Many in Dunwoody’s close-knit Jewish community knew Rusty and Andrea Sneiderman, whether or not they had ever met them.
The Sneidermans, parents to two young children, fit something of an archetype: northern transplants, well-educated and civic-minded. When they moved south a decade ago, the college sweethearts fit right in.
Roughly 10 years earlier, Hemy and Ariela Neuman had put down roots in east Cobb, raising three children and volunteering with religious and social groups. The Georgia Tech graduate and his wife traveled in the same affluent, mostly Jewish circles as the Sneidermans, though until last winter the couples had not met.
A favor changed all that.
Ariela Neuman readily agreed when asked by a mutual friend if she’d pass along Andrea Sneiderman’s resume to her husband. Hemy Neuman was an operations manager with General Electric Energy.
Sneiderman’s qualifications and smarts did the rest. She was hired to work under Neuman, overseeing specifications and performance standards for products ranging from nuclear reactors to solar panels at GE’s Wildwood Parkway office, a short drive for the mother of two young children. It seemed ideal.
Less than a year later, on Nov. 18, her husband would be gunned down outside a Dunwoody day care facility after dropping off their 2-year-old son in a crime that’s grabbed headlines for months. Her boss would be later charged with the murder.
The two families’ lives had become intertwined well before the murder, as Andrea Sneiderman arranged a meeting between her husband and Neuman regarding the latter’s career. Interviews and e-mails obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week indicate the two got along well, with Rusty Sneiderman referring to Neuman as “my friend” in subsequent e-mails.
Authorities haven’t released a motive in the killing, and neither Ariela Neuman or Andrea Sneiderman have consented to interviews.
Hemy Neuman faces an April 4 arraignment, four months to the day that he was arrested and charged with Sneiderman’s murder. The case took a turn last week with reports that Neuman and Andrea Sneiderman were in contact before and after the murder.
Dunwoody, especially its large Jewish community, is still trying to process the particulars.
“This is something that just doesn’t happen in the Jewish community,” said Bruce Weinstein, who’s lived in the area for decades and is active in the local Jewish Community Center. He said he didn’t know the Sneidermans, but “I know people who know them.”
“This is really close-knit group,” said Weinstein, 64. “I think that’s why there’s been so much interest in this case. It’s still hard to believe.”
It is only getting harder to fathom as new details emerged last week about the relationship between Andrea Sneiderman and Hemy Neuman.
The two were in “continuous communication” before and after the shootings, prosecutors alleged in an affidavit obtained last week by the AJC. Last month, a DeKalb Superior Court judge signed off on a search warrant for e-mail and cell phone records between the widow and her husband’s alleged killer.
The records may have information “not necessarily illicit” but which “may reveal motive to murder him,” an investigator with the district attorney’s office testified in the affidavit, which was submitted by investigators to obtain the warrant.
Police have not implicated Andrea Sneiderman in her husband’s death.
E-mails obtained by the AJC seem to reveal a close professional relationship. They traveled together to the United Kingdom and Colorado on business. Before they left on the U.K. trip in late September, Neuman sent Andrea Sneiderman a detailed itinerary, including plans to tour castles, take a dinner cruise and perhaps see a West End musical.
It is unknown which of those plans were fulfilled. Roughly two weeks after returning from England, Neuman moved out of his family’s home into a condominium in Buckhead. His marriage of 22 years appeared over, though his wife has refused interview requests.
Six weeks after leaving his wife, prosecutors charge, Neuman drove a rented Kia Sedona to Dunwoody Prep and shot Rusty Sneiderman four times at close range. No motive has been identified.
Sneiderman met his wife’s boss only a couple of months before his death. They had lunch Aug. 12, a meeting set up by Andrea on behalf of Neuman, who wanted out of GE, having complained of bearing “more responsibility” minus any promotion.
“I can see why Andrea is enjoying working with you,” Sneiderman wrote in an e-mail after that Aug. 12 lunch.
The two swapped collegial e-mails after their meeting, and Sneiderman forwarded Neuman’s resume to potential contacts, referring to the 48-year-old as “my friend.”
Neuman made contact with several of the sources provided by Sneiderman before and after the 36-year-old’s death. In one e-mail conversation with a childhood friend of Sneiderman’s after the shooting Neuman wrote, “So tragic and unfortunate ... Hard to find the words.”
In her only public comments about the case, Andrea Sneiderman said she was “shocked” to learn of her former supervisor’s arrest, saying she had thought of him as a “friend of our family.”
About the Author
