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You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good evening, A typical morning in the Atlanta suburbs. Businessman Rusty Snyderman drops his beloved son off at the Dunwoodie Prep Nursery. In the parking lot, a mini van pulls up next to his car. The driver pulls out a gun and shoots Rusty four times in the chest. Sneiderman's devoted wife, Andrea is devastated by the crime. Who could have done this? She is shocked when police trace the shooting to a man named Henry Newman, who happens to
be Andreas adoring boss. The prosecution accuses Andrea and Henry Hemy of having a forbidden relationship and of conspiring to collect two million dollars in her husband's life insurance, but Andreas sware she never intended to kill Rusty, and it is Hemy who is delusional and obsessed. With the charges against her dropped and the insurance money frozen, Andrea remains a mysterious character. Only one other person, the man who pulled the trigger, knows the truth about what really happened.
The book they are featuring this evening is Crazy for You, the true story of a family man's murder, a wife's secret, and a deadly obsession with my special guest, journalist and author, Michael Fleemann. Welcome back to the program, and thank you, thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. Michael Fleeman Thanks Dan, I'm yeah, happy to be here, Thank you very much. First off, tell us a little bit
about set the stage with this Dunwoody village. Tell us a little bit about Dunwoody in this proximity to Atlanta and what kind of suburb is it really?
Yeah, I mean, Dunwoody is an upscale bedroom community just on the Perimeter Loop, the freeway that runs around the Atlanta area. It's a place of very quiet trees, expensive houses, you know, upper class, upper middle class families. You know, it's a quiet, nice, nice community.
Now you open this right away with incredible action just before nine am and November eighteenth, twenty ten, and you open with a silver Infinity G thirty five. It's a real nice car pulled into Dunwoody Village shopping center and in front of the wall of Dunwoody Prep pre School. And you talk about Russell Rusty snyderman thirty six years old, and he's picking his three year old son up, or his three year old son had been in the car seat, taking him to daycare. Tell us what happens shortly after.
Well, Rusty drops his son off at Dunwoodie Prep, very expensive prep school that's also a daycare center, and that should give you an idea of what kind of school it is. They're already thinking the college at age three. And he drops his son off and heads back toward the car, and just then a van pulls up, and
out of the van emerges a man. He's wearing a stocking cap, and as you mentioned in the outset, he shoots Rusty right there in the parking lot in the morning, quiet day four times, gets back in the van and takes off and disappears. And this is the kind of thing that has never happened anywhere in dunwooth He much much less in front of a preschool, and the preschool is located in the shopping center, so the post office
is nearby stores or neboy. Just right in the middle of the morning this murder takes place.
Now you talk about that there are various witnesses. Is a Craig kol Meyer's some people heard the pops. They give a general description that he's about five foot nine to maybe five foot eleven. There's varying reports. There's a beard, there's a be a mustache, and there's this description of the silver minivan. What is the best lead that police have and what do they do with Rusty Snyderman immediately.
Well, they don't have a lot of good leads. In the beginning, Like you mentioned, the eyewitness accounts were kind of all over the map. They did have one eyewitness who got a good enough look at the gunman to provide a sketch kind of a swarthy looking man with
a beard and a cap. But there isn't much, you know, there isn't much in the very beginning, and in fact, the scene is you know, a little bit hysterical, because not long after this happens, Rusty's wife, Andreas, shows up at the preschool and you know, she's she's out of control. She's screaming, she's crying, what happened to my husband? What's
going on here? And nobody would tell her. And so you know, in the media aftermath of the shooting, of course, there's all these children there and they have to worry about the kids, and and so it's a rather chaotic scene at first. And nobody got a really good look at the gunman, except to reveal that it's a man. But a lot of people did see the van and and it looked like a later model Silver Mini van.
Right now, how does how do paramedics and hospital staff deal with Rusty? What's the prognosi as soon as he gets there? And anything along the way that was interesting? After he was shot, Yeah, I.
Mean, he's it looks pretty clear that he's dead. But they take him, you know, to the emergency room anyway, and and uh work on him, and and you know he's he's you know, he's the gunner. He's filled with these forty caliber slugs. We're talking a major gun shot him and they were unable to revive him. And he's declared dead at the hospital.
Now you say that the police are on the way, they go to the crime scene. At first, there's some misunderstanding and misdirected call. It was referred to as an arm robbery. But they finally get there. What do they find in terms of shellcasings or any kind of evidence other than the big, huge pool of blood as you described, Well.
They yeah, they have I'm trying to remember if they actually had the shell casings. You can help me out on this, but they basically they have a guy lying in a pool of blood, pumped full of shots, and you know, they have an aggrieved you know, new soon to be widow. They're trying to keep her away, you know, from the action and the scene. They're not telling or anything because you know, frankly, nobody really knows too much
about what's going on. And you know, she's screaming and yelling and and you know, they're just they're just really trying to contain things. But there's not a lot of physical evidence to work with at the scene.
Now, what is their procedure in terms of who do they talk to first? And who are the detectives involved? You talk about the Calb County, So who is involved in terms of jurisdiction here, and how do they proceed who they speak to first.
Yeah, well, this is you know, Dunwoody is a unique community. It's it'sn't actually it's not. It's part of the Calb County, but it's not part of Atlanta. It is its own little city. And there's some sort of socio economic issues at work here. Atlanta, which has large African American population, also has in places of the city crime. It's an
urban center. Dunwoody is a very white community. It's also a community made up of a lot of they call them, you know Yankees, Northerners who come to Atlanta, the Atlanta area to work at the big you know, Marietta ge work at the big corporations there, and they huddle in Dunwoody. And so Dunwoody was recently incorporated, and it was sort
of incorporated. You know, people tap dance around the issue, but the fact is this is a white community of people who are very concerned about Hispanic and African American coming into their community, breaking into their cars, breaking into their house. So the police department is very community oriented, very responsive to the community, and most of what they deal with is crime from the outside as they call it.
And they're not set up, they're not attuned. The entire city was not even founded on the very vague possibility that somebody within Dunwoody could commit a crime. So naturally, in the very beginning, the mindset is, you know, who came into Dunwoodie and did this to Rusty Center, What sort of outside force could have happened? And so that was the mindset from the beginning of the investigation.
You talked, and this is a critical part of this book too. You say that when the school had called Andrea, at first they didn't even tell her who was it involving. She later said she just assumed, but give us the details of what she was told. And then a phone call or phone calls that she made did the contrary.
