Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today. One evening in 2010, a driver pulled their car over on a residential street, trembling with fear.
The driver turned and looked at the passenger seat, and there they saw a six-foot-tall demon, and when the demon spoke, it sounded just like the famous 1970s R&B and soul singer, Barry White.
Then this demon told the driver there was no need to fear them, but this driver had been chosen for a very important mission.
Suddenly, the demon disappeared, and an angel who sounded like the actress Olivia Newton-John took its place.
And the angel said, the demon was right.
This driver was the only one who could fulfill this mission of cosmic proportions.
And so, the driver would take up this mission, and that mission would end in blood, murder, and the most bizarre case local police had ever seen.
But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, the next time you give the follow button a ride home, be sure to park your car as close as possible to another car on the passenger side so the follow button has to awkwardly slither their way out of their barely open door.
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On an August evening in 2010, 36-year-old Rusty Snyderman could barely contain his excitement as he talked to a small group of people in his kitchen in Dunwoody, Georgia, an upscale suburb of Atlanta.
Rusty and his wife Andrea had some friends over, and people were spread out across the large suburban home laughing, eating, and drinking.
But in the kitchen, Rusty was talking to Hemi Newman, who was his wife's boss, along with a couple other friends, about a new business that Rusty was launching.
Rusty was lanky with short brown hair, and he could barely see without his glasses on.
And when he talked about something that he was passionate about, he used his whole body.
And Rusty was very passionate about this new business idea, so he was very animated as he spoke.
He told his captive audience that his idea was to start a company that provided celebrity voicemail services.
So basically, somebody could pay a famous actor or singer or athlete to create the outgoing voicemail message on the person who was paying his phone. or a friend's phone as a gift or something like that.
To make this more clear, if I were to pay for this, I would have a voicemail that would say, hey, you've reached the voicemail of John Allen.
Leave a message after the beep. But instead of it being my voice, it would be some celebrity saying as much.
Now, remember, this was several years before celebrity video services like Cameo would come out.
So the people listening to this idea had never heard of anything like this before, and they thought it was absolutely brilliant.
Hemi, who was an executive at General Electric, which is a big appliance company, liked the idea but did raise some questions about overhead costs and stuff like that.
And the other people that were listening, Rusty's friends, they wanted to know how would he get these famous people on board with the concept.
And Rusty, who people said was a born entrepreneur, had an answer for all their questions.
And he really believed that if he did this right, the company would grow and it would even become something potentially that was so big and successful that he could pass it down to his kids.
And so as Rusty was talking about his big plan, his wife Andrea stepped into the kitchen and overheard what they were talking about.
And she quickly kind of chimed in that, you know, maybe if this business is as successful as Rusty thinks, they wouldn't even need to worry about their kids' future job prospects.
You know, their five-year-old daughter and two-year-old son would be just set because of this great business.
And even though she was sort of joking about this, being so committed to this totally succeeding, there was some truth to that.
She really believed this was going to be a success, same as Rusty.
But Andrea's excitement was more about her husband having something to focus on rather than the actual company he was going to build.
Andrea had known Rusty had a great mind for business since they started dating back in college at the University of Indiana.
And not long after graduating, Andrea had moved with Rusty while he earned a master's degree from Harvard Business School.
They had gotten married soon after that, moved to Georgia when Rusty got a job offer, and they started their family.
And initially, things went great for Rusty on the work front.
A few years earlier in 2007, he'd gotten a job as the chief financial officer for a large chain of daycares and he was making a ton of money.
But over the last year, Rusty had begun clashing with the men who owned the company and so they ultimately fired him. and that had changed everything back at their home.
Andrea, who had always been kind of a math whiz, went ahead and got a job, and a really good one, a well-paying job at GE to support the family, and Rusty, who was now out of work, became a stay-at-home dad.
Andrea knew Rusty did not resent her at all, even though her job often required her to travel a lot and leave him alone with the kids, but she also knew Rusty loved working. and so now that he had this new idea for this celebrity voicemail company you know she just felt like he seemed so much happier and in such a better place way better than he had been over the past couple of months in the kitchen andrea grabbed a soda out of the fridge and asked her boss and rusty's friends if they needed anything they said they were fine so andrea said okay she turned around and headed into the other room to speak to some of the other guests Later that night, after all the guests had gone, Rusty and Andrea cleaned up the house, and as they did, they talked about what a great time they'd had.
