so we knew what we had to do on the stand, and we simply did it. in court, hemy neuman was the accused, but at times it looked as though andrea was on trial, too. the prosecution suggested andrea had been a willing partner, not only in their relationship, but possibly in the murder itself. hemy could not be insane, the prosecutor said, if he had been conspiring to kill rusty. it says, think about it, be with me forever. would that be a normal communication between your boss and you? the victim s widow was aggressively questioned about business trips with her boss that looked like a series of trysts with him in hotels here and abroad. a week after the trip to lake tahoe, when hemy read andrea a love poem, he joined her in longmont, colorado. did you pick the defendant up at the airport? yes. did you take him back to longmont with you? yes. did you and the defendant share a room in longmont? no.
continue, and the emotionally charged emails intensified. hemy wrote her words like, marry me. i love you. and this. betrayal and anger is not about what you and we did, it s a cop-out. it s about how you felt what we wanted. how you felt when we looked at the stars in tahoe, when we woke up friday morning in denver, when you took my hand and nestled your head on my shoulder. did that happen? did what happen? did you wake up together in denver and tahoe? no. andrea might not have known it, but during this time, hemy, like a moonstruck teenager, was confiding in a real estate agent friend named melanie white. he would get an email from her and he would be so excited because it had a smiley face at the end of it. the friend testified that hemy shared with her all the messages he d received from andrea. to melanie s eyes, andrea wasn t pushing hemy away at all. what i saw is that andrea wanted hemy and would lead him
and her behavior and her personality. during closing arguments, the focus was on andrea yet again. had she manipulated the mentally unstable hemy neuman into killing her husband, as the defense contended? the gun in this case was in hemy s hand, but the trigger, i respectfully suggest, was pulled by andrea sneiderman. if he and andrea or, as the prosecution argued, was neuman trying to hide behind a fabricated mental illness to avoid answering for a murder plot that he concocted with his lover? which one is more likely? these imaginary beings, i see dead people telling me to kill people, or was it the woman who stood to gain $2 million and he did too? he s not crazy. he s a co-conspirator. on the third day of deliberations, the jury announced it had a verdict. andrea was not in the courtroom to hear it.
get a bowl of ice cream, and before we knew it, the bowl of ice cream went flying, hemy was getting slapped, and it just kept going and going and going. but it was at boarding school that hemy had experienced his first delusion, this defense expert testified, a demon. he described the demon as much bigger than him. he said that when he felt and saw this demon, he felt anguish. deep pain. by the time andrea met him, hemy neuman had a history of breakdowns. and he was teetering on the edge of having another one, according to his defense. hemy s fascination with andrea began as a fantasy, according to mental health experts, something to help him escape his troubled life. but they say that workplace infatuation soon became something much darker. hemy s confidant said that it looked like andrea would wind
the defense argued, that it hadn t taken much from andrea to send hemy over the edge. and if the defense could prove that he was not guilty by reason of insanity, that he didn t know right from wrong when he pulled the trigger, there was a chance he would escape prison, if not a hospital bed in a psychiatric unit. their first witness was hemy s younger sister, monique. she painted a picture for the jury of hemy s painful childhood. monique, would you describe for the jury your household at 6:00 in the evening when your father was coming home? anxiety. monique explained that their father, a violent and alcoholic man, had beaten both children savagely. i ve been kicked, i ve been slapped, i ve been whipped. and those things you don t forget. and monique said hemy took the worst of the beatings. my brother got up, went to