Yeah, this would be very critical later on Andrea, you know, was given and there's some dispute about who said what to whom, but most all of the witnesses are in agreement that Andrea got only the sketchiest of information that her husband was dead apparently violent act. Police are there, so she knows it wasn't, you know, heart attack or
car accident or something a homicide. A detective sort of talks to her briefly, so she can assume that her husband had been killed, but nobody, nobody claimed to have told her how her husband was wounded. And keep in mind, in the beginning, he's only wounded, he's taken off to the hospital. Nobody even tells her that he's all the dead. She doesn't get the notification until hours later when she
goes to the hospital. So in fact, she's so frustrated by the lack of information that she's lashing out of people. And for years later she's complaining about how nobody would tell her anything. No one would tell her anything, and she's the wife, and she, you know, demands to know, which is of course natural. Yet in some critical phone calls early on, including one to her father in law and one to her close friend, she says, and I think to a coworker, she sent a text to all
of them, she says, my husband has been shot. Yet nobody told her. Nobody told her that he'd been shot. There was no obvious, uh, you know, gun evidence on the that she could see. He could have been beaten to death, he could have been poisoned, he could any number of things could have happened. But she very clearly told several people. He had been shot.
Now, when I asked you about the shells, there was shells left, but they couldn't narrow it down. It's either a forty caliber or forty four caliber, but ballistics couldn't narrow it down to make the model make out the model of the gun, much less where or when it was purchased. So they did do an exhaustive search. But tell us about the van they had at least they thought more luck and again, very very interesting, how how much effort they put into this van.
Yeah, you know there was and we'll talk about it later. There was a lot of very bad police work done in this case. And Donewoodie, like I said, was not equipped to handle a high profile homicide. But there was a lot of good police work and a lot of real intrepid shoe leather police work, and this this fell under that category. They had the van, and you know, they asked around everybody that trying for who has this van? Who has his van? And it seemed like a needle
in a haystack. But there was some security footage. There's security cameras all over the preschool. Now, the security camers did not capture the actual shooting, but it did get footage of the van and in the In some of the still photos that were enhanced from the security video, one of the cops said, hang out, looks like a sticker on the windshield. And they talked about why would there be a sticker on the windshield, and this one
officer said, well, maybe it was. You know, like when you rent to rent a car at the airport or the rental lot, isn't there a sticker that they put on the windshield, you know, the driver's side, to kind of scan the car in and out. And the more they looked at the more they said, yeah, that looks like one of those rental car stickers. And first you have to get past the notion who on earth would
commit a murder in a rental car rental van. But that turned out to be a big lead, so they were able to narrow the person driving the van from every single conceivable silver van in the world to silver vans that had been rented around the time of the shooting, and as they looked at it more detail, it appeared to be a key of Sedona van had those kinds of marketings, so they were able to really narrow it down just by happenstance, just by somebody thinking a little
outside the box. And so this is where the real detective work started. And they started calling, literally calling every rental agency in the area asking if anybody had rented out a silver keya Sedona or symbol her fan around the time of this shooting.
You talk about some police work that wasn't up the standard, and you talk about just the politics of having basically your own police force, much different and much different treatment of the citizens there, it seemed. You talk about the treatment of Andrea potentially as a suspect in this and the sort of velvet glove treatment that she got as well. She was offering advice to the officers and they took her up on that advice. So what did she say
to them? How was what was the content of what she had to say to them and her instructions as to the investigation.
Well, anybody with the most rudimentary knowledge of police work knows that when somebody is killed, you start with the people closest to them. Then you work your way out in concentric circles. Not just murder, but I mean any crime, because overwhelmingly you get killed by people you know who know you who are close to you, and the notion of a complete stranger driving up to you and shooting you in a parking lot is not just doesn't happen. So in the case of a husband or a wife,
you always always start with a spouse. They are the first person you have to eliminate. And you know, cops talk in terms of not suspects, but in terms of eliminations, everybody in the world is a suspect. Then you start eliminating people, and you have to start by eliminating those closes. So Andrew is the wife. They very carefully did not tell her anything in the beginning, but they do have
to talk to her. And not only would they have to eliminate her, but you know, she would presumably know about enemies or problems or whatever, so she would also be the best witness to talk to. And a couple of detectives and a more seasoned detective and a younger detective go to the Snyderman house, beautiful beautiful house in Dunwoodie.
Knock on the door, and I think it was Andrew's mom comes to the door and says, the cops say, you know, we want to talk to Andrea about miss Sneyderman, you know, sorry for your lost When I talked to her about her husband's murder, and the mom says, you know, come back tomorrow. She's not up to it, and the detective says, okay, I will. Now, if this had been a young African American man from the inner City, I don't think he would have gotten that same deferential treatment.
At least they would have pressed the matter a little bit. But they from the very beginning handled this thing with kid gloves. So they come back the next day, the two detectives, and that's when they talked to Andrea. Meanwhile, she's surrounded table by her family. Her brother was a lawyer. And again it's a very very deferential interview, not that it has to be antagonistic or adversarial, but you know, every cop knows that you have to eliminate the spouse.
But they went into this, certainly, one of the detectives as if, look, you know, we can't we gotta be nice to her because this kind of thing just doesn't happen in Dounelody. And so you know, there wasn't a lot of attention paid to her from the very beginning.
They eventually ask her for permission to search, and or they get search warrants and then they are they find some a very very interesting document if you were looking for motive, potentially tell us about the life insurance policy that they found.
Yeah, I mean, they do the usual due diligence and yeah, you know, Rusty's got a ton of life insurance. So I don't remember what is over a million dollars. I think it certainly certainly enough money, you know, to make for a murder motive. At the same time, you know, these are people of means and you know, a large life insurance policy, and I think they both had life insurance policies, so would not be that unusual. But you know, when you're talking a big, huge payout, you know you
have to you really have to look at that. I think more important what would prove more critical later on was what Andrea did and did not tell them. In this deferential interview. They're talking to her and you know, they're asking her the usual questions, does he have any enemies and you know, anybody who might want to kill them? And and she says, well, you know, she starts throwing
out some possibilities. Rusty was in finance. He worked at a at a company, and you know, they didn't part ways on particularly good terms, and she called the bosses a bunch of a holes, and you know, kind of pointed to that, you know, she mentioned kind of in casually, I think, like an exterminator had come by the house earlier, sort of thought, you know, that might be somebody. She mentioned that previous to that, Rusty had had stumbled onto a guy who was sort of crouching behind the house
by the air conditioning unit. She you know, she said it was a Mexican guy, you know, And that's kind of in Dunwoody code for you know, possible criminals, so you know, and and she's you know, sending them into these various investigative avenues. But at one point, and this is the most what would prove to be the most critical point of the interview, they started asking the sort of routine question, you know, any problems in your marriage? Now?
Were very happily married, you know. They asked about their sex life, and you know, everything's fine, and you know, did he have an affair? Now? I don't think he ever had any affairs. And then they asked her, well, has anybody ever expressed romantic interest in you. And Andrew got a little flustered and and she finally says, well, you know, and the cop said, well, do you want to talk about this privately, because keep mind her mom is there,
brother's there. And Andrew's no, no, no, I'll talk about this. And she says, well, you know, my boss, my boss once, you know, expressed feelings for me, but I very quickly shot it down. I'm you know, I'm happily married and and we're very respectful after that. You know, It's just one of those passing moments. And the mother jumped in and said, yeah, you know, tell her, tell her you never reciprocated, right and Andrew, No, No, I didn't, mom, you know, I just happened. He's a very nice man.
