Ariela Neuman had never met Andrea Sneiderman when, at the request of a mutual friend, she passed along the woman's resume to her husband, then a projects manager for GE Energy.
"There is a couple, they have two babies and the husband's not working," recalled the Israeli-born wife of Hemy Neuman, the Dunwoody day-care shooter whose fate is being deliberated by a DeKalb County jury. "I told him, ‘Please, help this couple.' "
Hemy Neuman eventually hired Andrea Sneiderman. The lives of their families would be forever altered.
"He was only thinking about himself," said Ariela Neuman of her husband of 22 years. They are presently separated and Ariela said she plans to file for divorce once a verdict is reached in his murder trial. "I have no mercy, not for him."
Ariela hasn't spoken to Hemy since the night of his arrest on Jan. 4, 2011. Earlier that day she arrived at the couple's Cobb County home to find police cars waiting in her driveway.
"I lost my blood pressure," she recounted in an exclusive interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I couldn't move. I couldn't function for 10 days."
But she was not silent.
"When they told me he had been arrested I told them, ‘I want you to know they had an affair," said Ariela, referring to her husband and Andrea Sneiderman.
She had suspected her husband was seeing another woman in the summer of 2010. It quickly became evident, she said, that woman was Andrea Sneiderman, who has denied, under oath, that she was romantically involved with Hemy Neuman. The defense and prosecution in Neuman's murder trial saw it differently, with both sides alleging she played a role in her husband's death.
"I know who destroyed him," Ariela Neuman said. "He was a puppet."
Ariela and Hemy were introduced to each other in the late 1980s while both were living in Israel. She was a schoolteacher at the time while he was a young engineer working on General Dynamics' F-16 Fighting Falcon. After their marriage and subsequent move to America, Hemy insisted she stay at home to raise their three children.
She was attracted to his "risk-taking" -- "He liked his heart beating," she said. "He always fell on his feet, like a cat."
But Hemy was also a control freak and a bit of a loner obsessed with his career, said Ariela. He bought the couple's Cobb County home without her seeing it. A luxury car, also.
In 2010, things started changing, dramatically and without much warning. Early that year Ariela learned they were in financial trouble. During his trial Hemy Neuman, in videotaped interviews, complained about his wife's spending but, according to Ariela, "he was the one finding the finest restaurants for dinner, taking the nicest trips. ..."
Ariela was supposed to join her husband on a business trip to the United Kingdom in July 2010. But he told Ariela she'd have to remain at home -- "he was too busy," she said.
"He came back a different man. I knew then it had been a honeymoon," Ariela recalled. "I think she blinded him. She led him to a very black corner. But he didn't say no."
Hemy displayed the classic signs of a cheating spouse, according to his estranged wife. There were late-night phone calls, often made outside. "Suddenly he couldn't hear his cell phone in the house," Ariela said.
Ariela confronted him: " ‘It's all in your head,' he'd say to me."
Whenever Andrea's name came up, Hemy grew defensive. "You don't know Andrea, she's very smart," Ariela said he told her.
Finally, in August 2010, Hemy moved out. He told his three kids, all of whom are now in college, that he "needed his space," Ariela said.
But on the night he was arrested, he called "Reli." She remembers little about the conversation, only that he told her he was sorry.
"I still didn't believe it was him. He couldn't be capable of killing someone," she said. "I told him, ‘okay, be strong.' "
The next day, she learned that Hemy had been fired from his job at GE. Not only had she lost Hemy's income, but his benefits, including health insurance. She expects to lose their house as well, and scrapes by working three jobs -- in retail, childcare and teaching -- to help put her kids through college.
"I live by pennies," Ariela said. "But I will keep smiling, I will keep being happy. I will keep my family moving on."
She doesn't like to discuss the impact their father's arrest has had on their college-aged children. They didn't want to believe he was having an affair.
"We are a family. We're still together," Ariela Neuman said. "He decided to go. It was his decision."
Now, they must deal with the knowledge that their father is a killer. None of the children have visited Hemy in jail, she said. They have also avoided his trial, as has Ariela, who was not subpoenaed to testify. She said she would have testified had she been asked.
Hemy Neuman acknowledged shooting Rusty Sneiderman but, his lawyers argued, he was not culpable because he couldn't differentiate between right and wrong. Two defense mental health experts testified Hemy suffered from bipolar disorder.
Ariela said she doesn't buy his claim of insanity.
"He's not crazy, he's a faker," she said. "He did something so bad, he has to pay for it."
Ariela last saw her husband in August, at a motions hearing after the defense had challenged a search warrant of the couple's home. She largely avoided eye contact with Hemy.
"I delete this part of my life," said Ariela Neuman, adding she plans to change her name. "Unfortunately, I was married to the wrong guy."
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