They also got excited discussing an upcoming cruise they were going on in a few months, just the two of them.
Their kids would be with their grandparents, and so Rusty and Andrea would finally have time to reconnect just the two of them.
Even though things have been kind of tough the last few months, they both felt good about where their lives were heading.
And to their surprise, they actually felt sort of lucky to live in this town of Dunwoody, Georgia.
Rusty and Andrea had grown up in the Midwest of the United States, and they had really worried they wouldn't fit in when they moved here to the South.
But over the years, Dunwoody had proven to be the perfect place for them.
Their house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac in this beautiful secluded neighborhood that backed right up to sprawling woods filled with oak and pine trees.
And they were close enough to Atlanta to also enjoy all the city had to offer as well.
But most importantly to Rusty and Andrea, Dunwoody had a tight, supportive Jewish community which was not the case for a lot of suburbs in the area.
Rusty and Andrea credited the Jewish community for helping them adjust to life in the South and for weathering challenges like when Rusty had lost his job.
So Dunwoody felt like home, a great town to raise their kids in and the right place for Rusty to launch this next phase of his career.
But a little later that night, as Rusty worked on his business proposal at the kitchen table, something so strange, almost completely unbelievable, was happening in Dunwoody.
It was something that nobody who lived in the small suburb would have ever imagined.
A few minutes from Rusty and Andrea Snyderman's house, a driver sat in their parked car on the side of a neighborhood street.
The car felt ice cold, but sweat dripped down the driver's face.
They could feel their chest getting tight, and they heard this loud rumbling sound coming from their passenger seat.
The driver shook their head, please don't let this happen to me again, but there was nothing the driver could do.
The car rattled, a light flashed outside, and then the demon appeared in the passenger seat.
The driver tried to hide their eyes, but they couldn't look away, like the demon was forcing the driver to stare at it.
The demon's head nearly touched the roof of the car, and its legs were massive.
It wore a dark cloak and hood, and when the driver looked at it, they felt like all hope inside of them was just draining away.
The demon turned its head away from the driver and began to talk.
Its voice was deep and powerful. The driver thought the demon actually sounded like the 1970s soul and R&B singer Barry White, who was famous for songs like Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe.
The driver trembled, but the demon said there was no need to be afraid.
The driver had been chosen to carry out a mission.
The driver begged the demon to please leave them alone, but the demon said the mission was too important to ignore.
Suddenly, the whole car shook, and light flooded in from all sides.
The driver shielded their eyes again, but they also felt a perfect sense of calm coming over them.
They looked back at the passenger seat, and now the demon was gone.
In its place sat an angel wrapped in light.
The angel spoke, and the driver thought immediately that it sounded just like Olivia Newton-John, the actress and singer who had starred in movie musicals like Grease and Xanadu.
When the angel spoke, they said the driver really was the only one who could carry out this very important mission the demon had already mentioned.
So the driver asked, what's the mission?
The angel smiled and said members of the Snyderman family were in grave danger and the driver had to protect them.
On the morning of November 10th, so about three months after the angel and demon appeared in that driver's car, Andrea rushed into her kitchen, holding her five-year-old daughter's hand.
Rusty was in the kitchen helping their son finish his breakfast.
Andrea and her daughter both gave Rusty a kiss and told him they'd see him later, and then they headed out to the garage.
Whenever Andrea was not traveling, she always made a point to drive her daughter to kindergarten on her way to work.
It was just another way for her to bond with her child.
After they were gone, Rusty's son finished eating and Rusty cleaned up the kitchen and then got his son dressed for preschool.
At about 8.30 a.m., Rusty carried his son out to the Silver Infinity car parked in the garage, opened up the garage door, and then buckled the boy into his car seat in the back.
But before Rusty closed the car door, he hesitated.
A strange smell was coming from outside.
Rusty couldn't tell if it was gasoline or something else, so he walked out of the garage and scanned the yard, and he saw something move out of the corner of his eye.