He expresses as I said, you know, this could not go both ways. I married and that was the end of it. And unfortunately that was the end of it for a while because police did not follow up on that.
You talk about that, they didn't have another official interview. It took a long time for them to have an interview at the police station. And that was very very interesting. So they took her advice and they went on and followed leads they put out the sketch and that generated some leads. They had to follow those to their logical conclusion.
What do they before we talk again about how they eventually put this together with the again tracing it back to the van rental, But in the interim, what is the investigation and where is it focused on?
Yeah, well, they're looking mostly into Rusty's financial and work. His he was an NBA from Harvard, made a lot of money, but he had bounced around from job to job, and you know, he, like I said, he left his one position under you know, not very good circumstances. He then got involved, he was an entrepreneur. He then got involved in this sort of celebrity. It was a kind of complicated as one of these things where if you have an answering machine or an answering message, you can
get a celebrity to do your your answering message. And he was trying to start up a you know, so the George cloone you could answer your phone, you know, when you're not there, And he was trying to get that company off the ground. And you know, they kept police kept thinking maybe there's something in the business history, and they kept thinking it had all the sort of
signs of an assassination, right, like a hitman. That it was so brazen, middle of the morning, broad daylight, in front of a school for have and say calm cool collective. So they just they kept thinking this had to be a hit, and they really scoured his his work history looking for something. Did he did he you know, across somebody some way, you know, litigation, and and that's that's really what dedicated most of the police's work in the beginning.
Now, what did police do with the report and how did they attributed to this crime at all? Did they think it was connected when they looked at the police reports of the incident that happened with the homeless guy considered a Mexican with the mustache that Rusty had called nine to one about.
Yeah, I you know, it just it just seemed kind of interesting. But I don't think in the beginning, you know, it's this odd thing where Rusty saw this guy at the house and it was on the side to the house and then he ran off into the woods or something, and you know, it's all very scary, but you know, he was this Mexican guy, didn't have a good ID, and I don't as I recall, I don't know that they were able initially to make much of it.
Right.
You talk about the again incredible funeral, and this is a Jewish funeral, so you talk about some of the traditions, and hemy Is attends the funeral, what is his role at the funeral and what is his demeanor at that funeral? Again?
Yeah, you know you remember that that Andreas said, oh, my boss had expressed affection for me, but we put it aside and we moved on. Well, that same boss, ashimmy newman, and and he did he attended the funeral, you know, seemed respectful and you know, he he uh, he gave his condolences and and you know it was two people on the outside. It all seemed very appropriate.
Yeah, even shovel dirt on the coffin.
Yeah. Yeah, there's a tradition. You know, there's a this was you know, these were very very devout Jewish people and and you know, and in the town of Dunwoodie that's a very very tight knit community. Not a lot of josh people there. And and you know they they they you know, had the went back to the home and you know, did did the whole you know, the whole the whole ceremony and all the traditions and yeah, I mean even shovel dirt onto the coffin.
Right now, let's get back to the to the van discovery, because again they start off with thinking that this might be a new van and it might be a Dodge caravan. And then through this again very good police work, they narrow it down to this twenty eleven Sedona. So once they inadvertently bump into this hemy newman and the other warrants come into play. Where for computers and again tell us about the process of them eventually getting around to
looking at digital information. Yeah, all that phone call information.
Yeah, I mean it's first the van and they narrow it down, and they narrow it down, and you know, it took a while. They called a lot of rental places, and you know, we see the security footage. It's not super clear and it's hard to make things out and you can't see the license plate and all that, and they get some help from other, you know, cops in the department, and and they finally do they do trace the van and to who rental agency? I think it
was an enterprise outside of Atlanta. And yeah, they did have a van Kia Sedona Silver did get rented out right around the time of the I think this was November eighteenth, And I think the van was rented out day before or something like that, and came back the next day. And yeah, I was rented out near you know, Dunwoodie. And and and I was sitting here in the lot if you want to take a look at It had
out of state plates. But that was not unusual, you know, someone would rent a van one state and bring it back. And they said fine, fine, And and the cops asked, OK, do you have the paperwork for when that van was originally rented? And yeah, they had it. And you have a contact phone number for the person who rented it, and yes we do, and so the please pick up the phone, and they call the cell phone number the contact of the person who rented the van, and Hammy Newman answers the phone.
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Yeah. Now, there's of course a warrant for like I say, his computer. The they do start to investigate the connection because they realize where he works at GE and he's the boss of Andrea Snyderman and they speak to him as well, and they arrest him. It's the first time he's ever been arrested. So tell us a little bit about just that that first interview with him and what the police gleam from that.
Yeah, they it was it took a while to talk about a month I think before they put everything together with the van and himI. And even then they didn't you know, holme into jail right away him. He was actually Florida for some his funeral I think, and they when they called them and they gave him a week to come back, and you know, again very very deferential, and yeah, they bring him into the station and he
really gets the third degree. This is a long, complicated, grueling interrogation and I you know, it begins as not an interrogation, which is his questioning, but they reach a point where they want to read Hamy his rights. And when they do that in real life, you actually sign a paper saying, you know, you understand these rights. And and he kind of hmmed and hat and didn't want to do it. And you know, he asked, do I need a lawyer? And you know, once he gets a lawyer,
that's that's it. So they sort of say, well, do you need a lawyer? You know, and you know, so that became very suspicious, and you know, but he he he's agitated, he's you know, he looks at things on videotape. You can watch it, and he looks you know, he doesn't look like an innocent man. But they ask about his relationship with Andrey, and you know, he says he has a lot of respect for her. And they also find out that he had met with her husband shortly
before the murder, which was kind of odd. But you know, there's there Hemi's Jewish, and Rusty's Jewish, and Andrew's Jewish. And you know, he was helping him with some business stuff, I think he said. And you know, but he steadfastly denied killing killing Rusty, but he did kind of tap dance around. It's like, well, why would I do that, you know, that kind of thing. Why would I do something so stupid? You know, So his answers, you know,
while in the negative, were very suspicious. Now they asked about the van, and he says, oh, you had to bring in his car for some kind of warranty recall work or something, and and that's why they rent to the van. And they asked for his and this is where he got in trouble. They asked for his whereabouts the morning of the murders. So I was at work and are you sure? And he said him, yep, I
was at work. Well, you know, he was so suspicious and acting so strange that they did actually arrest him and held him, and then they had to go about confirming or knocking down his.
Alibi while they're doing that with the help of ge and also pings from the cell phone records, those kinds of things. It's interesting and very very telling. I think is that Andrew has notified that the police have made an arrest, and I'm sure this is strategic. What is her response to just the statement that someone has been arrested in the murder of her husband.
She is acting about as guilty as Hemmy is. And you know, I think, and you may have to refresh my recollections. I think she said, is it Emmy or somehow brings up his his name?
No, she What she does do is she doesn't ask who it is.
