the last “2.5 weeks” convinced him that to carry on would only result in him “hating myself, hating my life.” He noted that he had gone out into the garden and prepared it for the winter. “That’s who I am … I take care of those I love and I do not absolve myself of any responsibility,” he wrote. “Not to you. Not to your mother. Ever. I love you. I will always be there for you.”
Finally, in a section addressed to “Family/Friends,” Hemy acknowledged that they must feel “extremely disappointed” at the collapse of something that “all seemed so perfect” but said it was a facade. “I keep it all in … I have my poker face.” He urged them to support his wife and that he would be speaking to them all shortly. He signed the email, “I love you all, Hemy.”
The next day, October 4, Hemy returned to Atlanta—and moved out. He’d eventually end up in the apartment of family friend Ruthy in Buckhead.
The public airing of their private troubles in the email left Ariela embarrassed, stunned, and, she’d soon find, in a financial bind. This was in stark contrast with Hemy, who seemed relieved. About two weeks later, he had after-work drinks with an old friend at the Crown and Prince, a pub around the corner from GE Energy. James Vono, a fourteen-year GE employee, general manager of global operations for field services, in charge of the organization that fixes power plants around the country, used to supervise Hemy. From 2007 to 2010, they’d see each other a couple of times a week, emailed each other frequently, and collaborated on projects. Vono held Hemy in high esteem for his logical thinking and organization. They occasionally socialized, a couple of times after work and at office holiday parties.
Vono would later estimate they went to the pub on October 17. About to leave his position at GE, Vono told Hemy that he might be interested in the job. But Hemy had other matters on his mind. Usually reticent to talk about his personal life, Hemy now shared that he was going through a divorce, had moved out of the house, and was struggling to put two of his kids through Georgia Tech. Somber as he ticked off his problems, Hemy perked up when he mentioned he had met a woman and that they “were together,” Vono later said. Hemy said the woman was married with children, but considering leaving her husband. Hemy shared that he was in love with her and that they had amazing sex—“like magic,” in his words. She made him feel young again, like he was back in high school.
Hemy did not give her name and Vono didn’t ask, figuring if Hemy wanted to say it he would. (Although he worked at GE, Vono didn’t know Andrea Sneiderman—he’d later say that if he had met her in the office, he didn’t remember her.) The conversation left Vono uneasy. Though friends for a long time, Hemy had never confided in him like this.
* * *
Within days, the newly separated Hemy hit the road again with Andrea for a second trip to Greenville. On the way to Andrea’s house to pick her up, Hemy called Melanie White. “He was really excited,” she recalled, adding that the hotel reservation called for adjoining rooms. They checked in to the Hampton Inn on Saturday, October 21, 2010. The reservation originally called for two rooms anywhere in the hotel; it was changed to two adjoining rooms, according to travel records.
After check-in, Andrea and Hemy went down the street to Pulse, a nightclub/lounge. Open Tuesday to Saturday, Pulse offers live music, dancing, drinks, and sometimes a full dinner. Christine Olivera was tending bar when they walked in at about 8:30 p.m. October is past the busy season and nobody else was in the bar except for the DJ playing tunes. The couple had Olivera’s undivided attention on this slow night, and she’d remember everything clearly.
“I recall the music was playing,” she said later in court. “Mr. Neuman seemed very happy to be there. They ordered their drinks. He had a discussion with me about how happy he was and how nice the bar was.”
Andrea gave off a different vibe. She “seemed a little upset” and went to the bathroom a couple of times, Olivera recalled. It was during one of these trips to the ladies’ room that Olivera asked Hemy if everything was okay with his lady friend and if they needed anything. Hemy said that Andrea was “dealing with a real jerk at home.” That’s why, Hemy said, she needed to be someplace like Pulse, to get away from her troubles. Over the next hour, Andrea seemed to perk up, and Hemy’s mood soared.
“He asked if the band or the DJ played every night, said that the ambience was very nice,” Olivera recalled. “He kept thanking me for the service, and saying that she really needed this, again repeated that she was dealing with a jerk and going through some personal stuff and that she wanted to go out and take her mind off things.”
The two of them went on the dance floor, with Andrea spinning to salsa music. Andrea seemed to be dancing specifically for Hemy, giving him a little show, Olivera said. At one point, he pulled her toward him and they began “groping each other,” she recalled. “He had his hands on her rear end, she was hugging him,” she said, remembering that at one point she had to look away. They kissed about three times. Quick lip-to-lip kisses—“pop kissing,” she called it, “not like making out.” It happened while they were dancing.
After about an hour they started to leave, closing Hemy’s bar tab of $25.35, which he would expense to GE. Hemy asked about upcoming events at the bar and Olivera told him about the Halloween dress-up party at the club. She overheard Hemy telling Andrea that they should try to come back for that. They left “very happy,” the bartender said, their arms around each other.