Rusty turned to the side of the house, and he saw someone laying in the grass.
He didn't know if this person was sleeping or hurt or what was going on, so he just shouted, Hey, are you okay?
The person jumped up and just stared at Rusty.
It was a man with a thick black mustache and he wore a wool hat and earmuffs.
Rusty immediately felt like something is wrong with this person, so he turned, ran back into his garage, hopped in the car, locked the doors, and then he pulled out into the street with his little son in back, and then as Rusty began to drive away, he looked and saw this man with the earmuffs running down a long path that led to the woods behind the cul-de-sac.
Rusty had no idea what any of this meant, so he just grabbed his phone and called 911.
When the emergency operator picked up, Rusty told them what he had just seen and gave as good of a description as he could of the man with the earmuffs.
Rusty also said he thought he smelled something like gasoline outside of his house right before he saw this guy.
The operator told Rusty they would send a police unit over right away to look around, and Rusty said okay great, but he still had to drive his son to school, but right after that, he would come back home and be ready to talk to police.
A few minutes later, Rusty arrived at the preschool and walked his son inside, and then afterward, he headed right back home.
And when he got there, police officers, firefighters, and a workman from the gas company were all arriving as well.
Rusty told his story to the police again, and they said other officers were already out looking for this man he described.
Then, the gas company employee said Rusty's house did have a gas leak, but nothing had been tampered with.
Whoever had been at the house in the front yard didn't appear to have caused the leak.
It was just an odd coincidence. And the guy said he had fixed the leak already, and the gas company employees said, you know, the leak was a very easy fix.
Later that day, after all the emergency personnel and the gas company employee were all gone, Rusty still didn't have any real answers about who the heck that guy was.
Officers said that, you know, the guy with the earmuffs could have been a homeless person sleeping near his house, but that made no sense to Rusty.
Things like that just didn't happen in this neighborhood.
But police had said that until they found this guy with the earmuffs and the mustache, there really wasn't much they could do.
So that night, when Andrea came home and Rusty filled her in about this guy, they talked about it and just said, you know, all we can do is be super vigilant whenever they left the house.
And they said they would do their best not to worry too much.
They didn't want the kids to get a sense that their parents were scared of something.
But Rusty admitted he was glad that he and Andrea were leaving town for their cruise soon and that the kids would not be at the house either.
They'd be with their grandparents. And Rusty hoped that, you know, by the time they all came back home after the cruise, things would be back to normal in the neighborhood.
Meaning the guy with the earmuffs and the mustache has been found and hopefully will not be back anytime soon.
Eight days later, at 9 a.m. on November 18th, Rusty pulled up to his son's preschool.
Rusty and Andrea had gotten back from their cruise a couple of days earlier, and Rusty felt rejuvenated.
And nothing strange had happened at the house since they'd returned, so he hoped that the man lying in the grass was just some weird one-time occurrence.
Rusty unbuckled his son from the car seat and led him into the preschool.
And then Rusty chatted with a few other parents who were also doing drop-offs, and then a few minutes later, Rusty was headed back towards his car.
However, when Rusty reached his car and opened up the driver's side door, he suddenly heard footsteps and he glanced over his shoulder and he saw a man with brown hair and a beard walking quickly towards him.
Seconds later, screams rang out in the preschool parking lot as a silver minivan peeled out and sped away.
One of the other parents ran over to Rusty's car where the scream had come from.
The driver's side door was still open and Rusty lay on the ground in a pool of blood.
The woman could see Rusty was still breathing, so she screamed for help and then called 911.
In the shopping center right next to the preschool, a woman happened to see what was going on and so she immediately ran into a doctor's office that happened to be nearby.
And right away, a doctor and a nurse darted out of that office and they ran over to Rusty.
The doctor quickly checked Rusty's pulse and then began administering CPR.
And soon, the doctor heard an ambulance siren wailing down the street.
By this time, people from inside the preschool who heard all this commotion had began running outside into the parking lot.
But luckily, all of the children were outside behind the school and had no idea what was happening, including Rusty's son.
The ambulance arrived and paramedics took over for the doctor, trying to keep Rusty alive.