She doesn't ask. She doesn't ask. That's it. That's it. She doesn't ask the obvious questions. Right, if your husband got killed, who did it? You know? When you want to know what happened? Oh, No, she doesn't ask. It's as if she knows and she's just not it's it's, it's it's. It's difficult to describe unless you hear her interviews, but she's just not asking acting like the aggrieved widow, you know, or at least, oh, you know, we saw Dresne's murder. You think she'd be overjoyed or wanting to
help in any way. But she's evasive and defensive and just doesn't do the things or ask the kinds of questions that you would expect somebody in that position to do.
Yeah, you say. Right after the arrest though, that this Deputy chief Sides and Lieutenant Barnes they talked to Andrea, and so there's a little bit more heat on her. So and they're asking her things like what do you think we found out? And so she tries to assume she might know the Andrews. He said, well that he went crazy. Yeah, so she then starts talking about.
Crazy, he loves me, what's wrong with him? I don't know, you know, you tell me that kind of stuff. You know. It's it's the defiance, you know, it's it's it's as if it's like, lady, we're on the same pay, we're of the same team as you. You know, why are you putting up all these roadblocks? Why why are you giving us all this attitude? You know, what are you hiding?
And you know they're now having a pry information at her now look to the very end, she said, Look, I told him up front that Hemmy expressed feelings for me, not my fault. You guys didn't follow up on it, you know. But now they are following up on it, and she's not helping them.
She is trying to protect herself though, so she says that she received a again when she was very shocked. This Bruno Mar's itune gets.
A sound like love song, you know, while Hemmy after the murder, but as after the murder murder, and while Hemmy was out and about, you know, he sends her like an iTunes love song. You know, I forgot the name of it. It's not like I love you or how do I love you? Or whatever? You know, and it's like, well wait a second, lady. She's telling them this now right after the arrests, saying well, why didn't
you tell us this sooner? You know, I mean, your husband's arrested, I mean, your husband's killed, and your boss is sending you love songs afterwards, and you know, we're trying to find the person, and we already asked you, you know, if anybody was in love with you, and you downplayed it. But she does tell them because you know, she's smart, and it's starting to dawn on her that you know, they can search her phone, they can search
her computer. Although it's interesting to note that that first night, remember when they went to talk to her and had to come back the next day, they didn't see her computer at twenty four hours more to mess around with that computer, and so, you know, but she knows, she clearly knows, and so she tells them, Yeah, my boss, my boss sent me this, send me this love song.
It's interesting too in this interview, when they're she's receiving heat, they certainly have a different attitude with her and much more confrontational. They say to her, listen because her mother arrives at the police station. They say, listen, your mother is thinking that we're holding you hostage. Can you go out there and reassure we aren't, and then we'll continue right after that, Yeah, well thats what happened.
Yeah, so near the end, near the end, they say, look, your mom thinks we're holding you hostage. Go out there and tell her we're just having a conversation. She goes out there and she never comes back. That's the last time she talks to Cobbs.
Yeah, very very interesting, that mother dynamic. Now, how do he gets a public defender right away? But not for long? And somebody comes to the rescue? Here, tell us what kind of his appearance in court? And then what happens as a result of getting a defense team together.
Yeah, so remember that the publicity, and this was a very highly publicized case. The world is expecting a hitman, a trained assassin from the sketch. They're expecting maybe some hardened criminals or they Hispanic man. And what they get is this nerdy, little gray haired guy who works a general electric and he just looks just doesn't This isn't what anybody thought. This is a man pulling down close to two hundred thousand bucks at ge technical wizard, you know, supervisor,
you know, very very good position. And so he's just kind of, you know, he's kind of sitting there sort of sad and forlorn in court. And it doesn't jibe with these preconceived ideas of what goes on in Dunwoodie, and you know, he goes through the usual, he goes
through the usual, you know, not guilty stuff. But he does get private counsel and they are very very very accomplished lawyers in Atlanta, and they are watching and becoming increasingly concerned with what police are digging up on Hammy newman.
At the same time, they don't rest in terms of getting all the details, so they are amassing, like I had mentioned, the all of the relative email evidence, the card reading at GE to know when he came in, when he left, tell us a little bit what is found eventually, and so it kind.
Of falls under Yeah, it kind of falls under two categories. The first is they got to look into his alibi. Well, I was at GE twenty whatever miles away in Marietta, DEPHTI was a GG when all this happened, so with Andrew or Andrew was on away or something. Well, when you work at a big company like geh, it's kind of creepy, but they really sort of follow your every move. There's key cards that you have to swipe to get
into the building, into different parts of the complex. GE even keeps track of when you turn on your computer, when you turn it off, and security cameras, all kinds of things, but mostly the key cards. And this initial phase one of the technical investigation found that Hammy could not account digitally electronically for his whereabouts at the time
of the murder. In fact, all signs point to him not being there and all kinds of weird stuff like normally he would swipe a car but instead when he at one point during the morning, he I think he like signs himself in, you know, manually showed up at a different time in the morning. Basically, and it's very complicated.
They were using the tech you know it team at GE but basically there was this big gap, plenty of time, plenty of time for him to have committed the murder and then gotten back to his office.
They eventually look at Hemi's cell phone records and they recognize the name, or they don't recognize the name. But when they contact this Jen Da Silva, what does he tell them.
Yeah, they're going through a cell phone and there's a lot of suspicious stuff on the phone. You know, they don't have taps of the phone, but through through subpoenas by figuring out where you know, when you're near a cell phone tower, it pings the phone. You can they can kind of trace your movements and they find a lot of interesting movements by Himy number one, he was in the area of a gun show before the murder. He was in the area of a firing range before
the murder. They were able to confirm that he was actually at the firing range. They were able to confirm he was actually at the gun show. And then yeah, this Silva number comes up and cops call this guy up and ask him, you know, why are you talking to Hammy Newman? And he says, oh, I sold him a gun.
Yeah, and it's a Bursa thunder forty caliber semi AUTOMATICA This is like an.
Elephant gun, you know this. This is a big, big gun, forty caliber, very similar, you know to to the kind of gun that that killed Rusty. The problem is they don't have it right. He sold Jan sold him the gun. But the gun is still missing, and the cops are, boy, you know, do you have any you know, the ballistics they can by looking at this her brass cartridges and the way that the firing pin hits the cartridges, they can they can make a match if they have a
spent cartridge and they were none at the scene. And you know, when they found out that Hemmy went through the firing range, they went through thousands of spent cartridges and none of them matched, you know, so they couldn't find it. And they asked you, you know, hey, you know, did do you have any spend? No? I, you know, whatever, I gave him the gun. He's oh, wait a second.
You know when I when I first bought the gun, it came with a one cartridge from a test fire, and I gave that cartridge to my girlfriend as a souvenir and go boy. So they cops zip over to that. I think she was the next girlfriend at that point, zip over to the woman's house. Did you keep the cartridge? Please? Please? Please? Oh? Yes she did, and they look at the cartridge, they run ballistics, and sure enough, that was the gun that killed Rusty Steinman.
