Investigators testified Friday that Andrea Sneiderman did not disclose details about her relationship with her boss until after he was arrested and charged with killing her husband.
“She never directly said that she believed (Hemy Neuman) was responsible for the murder of Rusty (Sneiderman),” Dunwoody Deputy Police Chief David Sides said. “The first time we ever heard anything about (that) was Jan. 5 (2011)” — one day after Neuman’s arrest.
Prosecutors on Friday played videotape of that interview in which Sneiderman, on trial on charges including perjury, repeatedly said her supervisor at GE Energy was “crazy.” She had previously told police, in an interview on Nov. 19, the day after Rusty Sneiderman was gunned down outside the Dunwoody Prep day care, that Neuman had made a pass at her but added she had made it clear she would not leave her husband and that the two remained friends.
Sneiderman did not inform investigators that Neuman had asked her to marry him, Sides testified. She also failed to disclose a phone call she placed to Neuman following that first interview with police in which she allegedly asked him whether he had shot Rusty Sneiderman.
“If we had known Hemy Neuman had professed marriage to Mrs. Sneiderman, we would’ve gone and found him right then … the moment we found out that information,” Sides said.
Andrea Sneiderman, 37, faces 13 felony counts that also include charges of making false statements to police and hindering the apprehension of a criminal. She has denied engaging in an inappropriate relationship with Neuman, sentenced to life in prison last year for fatally shooting Rusty Sneiderman.
Andrea Sneiderman’s former best friend, Shayna Citron, said Friday that she did not believe her denials of an affair.
Citron testified Thursday that she concluded her friend had “checked out of her marriage” after meeting her for lunch two months before Rusty Sneiderman’s death.
“Her eyes were dark and cold when she was speaking about Rusty,” Citron said. “When she was speaking about her boss, her eyes were sparkling.”
Citron, who was in Arizona at the time of the shooting, returned to Atlanta the next day and said she implored Sneiderman to tell police about Neuman.
“The first thing she said to me was, ‘It wasn’t supposed to be this way,’ ” Citron testified.
Before Neuman’s arrest in January 2011, Citron said her friend told her the eyes of the suspect sketched by the GBI “looked like Hemy’s.” But Sides said Sneiderman never shared that information with investigators.
Sneiderman defended her actions in the Jan. 5, 2011, interview with police.
“I sat at my dining room table on the Friday after this happened and (Detective Andy Thompson) asked if anyone had shown interest in me and I gave him Hemy’s name immediately,” she said.
Sneiderman’s defense team has gone after police for the way they handled the murder investigation, saying they never followed leads their client provided.
Meanwhile, defense co-counsel J. Tom Morgan suggested that Citron, who broke down repeatedly as she recalled the final days of Rusty Sneiderman’s life and her relationship with the defendant, had manufactured her emotions.
Citron had not cried during interviews with police or during her testimony in Neuman’s murder trial, Morgan said.
“It’s very hard being here,” Citron said. “Andrea was my best friend.”
She later acknowledged she was more thorough on the stand than in interviews with authorities investigating the shooting.
“When’s the first time you told police about her checking out of marriage or the sparkle in her eye” when discussing Neuman, Morgan asked.
Citron said that “in the months after Rusty’s murder I wanted so deeply to believe in her.”
The lead detective investigating the shooting testified Thursday that Sneiderman steered police away from her boss.
The defense will continues its cross-examination of Sides when court resumes Monday morning.
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