After a week dominated by the victim’s widow, jurors in the Hemy Neuman murder trial on Monday finally heard from the defendant.
But Andrea Sneiderman's name was not lost amid the questioning by investigators on Jan. 4, 2011, when Dunwoody police grilled Neuman for roughly five hours. By the time they were finished Neuman, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, was charged with fatally shooting Rusty Sneiderman.
“The only thing I can think of, why you're not coming out, is that someone else was involved,” Det. Gary Cortellino tells Neuman on a video played for the jury. “I think it includes someone else,” the detective says, mentioning Rusty Sneiderman’s widow by name.
“I think this was a plan,” Cortellino continues. “How else would you know where to go?
Neuman dismisses the speculation, much as he does the evidence that places him at the scene of the crime. Andrea Sneiderman, who worked under Neuman at GE Energy, has not been charged in connection to her husband’s death.
Investigators had zeroed in on Neuman after discovering he had rented a silver Kia Sedona matching the description of the vehicle seen speeding away after the shooting in the Dunwoody Prep parking lot.
“Am I going to need a lawyer?” Neuman asks detectives after he is read his Miranda rights.
Last September, Neuman, through his lawyers, acknowledged shooting the Dunwoody entrepreneur. His attorneys say he could not differentiate between right and wrong when he shot Sneiderman four times at close range on Nov. 18, 2010.
He admits nothing in the Jan. 4 interrogation.
“You were there when Rusty got shot,” Cortellino tells Neuman, now 49. “I know you were. That van was there. I’ve got it on video.”
Cortellino notes the suspect is “shaking like a leaf. I gotta wonder about that,” he says.
“Of course I’m shaking,” Neuman says. “Look at this setting. Look at what you’re accusing me of.”
Neuman repeatedly denies being at Dunwoody Prep the day Sneiderman was killed.
“I don’t see how you can place me there,” he says. “I was not there.”
Neuman also divulges few details about his relationship with Andrea Sneiderman, telling them they were just friends. Neuman said he found her attractive and told her so but Sneiderman “basically said no,” telling him she was committed to her marriage.
Their relationship was the focus of much of the testimony during the trial’s first week.
Andrea Sneiderman, barred from the DeKalb courthouse last week after prosecutors alleged she interfered with witnesses, called Neuman six times after being told by Dunwoody Prep’s assistant director there had been an accident. She testified last week the school official would not tell her what had happened, saying only her young son was not involved.
However, a close friend of Andrea Sneiderman’s, along with her father-in-law, testified that she notified them that Rusty had been shot before she arrived at Atlanta Medical Center. Sneiderman testified that she first learned of the shooting at the hospital, where an emergency room doctor broke the news.
She also faced tough questions from both the prosecution and defense about why she waited nearly a week to tell police she suspected Neuman was her husband’s killer. Prosecutor Don Geary accused her of leading investigators “down a rabbit hole,” though, on the videotape played in court Monday, Cortellino tells Neuman that Sneiderman had just visited with police and told them she had a gut feeling her former boss was the shooter.
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