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Blue Apron a better way to cook now they have the confirmed weapon. They have now all kinds of other digital evidence tell us a little bit about what the credit card evidence tells them about the.
Relationship with Ge. Turns out that Hemi had a corporate Amex card through GE, and Andrea had made reference earlier to when Hemmy had expressed his feelings for her. She said it was during a business trip and I think was near Lake Taho or and Nevada somewhere. And you know, it turns out that Hemmy and Andrea made several business
trips together. Hemy was her boss and not only they make these business trips, but he put it all in the corporate Amex card, and we mean down to not just the hotels in the flight, but the wine that
was purchased and the expensive meals that were purchased. And it was all documented multiple multiple business trips together, including one to London, and by kind of backtracking from the credit cards, they could call the hotels, the motels, the restaurant and what emerged were not innocent little business trips. One of the business trips North Carolina, they went to a club called Pulse Nightclub and there they were slow dancing on the floor and he's grabbing her butt or something.
And another trip they had adjoining rooms and you know they talked to the front desk guy, and you know, HEMI had called ahead and said, oh, my wife is coming, Tell her I love her. And then Andrea shows up. You know, late checkouts. You know, the credit card evidence painted the picture that any reasonable observers say they are clearly having an affair.
You also talk about that they dug up people like I say, witnessed their behavior at this nightclub groping, but also that she had spoken to some of her friends and mentioned in a fair so there was quite a bit of contradictory evidence gathered against her official statements, even though they were quite.
A bit and you know, and she also confided in her friend that things were not great with Rusty and you know, all everything's always about Rusty and he always puts his career first and on mine, and you know it, you know, just one thing after another, didn't it didn't add up from what she had told police initially. Remember from the very beginning, Oh, my boss, express feelings and
I said no, and that was the end of it. Well, she left out the part about the slow dancing at the nightclub and the you know, romantic dinners with expensive wine and the adjoining rooms and you know, all this other, all this other stuff.
Now you talk about the The media in twenty eleven, in March revealed all the suspicion of Andrea officially and the connection before the correspondence between them, before the murder and after the murder. Just so tell us what would the basically the tone of the media coverage.
Yeah, the tone became increasingly the gist of the media coverage because the media started getting a hold of some of the evidence as it was released through search warrants. And other means. It was very clear that Andrea it appeared, I should say, that Andrew was having an affair, that she had either been evasive or lied about the affair, and that perhaps she had something to do with this.
I mean, we go back to the first thing. Who's the first person you talked to, the spouse and had Andrea, you know, recruited her boss with whom she was having an affair, to kill her husband so she could run off with her boss and a ton of insurance money.
And that was sort of the gist of the storyline. Eventually, cops were able to obtain the email correspondence between Andrea and Hemy, and you know, goes on for pages and pages and pages and pages, and it's hard to generalize it too much, but the point is they had a very very very close relationship, one that might have many times seemed a little one sighted. Hemy was constantly expressing his love and devotion. I think at one point even
proposed marriage to Andrea. Andrea seemed to waffle and at some point seemed to enjoy the attention and the affections of Hemy. At other times she seemed annoyed by him. She never said I love you other times, lots of expressions of guilt and anxiety about something. But they very clearly had a very close relationship that went much beyond bosson employee and went much beyond a one time casual. Oh you know, I think I have feelings for you, which is how she originally had portrayed it.
Before we get to this trial. What did police find in terms of this You talked about the continual correspondence in several emails and phone calls and texts, But what about after the murder? What was that record? Like, what did they find in terms of that kind of evidence.
You're gonna have to help me on this one. I can't remember what the main I can't remember exactly what they found. I know, right after the murder, Right after the murder that morning, Hemmy is trying to call her and call her and call her and call her and
call her. I mean, we're talking in the minutes after the murder, and at one point she does talk to him and we don't know what they said, but she's talking to this guy the morning of her husband's murder, and we don't know what it is, but it's very very suspicious. So there's this sort of continuous contact between them. Right after that she also sort of.
Left out, and then there's a gap, and then there's this noticeable gap in the correspondence between them, at least officially, at least that anyone can track. So that's very very interesting. Now this trial is set to go ahead, and of course you say it's the it's the last hope for basically a defense. You know, a guilty man. I think the expression is a pro but he has some capable lawyers, like you say, including this Doug Peters. What did they decide to do and what's the defense?
Yeah? So you know, between the gun and the cell phone and the emails and all of his lives in the rental car, I mean, you know his his goose is cooked. Right, there's even more evident. Remember they said he had a beard. Well, they found these fibers. It was clear that it was in the rental car. It was a fake beard. They were a trace it back to a Halloween supply store. So, I mean they had a mountain of evidence against himy and there they were
in a corner. There's not much they could do, and so they decide a very very risky gambit to launch an insanity defense. They claimed he was legally insane at the time of the killing, that he had suffered a und diagnosed bipolar disorder, that angels, spectral beings spoke to him, and in particular, it was an angel who looked like Olivia Newton John but had a deep voice like Berry White, telling him things like, you know, kill Rusty the children.
Rusty's children are in danger, blah blah blah. So these these these angels are telling him to do this, but he's nuts. He's got, you know, this bipolar disorder, and it's all scrambled in his brain and and these these these angels are telling him and driving him to kill. Now, under the law, it's not enough to just have bipolar disorders,
not enough to be flat out crazy. You have to, under the law, be so insane that you do not know the difference between right and wrong at the time that you commit the killing, that your insanity prevents you from knowing the difference between right and wrong. And contrary to popular belief, that is a very very difficult thing to prove, especially after the Hinckley thing, Reagan They've they toughened those laws, and so it was a risky gambit because it's really hard to prove that somebody is not
guilty by reason of insanity in any jurisdiction. But I think that's the only thing they had.
Now in many cases, in any way that they would really defend this. I think they still would have taken the suspicion of police and other people in the media towards Andrea as part of their defense in of trying
to bolster the fence. So they were trying to say that this man, she tried to say that that he had delusions, that he thought he was in a more serious relationship than he actually was, that he thought, because of the demon and the demon's instructions, that the children were in danger, and so he had to kill Rusty and basically had no choice. He had to kill so he was instructed to do this. And then this is
backed up by another by this doctor Flores. At first they get the first diagnosis of the psychotic disorder, then this doctor Flores, and so that's their defense, and then they back it up with another psychiatrist to disagrees with doctor Flores. What comes out in this though, too, and it's reasonable that there is a sad story attached to his upbringing. So just briefly tell us what they did uncover in terms of his connection in his family's connection to the horror of the Holocaust.
