“As a result of the finding of the jury and based upon all the facts and circumstances I’ve heard today, I’m going to sentence you to prison for life without parole. As to count two, I’m going to sentence you to five years in prison to run consecutively to count one.”
He reminded Hemy that he had the right to file an appeal, then said, “At this point in time I’m going to direct Deputy Moore and his assistants to take you in to custody.” He nodded to the deputy. “At this point in time, you may take him into custody and I will sign the sentence. Everyone else with the exception of lawyers remain seated.”
A guard handcuffed Hemy behind his back. The metallic click could be heard throughout the courtroom. Hemy glanced at his mother as he was led away.
* * *
Hemy was barely back in his holding cell when attention immediately shifted back to Andrea. Absent from the verdict and sentencing of the man who murdered her husband, Andrea responded in a statement from her lawyer.
“Andrea is grateful and relieved by the jury’s guilty verdict and sentence. Nothing can bring back her husband, but it is reassuring to her that, after all of the noise and distractions surrounding this case, some measure of justice has been done for Rusty.
“Rusty’s family misses and mourns him every single day. But today, at least, the family can be comforted by the fact that his killer will spend the rest of his days behind bars.
“Rusty was an amazing man and a wonderful husband and father. He is missed every day by so many. The world is worse off without him.
“This trial has been extremely difficult for Andrea and her family. They need time to grieve and time to heal. As such, Andrea has no plans to make any further public statement at this time. We respectfully ask that the public and the media respect this decision in the interest of the rest of the Sneiderman family.”
Others had plenty more to say. “The entire truth has not been presented,” Hemy’s attorney Doug Peters told reporters. “Hemy Neuman was as good of a man who ever walked this earth until he met Andrea Sneiderman … Andrea Sneiderman should be charged with murder in the first degree. I think she preyed upon him and used him to commit the crime.”
Rusty’s brother agreed. “We know she lied about her involvement with Neuman,” Steven Sneiderman said. “We will have no peace until everyone involved in Rusty’s death is brought to justice. It is clear to us that Andrea is covered in Rusty’s blood. And there aren’t enough rabbis in the world to wash that blood away.”
District Attorney Robert James had just won the biggest conviction of his career and all anyone wanted to talk about was the next possible prosecution.
“Guilty is guilty,” he told reporters. “Justice has been served here. I want to thank God that finally, after a year and a half or more, this family—a good family—is able to begin the process of healing.”
But he acknowledged that his office would now have to deal with the “thousand-pound pink gorilla in the corner,” as he called Andrea. “It’s something we’re looking at. I know it’s important to this family. It’s important to America. But as a prosecutor I have an obligation to follow the facts … and make a decision that seeks justice.”
Pressed on when he may make that decision, he said, “Stay tuned. When we know something, y’all will know.”
CHAPTER 23
On Saturday, March 2, 2012, Donald Sneiderman had sent Andrea an email. The trial of Hemy Neuman was winding down with mental health experts debating Hemy’s sanity at the time of the murder. It was a weekend break. Donald asked to visit his grandchildren for ice cream.
“Unfortunately, we are not available this weekend,” Andrea emailed back. “You can try to schedule something for next weekend.”
Two weeks later, with the verdict in and Hemy sentenced to life in prison, Donald asked again to see the grandchildren.
“This will probably be our last weekend in Atlanta for a little while,” he wrote. “We would like to see Sophia and Ian on Saturday evening perhaps for ice cream again.”
Andrea replied, “Don, I am sorry but tomorrow just doesn’t work with our schedule. We will set something up whenever you can in the future. We just can’t make it this weekend.”
In March 2012, after a year of frustrated attempts to see their grandchildren, Donald and Marilyn Sneiderman sued for visitation, invoking the language of the most bitter custody battles. A family devastated by the murder of Rusty Sneiderman now was being torn apart by his death.
