Dunwoody Murder Victim's Parents Suspicious of Daughter-in-Law
Don Sneiderman said he asked his dead son's widow if she lied to him.
March 16, 2012 — -- In January, 2011, long before Georgia prosecutors called Andrea Sneiderman a "co-conspirator" in the murder of her husband, the victim's parents had their doubts about their daughter-in-law.
"Andrea called us sobbing and in tears, (saying) 'I'm so so sorry,'" Don Sneiderman told ABC News Atlanta affiliate WSB-TV, "and I asked her if she had lied to me. And her brother said we're hanging up now. And they hung up the phone."
Don Sneiderman is the father of Rusty Sneiderman, 36, an entrepreneur and father of two who was gunned down in the parking lot outside Sneiderman's son's Dunwoody, Ga. nursery school in November, 2010. Two months later, Don Sneiderman said, police called to inform him that Andrea Sneiderman's boss, Hemy Neuman, had been arrested for the murder.
Neuman pled not guilty by reason of insanity but yesterday, after a three-week trial, a jury found him guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt but mentally ill." The "mentally ill" designation means Neuman will receive mental health treatment in prison.
PHOTOS: Dunwoody Daycare murder trial
Don and Marilyn Sneiderman were interviewed by WSB-TV before yesterday's verdict was announced. He said his daughter-in-law made her emotional phone call to him not long after he'd learned of Neuman's arrest. Sneiderman said that he asked her whether she had been lying about initially not knowing who killed Rusty, prompting the hang-up.
"I thought she knew on Jan. 4 ...I asked her if she had lied to me. All this whole charade has done is confirm everything that I thought. Nothing's changed my mind," he said. "I think she knew. I don't know what she knew."
Neuman, his estranged wife Ariela Neuman, Neuman's defense lawyers and prosecutors in Neuman's trial have all said that Neuman and Andrea Sneiderman were having an affair. Both the defense and the prosecution have argued that Andrea Sneiderman played a role in her husband's death.
Andrea Sneiderman has denied having any romantic relationship with Hemy Neuman and has not been charged in connection with her husband's death. Sneiderman testified that Neuman killed her husband after she refused his many advances.
In what has proven to be another point of contention, Sneiderman also said that no one at the day care would tell her what happened to her husband and she did not know he had been shot and killed until she arrived at the hospital at 11 a.m.
"I pulled up my vehicle to caution tape, police cars and Rusty's car," Sneiderman told the court. "I fell out of the vehicle and was picked up and taken inside."
But Don Sneiderman testified at the trial that Andrea called him at about 9:30 a.m. to telll him Rusty had been shot.
"I didn't know it was important, but it is," Don Sneiderman told WSB-TV.
"I would have thought she would have been more cooperative trying to convict the guy who supposedly killed her husband," Don Sneiderman said of Andrea Sneiderman's testimony, "and she didn't do that."
Also in an interview with WSB-TV, Rusty Sneiderman's mother, Marilyn, recalled meeting Hemy Neuman at her son's funeral.
"I say, 'Gee, I have heard of you -- you're Andrea's boss, and he said yes, and he said, 'Isn't it a tragedy?,' and I said 'Yes, it certainly is,'...I grabbed Don and said I want you to meet my husband, and I said, by the way, I'm Rusty's mother," she said. "He said, 'Please excuse me I have to go talk to the people from GE that came with me.' His voice didn't even quiver."
In a statement released yesterday, Andrea Sneiderman's lawyer Jennifer Little said, "Andrea is grateful for and relieved by the jury's guilty verdict and the sentence. Nothing can bring back her husband, but it is reassuring to her that, after all of the noise and distractions surrounding this case, some measure of justice has been done for Rusty."
Little said Andrea Sneiderman had no plans to make any further public statement and asked the public and media respect that decision "in the interest of the entire Sneiderman family."
Watch more on the Dunwoody Day Care Murder tonight on "20/20" at 10 p.m. ET.
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