Yeah, so, I mean as part of the psychological defense, they started looking into Rusty's life and and it is he had a hard life. His father was a Holocaust survivor and and survivor physically but not mentally. And his father, his father was never whole again after spending being incarcerated in a camp. And you know, he would beat himy and physically and verbally abuse his boy. And hemmy always was trying to serve as the protector I think of his sister and his mother, and you know, things were
really bad for him. He growing up, and he got shipped off to a boarding school and Israel, and there was some problem with and he ends up, you know, really bad in a bad situation there. And it's like the first time he starts seeing these having these delusions and the first time he starts talking to angels. And this comes and goes throughout his life, and he's mounting as he's older. Makes all his money a couple hundred thousand dollars, but a year one hundred and seventy thousand
a year. But you know he's got all these financial problems, his marriages and tatters. You know, Uh, he's got this mental illness. He's he's just under all kinds of pressure from within and from without. And you know, his his defense is that Andrea was smart enough to kind of
if not, no, he was out and out crazy. He's certainly toyed with him and and used him and played with his emotions and and and and you know put him up to this, to this act and that, and that she took advantage of his of his weakness.
Now she's an integral part of this trial, and they put her on the stand for a grueling few days. What's her demeanor like?
Uh?
Remember, even though they suspect, even though they suspect her of being involved, they haven't charged her with murder. Only Hemi is charged with the murder. And so he goes on trial, and she is the key witness. Now, remember her whole thing is, I didn't know he did this. My god, he's crazy. How would I know that this guy would go off the handle and you know, kill my husband. I'm as much a victim here as anybody's nuts. You know, he's crazy for me? How am I supposed
to know this, right? That's her sort of defense. Well, she gets on the stand and it's a disaster for her that that whole antagonistic adversarial demeanor she had with police comes out at the trial. Remember she's the prosecution witness. She is evasive, she is nasty, she is snied, she is really mean, and she won't answer simple questions. And
you know, she's very, very defensive. Now she's taking the position despite all these emails, despite the butt grabbing at the bar, despite the romantic dinners, despite the hotel rooms and all this stuff. She's taken a position they did not have an affair, and who're gonna believe me or your lying eyes? And that's her position. I did not have an affair with this guy. I know it looked bad, but I didn't have an affair with him. And for some reason, this seems to be a critical issue for her,
not finding justice for her dead husband. And so you know, she is combative on the witness stand. Now. The trial, unfortunately for her, is being broadcast locally and I think on HLN and so get some national coverage. It's all over the local area. It's on YouTube, and you know, she's just not coming off well now.
She is also basically grilled to the inconsistencies that she has made in official statements, including her reaction to her husband's death, and then the information that she conveys to her friend. But she couldn't have possibly known. And there are a few other crucial things that she really winces at and is defensive that at trial when she is cornered regarding some of those things, doesn't.
She Yeah, and he doesn't have a good explanation for it. And I think through it all, I think through it all. She has no good explanation for this. She's defensive and through it out, through the whole thing, she never gives the perception of a woman who wants to find her husband's killer and bring him to justice. I mean, you would think she would go to the ends of the earth to help police, and you would think, Okay, if she had an affair with this guy, you know, tough
it out and admit it. Yeah, that's awful. You had an affair with somebody and they went off and killed your husband. That sure looks bad, but why not just admit it? Just admit it. Okay, I did it. I had an affair all right, but that doesn't mean I killed him. And keep in mind, nowhere in all these emails does she say to him, he kill my husband. So there's no smoking gun. It just you have to wonder. She just starts making herself look even guiltier than the evidence would suggest.
They also have her with a major inconsistency that he was She was in I think Longmont, Colorado, and he was not with her. But then they did evidence that showed contradicted her view or our position, basically that he didn't join her, and in fact, as you can tell her audience, what he actually did. So it's a complete opposite of what she had said.
Yeah, I mean. And during these recording, these questioning by police, she leaves out one major major incident, and that's this business trip to Colorado, and oh you know he was there. Well not only was he there, but you know he's leaving expressions of his love for her at the front desk. I think he went trying to get the front desk by her flowers. She may have I camera if you rearranged the rooms, but somehow they ended up with adjoining rooms.
And then ends up there on the same flight back sitting next to each other, you know, I mean, how do you forget this? And why do you lie about it?
And another difficult question for her, very especially difficult, was once she had told people that she thought Hemmy was a suspect. She told when somebody that he resembled the eyes of the sketch, and other people they asked her, well, why didn't you call police? Well, if this was a man manipulating and a domineering force at work, why didn't you What were there Her difficult answers to those questions, Well.
She doesn't have a good answer, you know, and she bounces around and she basically just acts like, you know, she's the victim here and that they're picking on her. You know, nobody seemed to know who is in that sketch except her, right they issue they had this police sketch of the killer. And she tells a friend, Yeah, those eyes look like Hemmy's. You know, nobody else says that. Nobody, none of the co work, none of this, nobody seems to think it's him except her, And then she says nothing.
Then she then he, on top of all that, remember, sends her the Brunomars love song that leaves that part out too. So you know, all of a sudden, she's becoming an adversarial witness when she was supposed to be, you know, she was supposed to be the prosecution's key witness. Very quickly, it looks like this trial is about her as much as it is about Himy.
They also haven't. It was very interesting to me, is because I've seen the rules myself being involved that once you testify her, before you testify, if you're a witness, you don't get to hear anybody's testimony. You're still under subpoena. You may be called back again. You could influence other witnesses with the information and that you had that followed. You tell us a little bit about this, the initial decision and then the reversal.
Well, I as I recall, they were going to let her you know, you meant to refresh my recollection, but they were gonna let her stay in or something. And then her friend, her friend testified, remember the friend who she told you know, he was shot and it was you know, and this was the friend she confided marital problems too, And Andrey went on to deny this, and it became kind of a bad episode of the Real
Housewives of Atlanta. You know, between these two women, former friends are now at each other's throat, and there's an ugly confrontation, confrontation between Andrea and her former best friend at the courthouse, and you know, finally they had to kick you know, Andrea out of the trial. And and you know, none of this is reflecting well on her, and none of this is the kind of behavior you would think a grieving widow would exhibit.
Yeah, so basically the prosecution ends in the defense wrap up their case. She doesn't do well, hemy doesn't take the stand. There is overwhelming physical evidence, all kinds of material evidence, digital phone calls, emails, eyewitness testimony, circumstantial. It's a slam dunk.
Yeah, yeah, they find him guilty. They find him insane but guilty, which is interesting finding. But they just, you know, they just couldn't reach that threshold. Yes, he has mental illness, Yes there were mitigating circumstances here in his brain, but he knew the difference between right and wrong when he pumped for bullets into Rusty Sneydermans. He wasn't that impaired. And that really is the legal standard goes back hundreds of years, and they just couldn't overcome that hurdle.
Yeah, we have a different We don't have that hurdle in Canada. But it's interesting where that definition includes not being able to discern right from wrong, and that is a tough hurdle, isn't it.
It is? And in the United States, after the assassination attempt on I'm trying to remember which case it was. It was either the John Lennon assassination killing or the Reagan attempt, there were some high profile cases in which the gunman claimed insanity and laws toughened here since then, almost impossible to use an insanity defense.