They got Rusty onto a gurney, into the ambulance, and then they sped towards the hospital.
A few minutes later, Detective Andrew Thompson of the Dunwoody Police Department arrived at the preschool.
He saw a few of his fellow officers trying their best to keep a growing crowd away from Rusty's car.
Detective Thompson had been a cop in Atlanta for eight years before moving here to Dunwoody, but he'd only been a detective for about two years.
And he'd also never been the lead investigator on a potential homicide, and he knew that's what he had on his hands right now.
Thompson got out of his car, he briefly spoke with the officers on site, and then began taking witness statements.
The few people who had seen what happened all said the same thing.
A man with brown hair and a beard stepped out of a silver minivan, walked right up to Rusty Snyderman, and shot him multiple times.
Then the man with the beard got back in the minivan and drove off.
Other than the man having a beard, the witnesses didn't notice anything that stood out about the shooter's appearance.
But one witness said the shooter seemed remarkably calm considering what he did.
He walked up calm as can be, shot Rusty, and then turned and calmly walked back to the van before leaving.
Detective Thompson thanked all the witnesses for their help and then kind of gently told them to please step back and then he and the other officers began searching the area right around Rusty's car.
A trail of blood now stretched out almost 40 feet across the parking lot and to the side of the blood trail near the car, the police found four brass bullet casings that they believed were fired from a semi-automatic .40 caliber or .44 caliber weapon.
And then not long after Thompson and the others had found these bullet casings, Thompson got word that Rusty had unfortunately passed away at the hospital.
Thompson was now officially leading a homicide investigation for the first time.
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While Detective Thompson searched the preschool parking lot for more evidence, Rusty's wife, Andrea, sat at her desk in GE's Atlanta offices.
A minute later, her phone rang and she noticed the call was coming in from her son's preschool.
And so Andrea immediately answered and the preschool administrator on the other line sounded very upset.
She said Andrea's son was just fine, but Andrea needed to come to the school immediately.
So without thinking, Andrea grabbed her things and ran outside to her car.
And as she was running towards it, she pulled out her phone and called her boss Hemi to let him know she was dealing with some kind of an emergency.
And then she got in her car and sped back towards the suburbs.
As soon as Andrea pulled into the preschool parking lot, she saw all these police officers who turned and looked at her and immediately they walked right up to her.
And so she rolled her window down and they said, you have to go to the hospital right now.
Andrea demanded to know what was going on.
Was her son really okay? And the police assured her, her son was absolutely safe, but she still needed to go to the hospital right now.
And when Andrea arrived at the hospital a few minutes later, there she would learn her husband had been gunned down in the preschool parking lot and had died shortly after.
Detective Thompson spent most of the day in the preschool parking lot, working with the forensics team to see if there was any useful evidence they could find beyond just the bullet casings.
But they didn't find much of anything else.
So Thompson knew his biggest clues right then were that the killer had a beard and drove a silver minivan.
None of the witnesses had gotten the license plate of this silver minivan, but Thompson had already called in an alert, so all the police departments in the area would be on the lookout for any vehicle that could possibly be a match.
Thompson also arranged for a forensic sketch artist to meet with the witnesses and make a composite drawing of the shooter from all of their descriptions.
By the time the sun set, Thompson already felt tired and a little overwhelmed, but he had no intention of stopping, so he got in his car and drove to Andrea and Rusty's house.
Once he got there and parked his car, he stepped outside into the cool fall air.
It was just above 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
And just a second later, he heard somebody calling his name.
Thompson looked over and saw his boss, Sergeant Gary Cortolino, standing by his own car at the curb.
Cortolino still wanted Thompson to take the lead on this case, but he knew the detective did not have a lot of experience working homicide cases, so he said he would just be there to help.
Thompson thanked Cortolino for coming, and the two men walked up to the house together.
Cortellino's strong New York accent was a major contrast to the soft southern drawl a lot of people in town spoke with.
But just like Rusty and Andrea, Cortellino had come to consider this small town in Georgia home, even if he was originally an outsider from up north.
Andrea opened up the front door and it was clear she'd been crying.
