On a nondescript building along a busy highway a red neon sign flashes OPEN. Over the door is painted an American flag, and next to it a sign advertises a shooting club. Parnell’s Firearms and Range in quaint Woodstock, Georgia, sells a full array of pistols, long guns, ammunition, scopes, reloading supplies, all sorts of gun accessories. The shelves include goods from Remington, Ruger, Browning, Benelli, Weatherby, and US Repeating Arms. The shop also buys new and used antique and collectible guns and provides appraisals. Once you buy a weapon, you can shoot it right away without having to leave the grounds at the indoor shooting range.
On Halloween Day, 2010, at 2:47 p.m., a call went from Hemy Neuman’s 770 area code Apple iPhone to Parnell’s.
The evidence came from hundreds of pages of cell phone records produced under subpoena. Detectives who initially thought they were looking for a savvy master criminal instead found in Hemy a man who did virtually nothing to cover his tracks. The trail included not only phone calls made and received, but also Hemy’s whereabouts when he placed the calls—based on the nearest cell phone tower from which the call was “pinged.” The subpoenas also produced a record of virtually everything he did on his laptop and iPad, the history retrievable—in many cases even if it was erased or deleted—with forensic software that finds things hidden amid the memory bramble. David A. Freyman of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation created an image of the data on Hemy’s iPad, extracting both the stored history information plus anything that hadn’t been written over by the device. Among the findings: On October 15, 2010, Hemy created a bookmark labeled “gun.” Over the next two weeks the term range was repeatedly searched.
When Hemy called Parnell’s on October 31, phone records placed him near a cell tower in Dalton, Georgia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, about eighty miles away from Dunwoody up Interstate 75, which bisects the Perimeter and shoots north. This placed him near the Northwest Georgia Trade & Convention Center, a complex of meeting rooms and large banquet halls. The center hosts everything from high school proms and weddings to the Georgia Rampage indoor football games. On this weekend, the center hosted the traveling Eastman Gun Show. As “Proud supporters of your Second Amendment rights since 1981,” the show bills itself as a one-stop shop for “a good deal on the firearm, ammo, holster, scope, clip or magazine, knife or whatever you are looking for,” with sales consummated on the spot. “You may purchase a gun, ammunition and other accessories at the shows and take them home the same day.”
On that Halloween Day 2010, a Sunday, one of the convention hall’s sixteen security cameras captured Hemy Neuman walking through the admissions area. What he did next wasn’t known as no more footage of him inside the gun mart could be found, and there was no paper trail if he had purchased a weapon. Georgia has among the nation’s most lax gun laws. Residents don’t have to register firearms; in fact, the state prohibits registration. A concealed weapons permit is relatively easy to obtain. The state does forbid so-called straw purchases: Somebody can’t coerce a dealer to sell to somebody other than the actual buyer. And it’s illegal to sell a pistol or revolver to a minor. Certain weapons—including some (but not all) sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, and bazookas—are also illegal to possess without proper federal licenses. The federal government calls for a criminal background check for people buying guns from dealers, but not in private-party sales, as at gun shows like the one Hemy visited.
One way or another, the day after going to the gun show, a Monday, Hemy Neuman had a gun. He made his way to Woodstock in a semi-rural area near Allatoona Lake. Woodstock relies on day-trip visitors from Atlanta strolling the brick-paved 1870s-era downtown with antiques stores, gift shops, and tearooms. The outskirts are dominated by fast-food restaurants catering to freeway traffic heading to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and beyond.
Take a right just past the Taco Bell onto Main Street—which is more like a highway—and Parnell’s Range sits on the right. At 6:30 p.m. on November 1, 2010, Hemy walked in. John Turner, a retiree and part-time employee and gun enthusiast whose salary is supplemented by free range time and targets, waited on him. Turner handed Hemy the insurance liability forms required to use one of the store’s six shooting lanes. While state law frowns on paperwork concerning guns, the same is not true of gun ranges, which must worry about getting sued if somebody gets hurt. Hemy signed a form attesting that he had read and understood the safety rules written above. He also printed his name and added the date and time, and for one dollar purchased a target: a two-foot-by-four-foot silhouette of a man with rings providing points for accuracy: the closer to the heart, the higher the score. This is the most popular target at the store, far outselling the conventional bull’s-eye. Hemy’s form reflected that he used the target lane from 6:35 p.m. to 7:05 p.m.