“Prior to and subsequent to the death of the father, the grandparents had a loving, caring and consistent relationship with the minor children,” said the petition filed in Fulton County court, the jurisdiction where Andrea now lived with her parents. “Subsequent to the father’s death, the mother has unilaterally limited and most recently eliminated contact between the grandparents and the minor children.” As a result, the petition contended, “The health or welfare of the children would be harmed unless such visitation is granted.” The Sneidermans said they were also “ready, willing and able, should the court find it in the children’s best interests, to accept primary custody of the children,” the petition states. At the very least, Rusty’s parents wanted a the court to appoint a guardian to “investigate and make a recommendation as to what is in the children’s best interest.”
Responding to the visitation filing, Andrea’s attorney, Jennifer Little, told CBS Atlanta News in a statement that there had been “multiple in-person and Skype visits with the family, the most recent being immediately before the trial began” and that “we confirmed to them that Andrea is willing to schedule visits with her children, just as she has done in the past.” Beyond that, Andrea didn’t want to discuss the matter publicly.
“We believe very strongly that it is not in the best interests of the children for matters related to them to be discussed in the media,” her lawyer said in a statement. “Anyone who has their best interests at heart would recognize that this is a matter to be privately addressed within the family.”
As they did with so much when it came to Andrea, Rusty’s family disagreed. They continued to blast her in the media, adding a publicity campaign to the legal pressure on her. Hemy’s trial had left Rusty’s relatives convinced that Andrea had something to do with his murder and was now covering up that fact.
“We know that she’s lied; we watched her lie on the stand,” Rusty’s brother, Steven Sneiderman, had said in a Today show interview the day after the verdict. “She lied about the nature of her relationship with the killer. She clearly had an inappropriate relationship with him. We know that she lied about critical information that could have led law enforcement to, you know, arrest him much faster than they did. We knew that she lied about when she knew that Rusty had been shot. And those [lies] raise giant red flags and raise a lot of questions for all of us as to what … happens here.”
Steven’s wife, Lisa, added, “The last time I spoke with her, we were speaking right after Hemy Neuman was arrested, and she indicated to me that she felt she was suicidal when she thought of how much worse this could get for her. I immediately was alarmed and I said ‘What do you mean by that?’ She said ‘What do you think I mean by that?’ and I knew immediately that she was in big trouble.”
The Today show was not the only media appearance by Rusty’s family. His parents expressed their doubts about Andrea in an interview on WSB-TV that had been taped before the verdict but aired after. Donald Sneiderman recounted a phone conversation with Andrea shortly after the murder in which he asked her if she had lied to police when she initially said she didn’t know who could have killed Rusty. Andrea responded by hanging up on him, Donald said.
“I thought she knew on January 4,” he said. “I asked her if she had lied to me. All this whole charade has done is confirm everything that I thought. Nothing’s changed my mind … I think she knew. I don’t know what she knew.”
While the Sneidermans went at each other, Hemy’s wife went to court to finish off their marriage. On Mar
ch 22, Ariela Neuman—already legally separated from Hemy—filed for divorce in Fulton County Superior Court. In the petition, she asked the court for everything the family had amassed during their marriage, from their home at 2208 LaSalle Drive in Marietta to “household furnishings and appliances and automobiles, banking accounts, investment accounts, retirement accounts and other property.” Their “substantial personal debts” were the responsibility of Hemy.
But the petition said much more, listing as the grounds for separation what it called the “misconduct” by Hemy, including adultery, “the crime of moral turpitude”—being convicted of murder—and the “cruel treatment” of Ariela. She sought to return to her maiden name, Ariela Barkoni, asked for full custody of their minor child, their daughter, and wanted Hemy to pay for all costs related to the get, the Jewish Bill of Divorcement, “with a rabbi of her choosing.” Struggling to make ends meet on three jobs and Hemy’s small pension, Ariela acknowledged that Hemy’s lifelong incarceration made it unlikely he’d ever be able to pay alimony or child support. But she added a just-in-case clause. “If husband’s current financial position changes then the wife shall have the right to petition an appropriate court to recoup monies not paid since the date of husband’s incarceration,” it said.