The detectives introduced themselves and asked if they could please come inside.
But Andrea got a stern look on her face.
She said her parents and her in-laws were there and this was a house of mourning.
She thought it was very disrespectful that the police would want to intrude so soon after her husband had died.
But Detective Thompson was just not going to have this.
He said they were investigating a murder and they needed to ask her and the family some questions right now.
But Andrea just repeated herself. The family was in mourning and they had no intention of speaking to police right now.
At this point, Thompson got an angry look on his face and he was about to push Andrea further, but Sergeant Cortellino jumped in.
He said they were very sorry for her and her family's loss and then apologized to Andrea for disturbing her and her family at such a difficult time and said they would come back the following day.
Andrea's face softened and then she thanked him and said she would be willing to talk to them tomorrow.
She closed the door, and then the two detectives walked back towards their respective cars.
Thompson couldn't believe what had just happened.
Clearly, they needed to interview the victim's wife, like right now.
But Cortolino told him that in his experience, grief could do some really strange things to people, and they were way better off not pushing Andrea right at this moment.
Still, Cortolino did admit that it was worth noting that Andrea did not seem remotely eager to help.
The following day, November 19, 2010, Detective Thompson and Sergeant Cortellino returned to Andrea and Rusty's house, this time with a warrant to search the premises.
Andrea still did not seem thrilled to have the police in her home, and she thought the warrant was totally unnecessary, but she still led them into the kitchen, and she and her family sat down and spoke to them.
Over the course of about two hours, the detectives met with Andrea, her parents, Rusty's parents, and his brother.
And they all pretty much said the same thing.
Rusty was a great guy, people who knew him loved him, and they just couldn't imagine who would want to hurt him.
This didn't surprise Thompson and Cortellino.
Families often painted their dead relatives in the best possible light.
It's just what you do. It's your family.
Andrea told the detectives she couldn't think of anybody who fit the description of the bearded man that witnesses had seen.
Then after she said it, she immediately shook her head like she had just remembered something.
She said in all of the chaos and grief, she'd almost forgotten something really huge.
The detectives asked what she meant, and Andrea said about a week earlier, Rusty had seen this weird guy with earmuffs on and a mustache laying in their front yard for no reason right as he was taking their son to school.
Rusty had been so freaked out by seeing this guy who kind of inexplicably ran away that he called the police and gave a description of the guy.
And again, part of that description was saying that this guy had this big black mustache.
Thompson and Cortellino looked at each other.
It was definitely possible the man with the big mustache and the earmuffs had grown out a full beard, and then by the time he was shooting Rusty, that's what you saw, his full beard and not just a mustache.
So maybe the shooter really was the same person Rusty had seen in the front yard.
They talked to Andrea a bit longer, and then at some point, they told her they wanted to take her and Rusty's computers to be searched.
And again, Andrea got very upset. Detective Thompson thought it was strange that she still seemed unwilling to do whatever it took to help police find her husband's killer.
But the detectives, in truth, did not really need Andrea to give them permission because they had a warrant.
So they took the computers, then they thanked Rusty's family for talking to them, and then they left.
Back at the station, Thompson and Cordolino handed off the computers for forensic data analysis, and then they dug up the report Rusty had filed about this weird guy he'd seen in his front yard.
At that point, the detectives only knew there was a guy with this big mustache who might also be the big bearded guy who shot Rusty.
It was not much to go on and nobody in Rusty's family or anybody from the preschool remotely recognized this bearded guy.
Then something came to Thompson. He remembered what one of the witnesses had said, that the shooter seemed to be utterly calm when he walked up and shot and killed Rusty.
And so Thompson floated the idea that, you know, what if the shooter was a professional hitman who somebody had hired to kill Rusty?
That would make sense because nobody would know who he was and maybe he was wearing a disguise or something and he certainly would be very calm walking up to do the killing because this is what he did professionally.
And surprisingly, Cordolino did not think this was a far-fetched idea at all.
In fact, he said, you know, if this guy Rusty saw in the yard was also the shooter, this hitman potentially, he could have been at the house that day tracking Rusty's movements and learning his routines, something a professional killer would likely do.