When investigators interviewed Turner they found that there was no record of the kind of gun Hemy shot. The store keeps track of the manufacturer, model, and caliber of guns loaned for the range. But people who bring their own weapons don’t have to fill in that information. The store did, however, have piles of used shell casings going back months. Some of them could have come from the gun Hemy shot at the range and could be compared to the shells found at the murder scene.
Investigators filled up fourteen five-gallon buckets of brass and hauled it to ballistics man Kelly Fite. Among the state’s leading ballistics experts, Fite had logged thirty-one years as a firearms supervisor with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation before going out on his own in 1999 as a private consultant. One by one, the Parnell’s casings went under stereomicroscope magnifications of five to thirty times. Fite looked at the telltale ejector marks—where a gun’s mechanism grabs onto a shell after firing and kicks it out of a chamber. Like fingerprints, no two ejector marks are alike, so they can be used for identification in court. Even for an examiner accustomed to tedious work, Fite found this project particularly challenging. He said that there are about one hundred casings per pound, with three hundred pounds in the buckets, working out to thirty thousand casings that went under his microscope. In the end, the effort proved fruitless. Not one matched the murder-scene casings.
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Around the same time, Mark Potter, an investigator on loan from the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, was combing through Hemy’s cell phone records when he came across a name that he didn’t recognize: Jan DaSilva. A check against the files found no match to a GE employee or a family member. Potter called the number on the records and a man answered. After hearing what the man had to say, the detective set up a meeting at his workplace.
The Buckhead Diner on Piedmont Road Northeast is the quintessential ITP restaurant, with enough black-and-white tile, chrome, and neon to evoke a classic America diner but prices and ambience in keeping with Buckhead’s expectations. The restaurant promises a “fun menu” and “taste of nostalgia” to go with “snappy service, upscale atmosphere and retro style [that] gives this Atlanta icon a funky flair all its own.” The restaurant’s website includes a “celebrity spotlight” of black-and-white pictures of guests including Kevin Bacon, Alyson Hannigan and Kathy Griffin, and Eugene Levy.
On Feruary 22, 2011, Potter met Jan DaSilva outside the Buckhead Diner. A former petty officer in the navy where he was a mechanic on F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets, DaSilva left the service and now parked cars as a valet. Potter placed on the trunk of a car a photo lineup—six pictures of different men—and asked him if he recognized anybody. Without hesitation DaSilva picked out photo number 4—Hemy Neuman.
The detective asked DaSilva how he knew the man and how DaSilva’s phone number came to be in Hemy’s cell phone records.
“I sold him my gun,” he said.
It was a Bersa Thunder 40, a big and powerful handgun—over seven inches long and weighing nearly two pounds. A semiautomatic that can carry up to thirteen rounds, it comes in a black or nickel finish and gets generally glowing reviews from gun owners. Christiangunowner.com gushes that the Bersa Thunder is “worthy consideration for anyone wanting a full sized shooter.” A commenter on thefiringline.com says, “I love this gun. I can shoot it quite well. The weight makes recoil very manageable, and the .40 cal is, in my opinion, the perfect pistol caliber.” A common drawback is that it may be too much gun for people with smaller hands.
It shoots .40-caliber bullets, the same kind that killed Rusty Sneiderman.
DaSilva originally obtained the gun on April 8, 2010, from Nick’s Gun and Range on Canton Road in Marietta. He filled out the federally required form from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, passed the criminal background check, and was handed the weapon along with two magazines that carry ten rounds of ammunition each. After six months, however, his interest in firearms was eclipsed by a new passion: skydiving. Needing extra money to pay for his certification to become a skydiving instructor, DaSilva listed the Bersa on a gun sales website called gunlistings.org for $375 in October 2010.
He received just one email reply on his Yahoo account. A prospective buyer contacted him and asked if the gun was still available. DaSilva said it was and they arranged a date and time to meet, but DaSilva missed the appointment because he had gone skydiving. He sent an apologetic email and asked the potential buyer if he was still interested. They set up a second appointment for October 31, this time at another restaurant where DaSilva also worked as a valet.