Over the course of the evening, Hemy and Andrea had a drink or two each, but didn’t seem drunk. “They were fine, they left the bar fine,” Olivera said. “Responsibly, I could let them leave, they were walking to the hotel that they had mentioned.” Her lingering impression was that it was “like a first date.” Hemy’s demeanor suggested he was think
ing: Wow, I got her. Said Olivera, “He was very excited to be with her.”
While in Greenville, Hemy called Melanie White with an update. He told her that he and Andrea had walked by a lake, had a drink, a nice dinner, and went upstairs to the hotel, ending up in the same room, where, Hemy said, “She gave in.”
Afterward, though, “Andrea was very distraught,” said White. “From what Hemy told me, she was very upset with herself and she wanted to sever personal ties with Hemy and just keep it business.” Hemy had a different reaction. According to White, “He could not leave that alone.”
After this, for the four weeks leading up to Rusty’s murder, detectives found no more messages of evidentiary value between Andrea and Hemy. But they remained in touch, both at the office and by phone.
Chad Fitzgerald, an FBI analyst, examined the phone records with specific attention to calls Hemy and Andrea made at critical junctures of the case. Much of what he uncovered detectives could already have surmised. On July 1, 2010, for instance, Hemy and Andrea’s phones both connected with a cell phone tower at the airport in Norfolk, Virginia, while they both traveled there. Later in July, phone records placed both of their phones at the Denver airport—they were calling each other—suggesting that he and Andrea traveled from the airport to Longmont together. And their phones pinged the same cell phone towers in Greenville, South Carolina, when they traveled there in late August.
Other calls, however, raised questions. On October 15, shortly after Hemy split with his wife and moved out, he placed twelve calls and texts that pinged a tower in Marietta near a business on Austel Road called Wild West Gun Traders. Among these was a sixteen-minute call at 1:45 p.m. to Andrea’s phone. A little over two weeks later, the same day that Hemy was in Dalton for the gun show on October 31, he sent a text to Andrea’s phone at 11:34 a.m. The contents of the message were lost; all that could be determined was that the text was relayed by the same tower used by the convention center hosting the gun show. Less than two hours later, he called Parnell’s Firearms and Range, where he arrived the next day with a gun and ammunition. On another day, Hemy called two costume shops—in between he called Andrea.
Finally, the FBI analyst checked Andrea and Hemy’s calls for November 18, 2010. Less than half an hour after Rusty’s murder, at 9 a.m., Hemy made a flurry of calls. Timed between 9:27 a.m. and 10:50 a.m., the fifteen calls pinged a tower far away from GE Energy. Of these, nine were to Andrea’s phone. All of them went unanswered or apparently went to voice mail until 10:30 a.m., when a call between Hemy’s phone and Andreas’s lasted forty-two seconds.
It was at about this same time that Andrea also spoke to Rusty’s father, Donald Sneiderman, and texted her co-worker Alan Schachtely, telling them that Rusty had been shot. Reviewing her statements to police, she claimed that at that time nobody had told her what happened to Rusty.
Had Hemy told her what he had done? Or had Andrea known all along?
* * *
After the murder there were no more emails or phone calls between them that caught police’s attention. Those who saw Hemy at the funeral and shiva said, even in hindsight after his arrest, that they saw nothing unexpected. Al Harris, the audit program manager at GE who had been hired by Hemy, would later describe his boss at the shiva as remorseful, sorrowful, concerned about Andrea and everybody else. “He looked sincerely sorry for what happened,” said Harris later in court, repeating what he told investigators after Hemy’s arrest. “He hugged Andrea for a long time and said so sorry.” Later in November or early December, Hemy reached out to a childhood friend of Rusty’s who had been at the shiva. In an email later obtained by WSB-TV, Hemy described Rusty’s death as “so tragic and unfortunate” and said it was “hard to find the words.” Hemy summed up his feelings this way: “Too much shock.”
Orna Hanison saw Hemy Neuman the week of Thanksgiving, about three or four days after the murder. Hanison had been transferred from Houston back to the Marietta office with a different job title, and Hemy popped by her new office. He gave her a hug, welcomed her back, and said it was great to see her again.
“We must do lunch,” Hemy said, she recalled.
Hanison remembered Hemy as being pleasant. He laughed about his new living arrangements—he had by now moved out of his house—rooming with an older woman in Buckhead, he told her. He jokingly called her his “girlfriend.”
And just days before his arrest, when Hemy had already been contacted by Sergeant Cortellino about the rental car, he showed no signs of stress. He called Hanison on December 3, to wish her a happy New Year, a message he also posted on his Facebook page. Hanison would describe his demeanor as “upbeat” and “normal.”
