Dunwoody Day Care Killing: Trial Begins for Georgia Engineer Charged With Murder - East Idaho News
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Dunwoody Day Care Killing: Trial Begins for Georgia Engineer Charged With Murder

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022112 Hemy NeumanMugshot?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1329868400694Dunwoody Police Dept(ATLANTA) — The murder trial of a Georgia engineer charged with killing his colleague and alleged lover’s husband began Tuesday in Atlanta with starkly different tales of romance, betrayal and insanity in attorneys’ opening statements.

Hemy Neuman, 48, was a high-level operations manager at General Electric when he shot and killed Andrea Sneiderman’s husband Rusty Sneiderman, 36, in the parking lot of Sneiderman’s son’s preschool.

Andrea Sneiderman worked for Neuman at General Electric and they were allegedly involved in a hot-and-cold affair.

Neither the defense nor the prosecution denies that Neuman pulled the trigger and killed Rusty Sneiderman, but they tell divergent stories of what led to the killing.

Neuman pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Neuman’s defense attorney Doug Peters said in his opening statements that Neuman believed he had been visited by an angel and demon in the forms of Olivia Newton-John and Barry White, respectively, that told him that Sneiderman’s children were his and that he needed to protect them by killing her husband.

Peters said mental illness runs in Neuman’s family and his troubled past could be traced back to his family being taken to Auschwitz by the Nazis, a violent father and boarding school.

Neuman eventually married and became the father of three children — 21-year-old twins and an 18-year-old daughter.

Andrea Sneiderman worked for Neuman at GE and in May 2010, they took their first business trip together and began having conversations about their personal lives. Peters went on to describe numerous romantic business trips, hours spent on the phone and hundreds of personal text messages exchanged between the two.

The defense contends that although Andrea Sneiderman at times said she would never leave her husband, she encouraged Neuman to envision a life with her and her children. These messages and his troubled background, the defense said, were what led Neuman to hear demons and angels that commanded him to murder Rusty Sneiderman.

Andrea Sneiderman was in court and shook her head and let out sporadic sobs as Peters spoke.

“Marry me,” Neuman wrote in a text message read by Peters. “You think I’m crazy and your intentions are clear. Sleep on it. I will give you, Sophia and Ian the world. Together we can make it all work. Marry me.”

In an email, Andrea Sneiderman wrote to Neuman, “Desire versus reality is a world I’m trying to ignore because I have to. So sorry, not fair to you, I have other thoughts but not the time right now.”

“We know what happened; this case is about why. … How could this have ever possibly taken place?” Peters asked the jurors. “This man should not be released, he should be confined as the law provides, and held as the law provides. This man is not guilty by reason of insanity.”

The prosecution told a very different story.

“It’s a case of violence where a man wanted someone else’s wife, so he killed her husband,” DeKalb County Chief Assistant District Attorney Don Geary said in opening statements Tuesday. “He got caught.”

The prosecution painted Neuman as a calculating killer who planned Sneiderman’s shooting for months — going to gun shows, taking a gun safety course, going to target practice, renting a car for the shooting and wearing a disguise.

Geary also painted a picture of Rusty Sneiderman’s last morning and how unsuspecting he was as he dropped his 2-year-old son Ian at a Dunwoody day care.

“Ian enjoyed spending time with his father and spending time with his friends at day care, didn’t know that shortly his loving father, his hero, would be gunned down,” Geary said. “Ian didn’t know that he was about to see his father for the last time. Ian didn’t know that there would be gunshots and that would be the end.”

“As Rusty walks to car, Hemy Neuman approaches him, walking towards him, and shoots him three times — here, here, and here,” Geary said as he demonstrated the motions. “As Rusty falls in the parking lot, dying, Hemy Neuman isn’t satisfied. He walks up and at contact puts the 40 caliber on Rusty’s neck and fires one last time.”

Geary expressed his skepticism at the idea that Neuman, an engineer who managed more than 5,000 engineers and an $800 million budget, decided to kill a man without question after being visited by angels and demons resembling celebrities.

Geary said Neuman “doesn’t come close” to meeting the requirements for legal insanity.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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