Paperback: Crazy For You (2015) is the true story of the murder of a husband and father from Atlanta and the secrets that spilled out in the wake of his death.
Early one crisp fall day, rush-hour commuters got their morning pick-me-ups at the drive-through windows at Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, then slogged down Mount Vernon or Chamblee Dunwoody Roads toward the Interstate 285 freeway that circles Greater Atlanta. Women in brightly coloured tank tops and gym shorts power-walked to music from their iPods along the wooded trails that ran next to the traffic-clogged roads.
The Dunwoody Village shopping center in the heart of Dunwoody, Georgia, was quiet but for the distant sound of a leaf blower and an impact wrench at the Goodyear store. The Village Barbershop waited for its first customer; a training car from Taggart’s Driving School sat alone in the nearly empty parking lot. The post office would open within minutes, and people lined up outside in front of the glass door with the sign reading WE APPRECIATE YOUR BUSINESS.
Shortly before 9am on Thursday, 18 November, 2010, a silver Infiniti G35 pulled into the shopping center and came to a stop next to a red-brick wall in front of the Dunwoody Prep preschool. Russell “Rusty” Sneiderman, thirty-six years old, boyish looking with glasses, had his three-year-old son, Ian, strapped in the car seat in the back. The preschool run had become the morning routine ever since Rusty lost his CFO job, and his wife, Andrea, took her first full-time employment in the corporate world. Andrea usually took their five-year-old daughter, Sophia, to kindergarten on the way to her office at GE Energy in Marietta. Later in the day, Rusty would pick up both Ian and Sophia and take Sophia to ballet. In between, he would squeeze in work on a voice-mail company he was trying to start up.
Rusty brought Ian to his classroom and returned to his car. His schedule this day called for an 11.30am meeting with a potential business partner. Based on his casual dress, it appeared that Rusty had planned to make the short drive back to his large house on Manget Court and change clothes.
By all accounts, Rusty never saw the silver minivan following him into the parking lot, and if he did, it did not mean enough for him to do anything about it. Nor did he seem to recognize the driver, a bearded man in a hoodie sweatshirt who had waited behind the wheel until Rusty emerged from the school.
Rusty opened his car door, and the bearded man approached. If they exchanged words, nobody heard it. Without any apparent warning or provocation, the man pointed a handgun at Rusty’s head.
The gun was large and chrome-plated, the morning sun glinting off the polished surface.
Four times the man pulled the trigger.
The crime scene offered few answers and little evidence.
Rusty'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 Hemy Neuman who happens to be Andrea's adoring boss. The prosecution accuses Andrea and Hemy of having a "forbidden relationship," and of conspiring to collect $3 million in her husband's life insurance but Andrea swears she never intended to kill Rusty and that it is Hemy who is "delusional" and obsessed.
With the charges against her dropped, and the insurance money frozen, Andrea remains a mysterious character.
One person - the man who pulled the trigger - knows the truth about what really happened.
About the author: Michael Fleeman is a Los Angeles-based author, journalist, instructor and television commentator. His ten true-crime books include the New York Times bestseller The Stranger in My Bed and most recently Love You Madly and Seduced by Evil. He is currently working on a book about the Harold Henthorn “black widower” case in Colorado and once again will appear on the Investigation Discovery network’s true-crime show “Tabloid,” which begins its second season in 2015.
A graduate of UC Berkeley and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Fleeman is a former editor/writer for People magazine and the Associated Press, and is now freelancing for Reuters, Southern California Life magazine and Closer magazine. He also teaches journalism courses at UCLA Extension. He is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Online News Association, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society and Sisters in Crime.
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