The divorce action removed marital privilege that prevented Ariela from being compelled to testify, though her lawyer said she was prepared to take the stand against Hemy all along. “[The state] had enough overwhelming evidence of [Hemy Neuman’s] sanity as well as his guilt, so they didn’t need her,” Esther Panitch told 11Alive news. “I didn’t want her to be subjected to those ridiculous assertions that maybe she helped drive him insane or anything that the defense would’ve come up with.”
A different situation faced Donald Sneiderman, who not only did testify but likely would again. One of the unexpected developments in the trial was his growing importance for the prosecution. Called primarily to put a human face on the toll of Rusty’s murder, he had mentioned that during the tumultuous morning of the murder Andrea said in a phone call that Rusty had been shot. Interviewed after the trial, prosecutor Don Geary told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he had no idea that Andrea would say under his questioning that at the time of that phone call she still had no idea how Rusty had died. “It was the first time she had ever said those things,” said Geary. His boss, District Attorney Robert James, added in the same postverdict interview, “We were surprised she admitted it … We did not expect her to be as forthcoming as she was.”
In the days after Hemy’s trial, prosecutors wrestled with whether they had enough evidence against Andrea. “We have strong beliefs about Mrs. Sneiderman’s involvement,” James told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But, he added in another interview with WSB-TV, “I’m a public official, and I hear what people say, and it’s important to me what people think. But at the end of the day, when Mr. Geary and I walk into a courtroom with a case, he and I are satisfied that we have a good shot at proving that case beyond a reasonable doubt.”
* * *
As a tactical move, the prosecutors had deferred a decision on charging Andrea until after Hemy’s trial, gambling that she would shun taking the Fifth and testify. The gambit paid off. Andrea’s two days on the stand—her sarcasm, defensiveness, and, in the prosecution’s view, outright lying—could be another weapon against her in court. She presented herself so poorly, James believed, that a cold written transcript wouldn’t do her appearance justice. So in April 2012, James took the unusual step of subpoenaing from WSB-TV the video of “the entirety of Andrea Sneiderman’s testimony during the Hemy Neuman murder trial.” Already shown live in the Atlanta area, the testimony could be presented to a grand jury. James didn’t say when or whether that would happen, but Esther Panitch told 11Alive news that “every step that the DA takes to further investigate their case is a march closer to justice for Rusty Sneiderman and may result in the arrest of his widow Andrea Sneiderman for her role in not only his death, but also covering it up afterwards.” At the very least, Panitch guessed, prosecutors would slap Andrea with perjury charges, using her own words and what the lawyer called Andrea’s “level of arrogance” against her. “I think it would take a criminal charge to bring her back down to reality and realize that what she’s alleged to have done is very, very serious,” Panitch told the station. “This is not a joke. This is not a game. This is someone’s life who was taken, and this is someone’s life who will be affected by criminal charges, so the decision [to charge Andrea] has to be very deliberate.”
As prosecutors pondered their next move, Andrea took her first substantive step to fight back. In a blistering response to her in-laws’ visitation petition, Andrea’s lawyers accused Donald and Marilyn Sneiderman of “litigation strategy” to see the kids and questioned the couple’s true feelings about their grandchildren. She said that before the trial they visited the children twice a year for three days at a time. “They may love the children very much,” said Andrea’s court papers, “but they have shown very little outward affection during their visits.” Blasting Rusty’s parents for their statements to the press, Andrea’s papers said, “Clearly that was not in the best interests of the children for their grandparents and uncle to publicly make such terrible accusations about their mother.”
Two weeks later, in early May 2012, the public squabbling over the children ended when the two sides reached an agreement. Appearing in public for the first time since Hemy’s trial, Andrea sat near Rusty’s parents in a Fulton County courtroom to finalize a visitation arrangement, the terms of which weren’t revealed except that Rusty’s parents would be required to temper their comments about Andrea if they wanted to continue seeing their grandchildren.