Now in terms of what happens with Andrea and what is the betrayal in the end, after the trial concludes, of her participation and role in this, how is she depicted?
Yeah, I mean, she obviously comes off badly and initially she's charged with murder conspiring to kill her husband, and nothing that happened at the trial made it any better on her. But the DA went through the evidence and it was right. I mean literally the day or two before her trial, the DA finally dropped dropped the murder charge. Just didn't think he was gonna be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. And I think what was missing.
What was missing was that one email that one thing, hemmy killed my husband, Hemmy, get him out of the picture, Hemmy, I don't want him around. Any kind of any kind of even indirect indication from her to him that he should kill her. That just there, just it just wasn't there. There was a lot of evidence that pointed to a possible affair, a lot of evidence that pointed to her lying about the affair, a lot of evidence of her,
you know, not cooperating with police and obstructing justice. But and you know, I think people are still debating this. In the end, the DA just did not think he could prove that she conspired to murder her husband.
Did they under take the normal procedure of especially after this, after his conviction, regardless of whether they thought he was mentally ill and that you know that deduction, did the attempt to reach out to him for the normal maybe response that he might want to cooperate, now give evidence million times?
You know, turn on Andrew, right, did she tell you to do this? And God bless him, he refused to say that that he did it. Angel told him to do it, you know, And it was only his lawyers who kind of implied that she toyed with his emotions, But he would not say that she put him up
to it. Now, even if he did say that, they would have faced a lot of problems because here's a man whose defense was he's crazy, and now we're going to put him on the stand as a witness, you know, So it would have been problematic even if he did say it. But no, he never pointed the finger at Andrew.
What do you make of that?
Well, you can look at it two ways, but I think in the end you have to take it at face value and say, well, she didn't she never explicitly or implicitly told him to kill her husband, I think the larger question, and I've done books on several cases in which the wife or the girlfriend did not explicitly ask or direct the killer to kill somebody, but was able to use other means, sex, love, whatever to get
him to do it. And we enter a very dangerous area here, which is, you know, is it sexist to suggest that a woman can get her way, can get her man to do something without explicitly telling him. Can a woman use her body, her love, sex, whatever to get a man to do something but not have to tell him. Can she manipulate him in that way other cases I've written about, Yes, the jury said, yep. Now she didn't say go kill him, but yeah, she used her body and used all these other feminine wiles to
make it happen. In this case, the DA did not think there was enough there, So why did he not? Maybe he's telling the truth. He's crazy, but he's not lying that she never did tell him to kill my husband. You know that he really did do it at the direction of the angels, that he really did think, you know, and he's very protective, you know, I I don't want to hurt her, you know, I'm trying to save her from this horrible man, rusty.
It was interesting that though typically that there would be a story attached, and there would be some evidence that at least he would say something, for example, like, well she talked about the abuse, the abuse of the children, the sexual abuse of her, or the verbal or physical abuse that seemed to be suspiciously or conspicuously absent from this.
Yeah, the just it just wasn't there, you know. And even if she had lied to hem me about something in the emails or whatever. What you see in the emails is and you know this is my inference. But what you see as a woman who had been overshadowed by her husband, who had to give up her career for his had to stay home raise a couple of kids. Well, her husband went off this glamorous lifestyle and finance that they had to move to, you know, this little suburb
of Atlanta because his job took him there. She had to go that. She finally got back into the workplace. Keep mind this happened only a few months after, you know, she started working again, got a really good job at General Electric, finally living her potential, making good money over one hundred thousand dollars one hundred and forty thousand dollars a year, got a good job, a good paycheck, is using her mind and her education, and her boss not only respects her, but loves her, affects her as an
employee and loves her as a woman. And she is flattered, and she is feeling good about where she is. But then she backs up and thinks this is wrong. You know, she's conflicted, and there's a lot of guilt and so on the one hand, she likes the attention, and she likes the thrill of whatever it is, and whether it's an actual consummated affair or just heavy, heavy duty petting. Either way, she at times seemed to like it and be energized and excited by it, and the fact that
her marriage had problems I think added to that. But at the same time then she would express guilt, anger, frustration, leave me alone, that kind of thing. So, you know, is she toying with his emotions or is she trying to resolve her own? Does she want to have this affair or not want to have this affair. It doesn't seem like she could even articulate. It depends on where you are at different points in times. So you see all this going on. What you don't see is a
clear get rid of my husband. I want you to shoot and kill him. That that doesn't come out.
How important do you think it is for the you know, the evidence to show that at some point she admitted that she's having an affair. He says, yeah, I'm having an affair. I have a mistress. But at some point he presents the scenario to her that yes, we can live together. You know, even though he has kids, he has an ex wife with children, and she has children. He proposes something much more than an affair, doesn't he.
I mean he proposes, he proposes, you know, getting married and going off into the sunset. Keep in mind, one of the business trips, the one where they were slow dancing and groping, happened right after he split up with his wife, so right, you know, I think his feelings were a little more to the extent you can, you know, break through all the mental issues. You know, he had big, big plans for her. I think she was not really clear what she was thinking, and it seemed to change
at different points in time. And you know, how do you explain why she would be so defensive about all this? And you know it you have to ask, you said, well, is she defensive because she's embarrassed by the affair and embarrassed by what her family and friends would think about it? Doubly embarrassed because she's having an affair with a guy who is so nuts that he, you know, killed her husband. I mean, that's that's embarrassing and devastating point and pride.
Is she defining an affair as actual sex? I mean maybe they never actually slept with each other? Maybe it was all just romance, right, sitting in bed watching romantic movies but never actually come submating, or maybe I don't know, you know, how in her mind, how she even defines what an affair actually is. But you have to keep wondering, why was she Why would she be so defensive, why would she be putting up you know, I'm to the
point where she's obstructing justice. You know, in the end, she was more embarrassed than she would ever have been before. So is she hiding something criminal or is she just hiding something embarrassing.
Is there a possibility that she knew that her job would be terminated because it really was or it seemed to be dependent on Hammy Newman certainly during.
During the time, Yeah, they crossed boundaries while they were well, you know, whether the affair was consummated or not, they were crossing employee employer boundaries on these trips, and it was consensual. So she wasn't going to say anything. She wasn't gonna you know, she did these things. She probably felt guilty, certainly express guilt after some of it, but at the same time, she was not going to inform
HR because you know, he wasn't sexually harassing her. You know, she never claimed that, and that whatever it was they were doing, it was with her full consent.
What I'm asking is, is there a possibility that she a good possibility that she didn't know and there there's no evidence that she knew of his plans to kill her husband? That what once after it seems evidence that she may have suspected, and then after that may have suspected and then detoured the police and the investigation. It seemed purposely. Is there a motive for that two million dollars in an insurance policy?