And when the detectives began delving into emails and other information they had found on Rusty and Andrea's computers, the hired killer theory only began to make more sense.
The detectives found that during his time working as a chief financial officer, Rusty had clashed repeatedly with the business owners.
And based on the emails, he and Andrea were not shy about telling other people exactly how they felt about those men.
Also, since Rusty had begun working on creating his own company, the Celebrity Voicemail Company, he'd worked closely with a business partner as well as several potential investors.
So there was a chance that maybe Rusty had just angered the wrong people when talking trash about his former bosses, or maybe he'd had a financial dispute with someone who was working with him on his new business.
The detectives kept digging into Rusty and Andrea's computer data, but they also knew they could break everything wide open if they could just locate the silver minivan the shooter had been driving.
So with the help of other police departments in the state, they expanded the search radius for this minivan beyond just the Atlanta metropolitan area.
And so soon, police were scouring security camera footage from roads and stores surrounding the city.
The detectives also put together a list of people who might have had the motive and the money to hire a hitman to take Rusty out.
On November 21, 2010, so three days after Rusty's murder, sheets hung over the mirrors in Rusty and Andrea's house, and friends and family sat together on low stools in the front room.
Rusty's funeral had taken place earlier that day, and now the people who had been closest to him were sitting shiva.
Shiva is a Jewish tradition in which family and friends gather together to mourn a dead loved one.
They'll say prayers and often receive condolence calls from others.
At the house, Andrea thanked her boss, Hemi, and her GE co-workers for coming.
They had all been so worried about her when she got that call saying something was wrong at her son's preschool, but none of them could have imagined that that call would eventually lead to this.
A little while later, Andrea's boss, Hemi, began to lead the whole group in a prayer.
Over a hundred members of Hemi's extended family had actually died in the Holocaust, and so that had always inspired him to remain an active member of the Jewish community and to provide any help he could to those close to him, like Andrea.
But while Andrea was sitting Shiva and listening to Hemi give this prayer, Detective Thompson and Cortellino just could not shake the feeling that Andrea had to be somehow involved in her husband's death.
The police were still desperately trying to find the shooter's silver minivan, but their potential hired hitman theory had also led them to delve into Rusty's finances.
And they had discovered that Andrea stood to get a $2 million payout from Rusty's life insurance policy.
So along with being the murder victim's spouse, which by default made them a huge potential suspect, Andrea also had a clear financial motive to want her husband dead.
And on top of that, she really had not seemed like she wanted to cooperate with police.
And so the detectives decided they had to speak to Andrea again, but this time they wanted to isolate her from the rest of her family.
On November 24th, almost a week after the murder, Thompson and Cortellino sat down with Andrea in an interview room at the police station.
Andrea tucked her brown hair behind her ear, adjusted her glasses, and stared across a small white table at the two detectives.
Thompson and Cortellino could tell Andrea was all business and that she still clearly resented having to speak with the police.
But they still started by thanking her for coming in, and then they asked her how her relationship had been with her husband prior to his murder.
Andrea admitted things had gotten a bit strained between them when Rusty lost his job, but she said they'd worked through that.
And other than typical husband and wife arguments, they actually got along really well.
Andrea seemed totally matter of fact when she answered these questions.
On the one hand, the detectives thought that made her seem almost unfeeling about her husband's death, like she didn't care.
But Cortolino realized that this was a woman dealing with an impossible situation.
Also, she was used to being in high-powered business meetings, so maybe this was just the way she conducted herself.
Then, at some point, Cortellino asked Andrea if it was possible that Rusty could have been having an affair.
Was there a jealous lover out there who might have had it out for him?
But Andrea didn't flinch. She sort of half smiled and said the idea that Rusty was cheating on her was absurd.
He was one of the most loving, supportive people she had ever met.
He would never, ever do something like that to their family.
So, the detectives moved from Andrea and Rusty's personal relationship to their financial situation.
But nothing Andrea said indicated that she would have killed Rusty for his life insurance policy.
Rusty had put a lot of money away during his time working, and she got paid well at GE, so really, money was not an issue for them.
So eventually, the detectives wrapped up the interview and thanked Andrea for her time.