The deal offered only a momentary respite. About two weeks later Rusty’s brother filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her, pinning blame for Rusty’s murder on Andrea. The petition stated, “On November 18, 2010, Defendant Sneiderman, through her Co-Conspirator, Defendant Neuman, shot and killed Rusty Sneiderman as he dropped off one of his minor children at preschool in DeKalb County, Georgia.” The lawsuit alleged that Andrea “utilized her illicit relationship” with Hemy “to manipulate and influence him to attempt to murder Rusty Sneiderman.” Andrea knew that Hemy intended to kill her husband, the lawsuit alleged, and “actively and knowingly participated in the murder and the planning of the murder.”
In a statement to the media, Steven Sneiderman said he filed the lawsuit “to protect the interests of Rusty’s children for which he worked every day of his life to provide, to protect Rusty’s legacy by making sure the truth about the circumstances surrounding his death are publicly disclosed and to try to bring closure, once and for all, to all of the issues that continue to haunt us.” One of his attorneys, William Ballard, said that Steven would be seeking the millions of dollars controlled by Andrea, including the life insurance payout, “to make sure it all goes to Rusty’s and Andrea’s two children, and not to Andrea.”
Despite the strong allegations, the lawsuit did not provide new evidence that Andrea had either had an affair with Hemy or been involved in the murder. Asked if he had such evidence, Ballard told 11Alive news, “I wouldn’t have filed the case if I didn’t think we were going to make the case.”
The wrongful death case also brought another familiar face deeper into the case. Ariela Neuman’s attorney Esther Panitch now also was representing Steven Sneiderman.
Andrea didn’t let this go unchallenged. In her biggest move yet, she recruited a heavy-hitting legal team led by J. Tom Morgan, a former DeKalb County district attorney, and a lineup of some of Atlanta’s best-known criminal defense lawyers. “We categorically deny each and every one of the allegations in the complaint filed today,” her new legal team said in a statement. “We are looking forward to a vigorous and complete defense to ensure that Andrea is fully exonerated of these false accusations.” The statement went on to say the lawyers were “disappointed” in Steven Sneiderman for filing a complain
t “supposedly to benefit Andrea’s children, when all he is now doing is forcing Andrea to incur legal fees that will, at the end of the day, simply take money out of the children’s pockets.”
In their response, Andrea’s lawyers not only addressed the allegations but took aim at Panitch herself. “Steven Sneiderman and his attorney Esther Panitch have been attempting to try Andrea in the media for months,” they said in the statement. “We look forward to vigorously representing her in a court of law where, for the first time, she will have the opportunity to tell her side of the story. We are also carefully considering our legal options regarding the outrageous and libelous statements that have been made to the media about Andrea, without the benefit of privilege, by various individuals.”
* * *
As the civil litigation ground on, the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office had finally resolved the question of whether it had enough evidence against Andrea. At 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, August 2, on a muggy Georgia morning, armed DA investigators and deputies from Putnam County converged on Andrea’s parents’ house on Blue Heron Drive. With her children in the house, Andrea was arrested, handcuffed, and hauled off in a police car to jail. She did not resist.
A grand jury had handed down a nineteen-count indictment. The charges included malice murder, criminal attempt to commit murder, insurance fraud, perjury, and making false statements to authorities. By noon she arrived at the DeKalb County Jail. Photos by a Fox 5 camera taken from a distance through a chain-link fence showed Andrea in profile, her hair thrown back in a hasty ponytail, surrounded by policemen. She wore white shorts, and her hands were cuffed in front of her.
She posed for a mug shot, grim-faced, her mouth downturned, her eyes averted from the camera.
“Obviously she is in a state of shock right now,” attorney J. Tom Morgan told reporters. “She was arrested with the children in the home with her. She was not even allowed to say good-bye to her children.” Scrambling to file papers seeking bond, the former DA seemed beside himself. He complained that he had offered to work with authorities to turn in Andrea if she were indicted; instead they sent “a SWAT team” to get her while her children were in the house. The first he heard of her arrest was in a phone call from a reporter. He signaled that Andrea would launch a full-throttle defense, conceding nothing, not even an affair with Hemy.
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