Yeah, I really think I don't think the insurance in this case was the issue. I really don't. Two million seems like a lot, But when you're sitting in a big, you know, million dollar house, mortgage and all this, I just it's just for people of their station in life. It's not that big. It's big, but it's not that big. And I understand some people get murdered for a pair of tennis shoes and then you say, well, two million dollars, I don't think that was it. As for what Andrea
knew and when she knew it, I don't know. I think you can make a really good case that the second she found out her husband was killed, she knew exactly who did it, knew exactly. What I can't get past is how she knew he was shot and she didn't just say to one person, right. I mean, it's in a text message to a co worker, my husband's been shot. And I can't get past the fact that she expressed this around the time that she's talking to hemmy and did he tell her in a conversation afterwards,
I shot your husband? And she's like, you know, having one those oh gosh, you know moments, and she's putting it all together, right, And even though she knows she never told him to do it, everyone's gonna think she did. And she starts thinking about the business trips and the romantic dinners and all that stuff, and now it's like, Okay,
now she's in trouble. Even though even though you can make a really good case that she never did tell him to do it, and probably didn't even want him to do it, right, I mean, I don't think she even wanted her husband did That doesn't make sense. But now she knows she's in big, big, big, big trouble, and it looks really bad. And then part of me thinks she wanted police. She didn't want to have to tell them, right, She didn't want to have to lay
out this whole tawdry affair. She wanted police to figure it out on their own, because she did tell them in the very beginning. Yes it was my boss, you know, emmy newman. You know. She didn't have to say anything when they said, is anybody expressed? You know? So I don't know, and I think she has Remember, she's in a technical field. She understands. She understands that they can get to her email and her voicemail and all this sort of stuff, and then they can they can find information,
they can look at the crest. She has some kind of basic knowledge that there's a digital trail. So she's got to say enough, you know, test some christ So, you know, I don't know. I think there was a lot of panic going on. I think in the end, I really think in the end, the DA, although it was not a populary, has made the right decision. I don't think there was enough evidence to charge her with murder.
I think there was enough evidence the charger with obstruction of justice and lying the police, and all the charges that she ultimately was put on trial for. But I just don't, you know, I don't think it was there. I don't think it's there.
Now. Despite this, I love this term vigorous defense for the insanity defense for him, but insane but guilty, what do you think about is real? Again? They decided that he wasn't insane by definition. But yeah, this seems all this mental illness and reporting of it seems to be awfully convenient, and there is a lot of it seems yeah.
I mean it, I mean yeah, First of all, it wasn't until his defense started getting feedback on the gun and all this evidence that all of a sudden the insanity came out. Right. It didn't come out in the very beginning. He wasn't insane right after he was arrested. It wasn't until they found out about the gun and emails and all of this sudden and so it does kind of smack of some you know, kind of having to cook up at defense. At the same time, I think he I don't doubt for a second that angels
were telling him to shoot you know, Rusty. I think he was crazy. I you know, there's most people say if you commit a murder by very definition, that's an insane act, you know, just by doing it, saying people don't go around killing other people. People who are unimpaired, don't go around killing other people. The cold blooded diabolical killer, I just don't think really exists. And then you can
argue that person's even insane. So but it does. It did come out as awfully convenient, and you know, a lot of it didn't quite hold up. And you know, it's kind of dueling experts there near the end, and you know, you pay an expert enough money, they'll they'll say anything in court. But I think he's I think he's clearly got severe mental illness. But severe mental illness is not the standard in the United States for an acquittal.
People who are on drugs, right, I mean, really impaired while on drugs or drunk get convicted of murder, and if you're mentally impaired, you get convicted of murder. It just didn't rise to that very very high level.
It's very interesting. In your book, you have all the information from these psychiatrists that that assessed Hemi in prison, the preliminary and then the major interviews with doctor Flores, and then of course, another interview with the other defense psychiatrist. What I found was really crucial and very very interesting in this book was he talked to the prosecution psychiatrists. Well it wasn't a psychiatrist per se, she was. They
tried to attack her credibility. But the story he gave her was I think crucial at trial because it talked about the pre planning. He thought he had somebody could do a similar story with that the other psychiatrist, but he gave her quite a bit of a different story and that didn't help on that trial.
It seaks to the premeditation. And remember, let's go all the way back to the beginning of this interview. We talked about the Mexican looking guy who is lurking around the what was it an air conditioner or something at the house, the one Rusty gol Well, that was that was Himy, you know, and he was lurking around the house. That was a day he was going to kill. And there's still a lot of unanswered questions, Right, how does how did he know he's going to be dropping off
the kid that day? Right? How did he know what Rusty's schedule was going to be? How did he know
you know, how did he know all these things? And unless Andrea told him, and you know, there was clearly some planning and premeditation, and you have to wonder, you have to wonder, did Andrea really think it was some Mexican guy lurking around behind the house or did she know right away that it was himy, Yeah, she didn't say anything, and she raised the specter of the anonymous mysterious Mexicans, which would be you know, in that kind
of community, would really put people off on the wrong tracks. So, you know, it just it just he just couldn't reach that level of not knowing with all that kind of planning. He wasn't continuously constantly crazy, right, There were long periods of lucidity when he knew what he was doing was wrong, and he did it anyway, And that's what the legal standard is.
It was very interesting too. The one other thing was that when you talked about the schedule, but also I think even more important for me was that there was an escape route through the woods. There's a sidewalk there that unless he was told that, unless he again he must have done stalked her for sure, But at least he was told that that there was an escape route through that woods.
Yea. You know, the house kind of butts up against a grove of trees, and it's even though it's in suburban Atlanta, it's a very kind of woodsy area. And these are big lots and lots of trees and pathways and things. And how would he know, you know, how would he know? I think one other thing which I always I raised it in the book, which I found very interesting. You're asking questions about, well, you know, what
was going on in Andrea's mind. We had all this evidence about what went through Hemi's head, multiple multiple shrinks talking to him, but we don't have a psychological profile of Andrew. She didn't raise a psychological defense. We don't know. I'd be very fascinating to find out what the psychiatrist, the psychologist would have made of her. We don't know. We know what's going through Hemy's head, or at least has some very strong clues, but we don't know what was going through hers.
Yeah, yeah, more questions. Certainly. I want to thank you very much Michael Fleeman for coming on talking about Crazy for You. True story of a family man's murder, wife's secret, and the deadly obsession, fascinating book, fascinating for those that might want to take a look at this. Do you have a Facebook page and a website? Tell us about that, please?
I do. You can go on Michaelfleeman dot com. It's my name. You can go on Amazon and punch in my last name F L E E M A N and my profile. I have a biopage in Amazon and you can link to it through my website. You can go on Michael Fleeman on Facebook or the True Crime page on Facebook. All of those things will lead you to me. And if you want to reach out to me, go on to my website and show me not there's a contact me and that goes right into my email inbox. So I'd love to hear from everybody.
Thank you very much, Michael. You have a great evening. And also for fans, join me on my personal Dan Zepanski Facebook page for comments on this show and others. Thank you, have a great night, Michael, Thank you very much again.
Thank you, good night.