But after she left, Thompson and Cordolino felt like they didn't know much more than they did before she showed up.
And for the life of them, they could not decide if that was because Andrea really just didn't know anyone who would want to hurt her husband, or if she was hiding something.
In the weeks following that interview, no new leads came in and Thompson and Cortellino began to get frustrated.
They still didn't know if the man with the earmuffs and the mustache that Rusty had seen at the house was also the bearded shooter or if those were two totally different people.
And the detectives didn't know if this full bearded shooter had been hired by somebody else or if it was someone who knew Rusty that they had somehow overlooked that maybe had a specific reason to attack Rusty.
But then, in mid-December, so about a month after Rusty's murder, Detective Thompson was sitting at his desk when one of his team members rushed over to him, and this young cop had a huge smile on his face.
Thompson asked him what was going on, and the young cop said he'd been re-watching surveillance footage of the silver minivan as it drove down a street near the preschool.
There still was not a clear shot of the license plate, but the young cop had spotted a small white sticker on the van's windshield that nobody had caught before. and he was sure that that was the type of sticker that rental car companies used to track their vehicles.
Immediately, Detective Thompson stood up, full of energy.
The young cop said, you know, the sticker didn't point to a specific rental car company, but Thompson just put his hand up and said, nope, that doesn't matter.
This is a huge discovery. Armed with this new information about this sticker, police reached out to and visited rental car companies all across the area.
And after about a week or so of searching, they finally found a silver Kia Sedona minivan at a rental car lot 25 miles north of Dunwoody.
And that van could absolutely match the shooter's vehicle.
And when they checked that minivan's recent rental history, Thompson and Cortellino immediately recognized the name that came up.
And they were sure right then and there they had found Rusty's killer.
Based on information from the rental car company, evidence found at the crime scene, and interviews conducted during the investigation, this is what police think happened to Rusty Snyderman on the morning of November 18, 2010.
On that day, at about 5.45 a.m., the killer heard the voice of the angel ringing in his head.
That voice, that sounded just like Olivia Newton-John, had told the killer that time was running out.
People were in danger, and the killer had their marching orders.
This mission had to be accomplished now.
The killer climbed into a silver minivan and then pulled out into the dark, empty early morning streets.
The killer drove slowly, moving from dark to light as the van passed under each street lamp.
Finally, they pulled the van onto Rusty and Andrea's street about an hour before the sun would rise.
They parked their car a few houses down from Rusty's, and then they waited.
But soon, the killer noticed lights turning on in some of the houses as people got ready for work and school and their morning routine.
So the killer drove the van out of the neighborhood and found a spot on the street not too far from Rusty's son's preschool.
The killer sat in the van, occasionally hearing the sound of the angel's voice encouraging them.
And then at some point, the killer leaned over, opened up the glove box, and pulled out a semi-automatic pistol.
They checked to make sure the gun was loaded, and when they saw it was, the killer laid down on the passenger seat.
As the sun rose, the killer continued to just lay there, breathing very slowly, in and out, very rhythmically, to ensure they remained calm.
Then finally, around 9 a.m., the killer sat up and saw Rusty's Infinity driving down the street towards them.
The killer let Rusty drive by, and then quickly pulled out of their parking space, and then slowly tailed Rusty all the way to the preschool parking lot, and once they got there, the killer parked a few spaces away from Rusty's car.
The killer watched as Rusty led his son into the preschool and began chatting with some parents inside of the doorway.
As Rusty did this, the killer grabbed the gun off the passenger seat and held it in their lap.
Then a few minutes later, the killer saw Rusty walking back towards his car.
At this point, the killer opened up the minivan door and, calm as can be, walked across the parking lot.
Rusty had managed to open up his car door, but by that point, the killer was practically on top of him.
The killer got within three feet of Rusty, raised their gun, and fired.
The bullet struck Rusty on the left side of the jaw, traveling through his right shoulder, and then lodged in his back.
Rusty immediately collapsed to the ground, blood pouring out of his face and seeping through his shirt.
The killer turned to walk back to the minivan, but then quickly wheeled back around and fired three more shots into Rusty's abdomen as he lay dying on the asphalt.
