Defense: Ga. woman crushed by husband's death; she denies affair with his killer

DECATUR, Ga. – Andrea Sneiderman was a happily married mother devastated by her husband's killing, not the woman prosecutors described as engaged in a "forbidden romance" with the boss who fatally shot her spouse outside a preschool, defense attorneys said Monday.

The contrasting portraits of Sneiderman emerged during opening statements in her trial on charges of lying under oath and hindering the investigation into her husband's death. Prosecutors initially said Sneiderman arranged her husband's killing, but murder charges against her were dropped.

Sneiderman's husband, Rusty Sneiderman, was fatally shot in November 2010 outside a suburban Atlanta preschool. Andrea Sneiderman's former boss Hemy Neuman was convicted in the killing in March 2012, but he was found to be mentally ill.

Sneiderman has pleaded not guilty and has repeatedly denied any romantic relationship with Neuman.

DeKalb County prosecutor Kellie Hill told the jury that evidence in the case will show that soon after Andrea Sneiderman took a job at General Electric, she formed a friendship with Neuman that quickly blossomed into a romantic relationship. But because she was married with young children, she felt conflicted about their relationship and was hot and cold with Neuman, Hill said.

Emails the state plans to present show "she feels torn between her reality and her desires," Hill said.

Andrea Sneiderman had willingly participated in a relationship with Neuman, sharing deep personal secrets with him, sending him photos of her children, and sharing kisses and other physical contact with him during business trips, Hill said. But she failed to tell police about her relationship with Neuman and failed to tell them she suspected he might be involved, Hill said.

"If the police had known about the relationship, they would have known why someone wanted Rusty dead," she said.

Andrea Sneiderman also lied under oath during Neuman's trial last year, denying the romantic relationship and lying about when she found out her husband had been shot, Hill said. As she was driving to the preschool after getting a call from an employee there about an emergency, she called her father-in-law and told him his son had been shot, even though no one had told her that yet, Hill said.

"The evidence will show a forbidden romance that ends in murder, silence despite her suspicion, and lies to conceal the truth from her family, from her friends, from the police and from a jury," Hill said as she urged the jury to find Andrea Sneiderman guilty.

Defense attorney Tom Clegg told jurors that Andrea Sneiderman told police the day after her husband's killing that Neuman had tried to break up her family.

Andrea Sneiderman was happily married, brushed aside advances from Neuman at work and never complained to human resources because she didn't want to create problems for herself and couldn't imagine he would do harm, Clegg said.

"The bottom line is Hemy Neuman was a pest, Hemy Neuman was a nuisance. Hemy Neuman, to this woman, was not a threat," Clegg said.

Andrea Sneiderman cooperated with police and suggested Neuman might have been involved, Clegg said.

She was so broken up over her husband's death that, on what would have been their 10th wedding anniversary, she put on her wedding dress and went to the synagogue in Florida where they got married, hoping to feel his spirit, Clegg said.

During Neuman's monthlong trial last year, the focus was often on Andrea Sneiderman. She was grilled by lawyers on both sides and responded with occasional hostility and emotion to questions from both sets of lawyers.

The state's first witness was a human resources manager at General Electric. Prosecutors asked him about the company's policy for reporting harassment, and the defense questioned him about whether he'd ever been aware of any inappropriate contact between Neuman and Andrea Sneiderman.