Just as he did during the trial of the man eventually convicted of fatally shooting his son Rusty, Don Sneiderman took the stand Tuesday to testify about a much-discussed phone call.
The retired accountant said his daughter-in-law Andrea Sneiderman — on trial on charges of perjury, making false statements and hindering the apprehension of a criminal — called and said Rusty had been shot before she is alleged to have known details of the crime. Sneiderman’s former boss, Hemy Neuman, was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted last year in the fatal shooting in November 2010 in the parking lot of a Dunwoody day care.
Prosecutors replayed portions of her testimony from the Neuman trial in which she said: “I didn’t know what happened to Rusty until I got to the emergency room. No one told me what happened to Rusty.”
Sneiderman placed the call to her father-in-law before she arrived at Atlanta Medical Center, where her 36-year-old husband was pronounced dead.
Defense attorney Tom Clegg said in his opening statement that Don Sneiderman was mistaken about what was said on that call. On Tuesday, he questioned why Sneiderman waited five months to share details of that conversation with the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office.
Clegg’s cross-examination will continue Wednesday, when Andrea Sneiderman’s former best friend, Shayna Citron, is also expected to be called by prosecutors. Citron testified last year that Sneiderman told her over the phone about the shooting as she drove to the hospital.
The defendant’s own words, culled from her Neuman testimony and emails to and from her ex-boss and alleged lover — were front and center throughout Day Two.
The prosecution introduced dozens of correspondences they allege prove Sneiderman was having an affair with Neuman. Many of the 13 felony counts against Sneiderman are connected to previous statements she made about that relationship.
One email Sneiderman sent to Neuman after a business trip the GE Energy colleagues took to Greenville, S.C., speaks of a “betrayal.” In another, she writes: “I feel I have to repent. I don’t know how to live with this.”
Pressed about those exchanges when she testified in Neuman’s trial, Sneiderman said she felt guilty because she had held her supervisor’s hand.
The defense maintains there was no affair and that Neuman’s feelings for Sneiderman were not reciprocated.
“Everything you’re going to hear is based on inference … speculation, a hunch,” Clegg said Monday. “There is nothing that will satisfy your minds beyond a reasonable doubt that this woman has done … anything wrong at all.”
Neuman claimed otherwise, according to his friend Melanie White, whose testimony the defense had attempted to prevent.
White testified that Neuman told her he and Sneiderman were intimate while on a trip to England. The two “decided they were soul mates,” White said, quoting Neuman.
In one email White read aloud on the stand, Sneiderman writes to her boss about “how conflicting this whole thing is.”
White twice said she told Neuman he should “leave [Sneiderman] alone” — testimony the defense referenced in hopes of establishing their claim the relationship was a “one-way street.”
Neuman, found guilty but insane by jurors at his trial, should not be considered a trustworthy source, Clegg said.
Earlier, prosecutors introduced emails between Neuman and the defendant in which he twice professes his love for her. She does not respond in kind but later writes how she is torn between “desire vs. reality. I’m trying to ignore because I have to. Not fair to you I know.”
Neuman also tells Sneiderman he wants to take care of her and her daughter. Soon after that admission, Sneiderman sent him roughly 100 photos from her daughter’s birthday party. The photos were recovered from her work email account, according to a GE forensics investigator called by the prosecution.
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