As for Andrea, she stayed away from work and mostly away from Hemy after the murder. In late December, she traveled to Florida with her parents to go to the synagogue where she was married for what would have been her tenth wedding anniversary. It was then that Hemy sent her the iTunes love song from Bruno Mars.
Then Andrea and and her friend Shayna Citron discussed the police sketch of the killer that had at the time been recently released. According to Citron, Andrea said the longer she looked at the drawing the more she “recognized the eyes.” They looked like Hemy’s.
It was an observation Andrea didn’t share with police.
CHAPTER 13
In early March 2011, the news media revealed detectives’ increasing suspicions of Andrea. “Investigation revealed that there was continuous communication between Andrea Schneiderman [sic] and the defendant before and after the homicide,” said a search warrant affidavit leaked to the press. According to the affidavit, investigators were seeking “information (historical) call detail records, and digital evidence of communication between the defendant and Andrea Schneiderman [sic] and any accomplices or witnesses, known or unknown to law enforcement … that would indicate planning, premeditation or collaboration to commit murder and/or any indication of participation in the murder of the victim.” The affidavit said while this communication was “not necessarily illicit” it “may reveal motive to murder him.”
Other news reports revealed that Andrea’s husband knew Hemy and that the pair had lunch at least once to discuss future business ventures. Then 11Alive news reported on an email Hemy sent Andrea around 2 a.m. on August 8, 2010—three months before the murder—titled: “Raising Good Kids Can Be Easy.” It listed what Hemy called his ten “principals [sic] for raising good kids,” and quoted Hemy with this signoff: “Andrea, that’s it for now, and I’m getting tired. Good night, Mon Ami and thanks for the inspiration.”
The heat was building on Andrea. Her attorney Seth Kirschenbaum told reporters, “We understand that this is part of the investigative process and we continue to cooperate with the DA’s office.” He stressed that the warrant didn’t indicate Andrea was actually involved in the murder, but he did confirm a number of earlier press reports, based on leaks, that Hemy and Andrea had traveled together on business trips to the UK and Colorado, the UK trip including plans for a castle tour, dinner cruise, and possibly a West End musical.
On March 7, Hemy’s wife had had enough. Just days after the first TV reports about the search warrant affidavit, Ariela filed for legal separation. The filing claimed cruel treatment and sought alimony and child support for the youngest of their three children, a seventeen-year-old daughter. It also alleged adultery. “We believe there was an extramarital relationship between Hemy Neuman and Andrea Sneiderman,” said her attorney Esther Panitch.
With a trial date looming, the onslaught of publicity posed a grave threat to Hemy’s hopes of finding an impartial jury. His attorney Doug Peters asked everybody involved in the case to stop making comments that “could unfairly prejudice one side or the other,” but Ariela’s camp had no inclination to let up. As part of the separation filing, Ariela’s lawyer asked the court for a subpoena for “any and all documents, records … or other tangible evidence of communications” between Andrea and Hemy from May 2010 to the present. Pani
tch also wanted to question both Hemy and Andrea, separately and under oath, in depositions. Hemy resisted, and so did the district attorney, the two adversaries in the murder case joining forces for the time being against Hemy’s estranged wife. On March 10, the DA made it official, asking the court for a protective order to shield it from handing over anything to Ariela. “The state objects to the production of the information sought by the plaintiff for two basic reasons: (1) that the information sought by plaintiff could be discovered through other means and (2) that the information could be released to the media,” wrote Chief Assistant DA Don Geary.
The DA’s motion, however, did acknowledge that the “state does possess material and information which responds to the plaintiff’s subpoena to produce.” In the second week of March prosecutors turned over to Hemy’s attorneys three thousand pages of documents as part of discovery. An inventory of the evidence, leaked to the media, included a sign-in sheet from Hemy on November 1, 2010, showing that he practiced shooting at Pannell’s Firearms in Woodstock; evidence of purchase of a .40-caliber Bersa pistol in April 2010—police had not recovered the weapon but had a ballistics report from the scene; reports from interviews with at least thirty people, including GE co-workers; details on how detectives tracked down the silver minivan; and twenty-one various supplemental reports. Among the evidence, according to the inventory, were “material and information” which “prove a romantic and/or physical relationship between the defendant and Andrea Sneiderman.”
Of these bankers’ boxes full of documents, none went to Hemy’s estranged wife. Panitch filed another motion, this one seeking “correspondence, memoranda, business notes, personal notes, greeting cards, gifts, gift recipient cards, internet use, web site registrations, web site postings, electronic and/or cellular communications” pertaining to Hemy. Also requested were “documentation,” “itineraries,” and “receipts” for trips taken by Andrea since May 2010 “whether as part of employment or for personal travel.”
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