After that, the killer turned and walked back to the minivan, got in, threw it in reverse, peeled out of the parking space, and then sped out of the lot.
In the rearview mirror, the killer could see people running over to Rusty on the ground, but the killer felt confident they had killed Rusty and that the angel and demon would now be satisfied.
A few minutes later, the killer pulled the van out onto a highway and disappeared into traffic.
They drove for a while, exited off the highway, and then headed into a town 25 miles away from Dunwoody.
There, they drove the van to the rental car company where they had gotten it, and they pulled it into the return lot.
They checked the rearview mirror and looked out the windows.
Nobody was nearby. So the killer reached up and yanked the brown wig off their head and also peeled the big fake beard off their face.
The killer then stuffed the disguise pieces into a bag, got out of their rental car, and walked to a nearby auto repair shop where they had dropped off their real car for a minor repair the day before.
The killer quickly paid for the work on their car and then drove off, headed towards General Electric's Atlanta offices.
Some members of the investigative team had remained convinced that Rusty's wife, Andrea, had killed Rusty, but it turned out the shooter was somebody else who worked at GE, Andrea's boss, Hemi Newman.
Police had talked to Hemi when they interviewed Andrea's friends and co-workers, but they didn't really focus on him as a potential suspect until they discovered the minivan at the rental car company.
Hemi had used his real name to rent that car.
And seeing Hemi's name on the rental form led Thompson and Cordolino back to Andrea's computer.
And it turned out that she and Hemi had exchanged a number of emails that led police to believe their relationship was far more than just boss and employee.
After police traced the rental van to Hemi, they interviewed and then arrested him.
But they continued to push Andrea because they believed she and Hemi had worked together to kill Rusty, two lovers who wanted to be rid of Andrea's husband.
That's when things got really weird. Hemi admitted to being in love with Andrea, and he even suggested that they had had an affair, though Andrea denied it.
Still, Hemi said he did not arrange Rusty's murder with Andrea.
Instead, he was simply following orders passed down to him from a demon and an angel who happened to sound like popular singers from the 1970s and 1980s.
Talking to a psychiatrist, Hemi admitted that the Barry White-sounding demon had been visiting him for decades, dating back to when he was in college.
But it was not until that angel appeared to him in the car on the night he had gone to Rusty and Andrea's house and Rusty had talked about this new idea that he was going to make this company around celebrity voicemails that Hemi understood his role in the cosmic battle of good versus evil.
According to Hemi, the angel told him that Rusty was a threat to Andrea and the kids.
In fact, the angel said Hemi was the true father of Andrea's son and daughter.
And apparently, Rusty had found this out, this is again according to the angel, and so Rusty was bound to eventually murder his wife and kids as a result.
That is, unless Hemi stopped Rusty by killing him first.
To carry out this mission, Hemi first bought a big fake black mustache and slapped it on his face along with some earmuffs, and he spied on Rusty at his house.
But of course, Rusty caught him laying on the front yard, but Rusty had no idea it was actually Hemi because the disguise worked.
And then after that, when Hemi learned Rusty's routine, he bought a different disguise, the wig and the big fake beard for the day of the murder.
In court, Hemi's defense team entered an insanity plea and then proceeded to trace Hemi's complete and disturbed history with this demon and angel.
But the prosecution never bought any of this.
They remained convinced that Hemi had concocted this whole story to avoid life in prison.
They also believed that Andrea Snyderman, not some angel or demon, was the one who actually put Hemi up to murdering her husband.
The jury found Hemi guilty of murder, but they also deemed him mentally ill.
He was sentenced to life in prison without parole, and as of 2024, he is incarcerated at the Augusta State Medical Prison.
But after Hemi's conviction, police and the DA stayed focused on Andrea.
She was eventually arrested and charged with murder along with multiple other counts.
But the murder charge was dropped and she was never tried in connection to her husband's death.
However, Andrea was found guilty on multiple counts that pertained to hindering the murder investigation.
Andrea would go on to serve just 22 months of a five-year prison sentence.
And when she got out of prison, she received the $2 million from Rusty's life insurance policy and maintained custody of her two kids.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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