Owned by the same company that operates the Buckhead Diner, the Atlanta Fish Market on Pharr Road NE promises a “relaxing retreat from the hustle and bustle of Buckhead” with fish flown in daily and a “menu printed twice daily.” As DaSilva waited in the parking lot, he got a call on his cell phone call from the man saying he was nearly there. Minutes later a Honda Odyssey minivan pulled up into the big driveway and came to a stop at the valet hut next to DaSilva. After the man introduced himself as Hemy Neuman, they chatted briefly and found some things in common. Hemy said he had been born and raised in Puerto Rico as DaSilva had, immigrating to the United States when he was eighteen. The two now spoke in Spanish. Hemy said he’d graduated from Georgia Tech and had a daughter there; Jan said his uncle went to the university.
DaSilva then opened a box to show him the Bersa. He explained how the gun worked, gave him a cleaning kit and two kinds of Winchester bullets: about a hundred solid-brass rounds used for target practice and another fifty hollow points designed for self-protection, the hollow points spreading out in a body upon impact, causing maximum harm. Hemy gave him $380 from a wad of $20 bills he had just gotten from an ATM and Jan returned $5 change. Hemy drove off with his gun.
DaSilva thought this was the end of it, but one evening about two weeks later Hemy Neuman appeared at the Buckhead Diner while DaSilva was parking cars. DaSilva didn’t know how Hemy got there, seeing no car. Hemy apparently walked up to him. Speaking English this time, Hemy asked if DaSilva remembered him. DaSilva said yes, of course. Hemy reminded him anyway that he was the man who had bought the gun and asked if he could talk to him. DaSilva reluctantly agreed, wondering how Hemy had found him at his other job. Without being asked, Hemy said the other valets at the Atlanta Fish Market had directed him to the Buckhead Diner.
Hemy went on to tell DaSilva that “something bad happened with the gun,” DaSilva later said. DaSilva asked if the gun had malfunctioned and worried that Hemy wanted his money back. Hemy wouldn’t say what went wrong, only that he had to get rid of the gun. DaSilva asked if he had sold it, and Hemy replied that he had disposed of it where nobody would find it.
Then out of the blue Hemy said, “Don’t ever have a mistress.”
DaSilva didn’t know what to say, so he just said, “Yes.”
Hemy told a convoluted story about a mistress causing trouble with a family and that this family knew Hemy had the gun—somebody had seen him flash it—and members of the family got scared. So Hemy tossed the gun into Lake Lanier, a resort with boating, sandy beaches, banquet halls, a boardwalk, and a water park fifty miles northeast of Atlanta.
DaSilva listened, unsure how to react. Hemy explained that some people might try to contact DaSilva asking if he’d sold Hemy the gun or if he’d ever met him. If that happened, Hemy advised, DaSilva should just say that the pair knew each other through mutual friends at Georgia Tech and that DaSilva was trying to get them jobs at GE where Hemy worked. DaSilva agreed to lie for him but felt uneasy. Hemy offered him a bunch of twenty-dollar bills from his pocket, but DaSilva said he declined. Hemy asked if he was sure he didn’t want the money; DaSilva told him yes and added that he really needed to get back to work. Hemy walked away.
Rattled by the conversation, DaSilva that day approached an Atlanta police officer. He asked the officer if a person could get in trouble for selling a gun that was later used in a crime. According to DaSilva, the officer told him that if the gun had been sold legally, the seller need not be worried. Feeling assured the sale was legal, DaSilva said nothing more about it until he was contacted by Potter.
Hoping to obtain a shell casing for comparison, the investigator asked DaSilva if he had ever fired the weapon in the six months he owned it and kept any of the shells. DaSilva said he shot it about five hundred times at a range but had not kept the casings.
But he did know where he might be able to find one. When DaSilva purchased the gun, it came with a shell from a test fire. Excited about his first gun purchase, he gave that shell to his girlfriend, Aurora Juarez—also a gun enthusiast. It was “like a gift,” he later said, “nothing special.”
At Potter’s request, DaSilva called Aurora, who was at home and said she’d talk to him. The detective went to her house, flashed his badge, and asked her if she had kept the shell.
“I keep everything,” she said.
It had been in her room. Potter took the shell casing to Fite’s laboratory in an envelope. Through the stereomicroscope he compared the casing with one found at the crime scene, looking at their respective ejection marks.
Fite, who had testified twenty-seven hundred times in cases for both the defense and prosecution, was prepared to go to court to give his expert opinion that Rusty Sneiderman was gunned down with the $375 Bersa Thunder 40 that Hemy Neuman bought from Jan DaSilva.