If Looks Could Kill (16 page)

Whiddon and McFarland weren’t satisfied with what they heard about Seth and Carl; it was hard to scratch both men off the list. Seth was in Florida. If a break in the case, pointing detectives in another direction entirely, didn’t come soon, a detective was going to have to fly down to the Sunshine State and question Seth. But still, Ashton Zack, Jeff’s son, had mentioned Seth and Carl in his original interview with Bertina King. The boy was sure one of them had had something to do with his father’s death—as much as he was sure it was Ed George. That threat Ashton had heard Seth scream at his dad: “I’ll rip your throat out with a hot butter knife.”

Strong words. Explosive. Violent. Intimidating.

Although the boy would grieve for the rest of his life, and was in no way over the initial impact of losing his father, McFarland and Whiddon felt Ashton could be helpful, and decided to reinterview him.

Regardless of the type of person Jeff Zack had become over the course of his life, most agreed he loved his child and treated him with the ultimate amount of respect, often devoting most of his free time to the boy. Jeff had been there, supporting Ashton’s endeavors, whatever they were, regardless how many mistresses he had or what he and Bonnie were going through. It didn’t make Jeff “Father of the Year,” but it said something about his devotion to his son.

Bonnie answered the door after Whiddon and McFarland knocked. She said she knew they were coming. Someone from the CAPU had called. “Come in, please,” Bonnie said pleasantly.

“Thanks, Bonnie,” said Whiddon. “How are things?”

She didn’t say much about how she felt, but was eager to have the investigators talk to Ashton, who was up in his room. “Go upstairs. Talk to him privately. I don’t mind.”

The sadness weighing on the boy was evident in the way he carried himself. His youth had been blindsided by tragedy, disrupting, perhaps, everything else that may have seemed important a few weeks ago. Still, he wanted to help catch his dad’s killer.

“We need to go over a few things,” Whiddon said caringly.

Ashton shrugged in agreement.

“Tell us about Carl and Seth, Ashton.”

“Seth is short and fat, with a raspy and distinctive voice. Carl coached my football team for two years.”

Essentially, Ashton couldn’t offer anything new. He reiterated what he had told the CAPU the day his father was murdered, repeating that same threatening line from Seth.

About a half hour into the conversation, Whiddon asked Ashton if there was a feeling he had about his dad’s murder.

“I think my dad knew he was going to die.”

Whiddon and McFarland looked at each other. Whiddon asked, “What makes you say that?”

“After he died, I came across a box of old photos of my dad. My dad kept the box hidden. He didn’t like people going through his stuff. I found it because it was out in the open. My dad was obviously going through it himself.”

“What type of photos?”

“His whole life.”

Ashton was a smart, articulate kid. Whiddon and McFarland appreciated how direct he was with his theories. Near the end of the conversation, Ashton described his dad’s trip to Arizona during the Mother’s Day holiday: “He wanted to make up with them, because he felt that something was going to happen to him.”

Motive was the number one concern on Ed Moriarty’s mind as the investigation seemed to grow colder during the early days of the second week. The CAPU had conducted upward of fifty interviews with the likes of ex-girlfriends and mistresses, former coworkers and acquaintances, relatives, siblings, Bonnie Zack, Cynthia and Ed George, Ashton and several people who had called in tips. “Motive,” Moriarty recalled. “
What
would cause someone to be involved in Jeff Zack’s murder? We had harassment on the table, and, well, harassment to me didn’t feel like enough to kill someone. Not in this situation.”

A question kept popping up as Moriarty studied the case:
How did the shooter know Jeff Zack was going to be at BJ’s that morning?
It was possible—and the APD had a report—that the motorcyclist followed Jeff into the parking lot. But still, no one had reported a Ninja motorcycle hanging around Jeff’s neighborhood. “So we started to look into Jeff’s phone records,” Moriarty said. “And that’s when certain things fell into place.”

Yes, Jeff Zack had spent time in Israel in the Israeli Army, that much was confirmed. Yes, Jeff was pro-Israel and had gotten into several heated arguments with Arabs who were pro-Palestine. But did any of that have an impact on who murdered him? After studying the reports and interviews, Moriarty didn’t feel Jeff’s connections to Israel had anything whatsoever to do with his demise. “It just didn’t fit. We checked it all out, but time and again came up with nothing.”

When Moriarty found out that Jeff Zack had possibly fathered one of Cynthia’s children, well, a motive for murder seemed to fit warmly into the context of the crime. Once that suspicion grew into a need to know, Moriarty felt compelled to take it a step further, setting out to first prove the allegation. If true, and Ed George knew about it, the possibility that he had Jeff murdered to fend off embarrassment would make sense. Everything else—and there was plenty, Moriarty knew—didn’t fit together in a uniform fashion. There were other theories, sure, but there had always been one key element missing from each. Jeff fathering a child and Ed not finding out about it until just recently worked better than most.

With a need to know the truth, Moriarty said, “I got us a subpoena for a blood draw—a buccal swab from the child’s mouth to compare for parental DNA.”

That one simple test would answer a lot of questions. One simple scraping of flesh with a cotton swab from Ruby George’s cheek would clear the entire matter up—and either bury a finger deeper into Ed George’s chest, or begin to phase him out of the equation. Jeff Zack had lied so much—who could say the kid was his or not? Moriarty and other detectives had looked at photographs of the George family and seen the resemblance between one of the children and Jeff Zack. But a hunch certainly wasn’t evidence.

DNA would clear it all up.

St. Thomas Hospital is a redbrick building in downtown Akron on Main Street. Inside the hospital is the CAPU’s rape crisis intervention unit. Moriarty was able to get a court order that, by law, authorized him to have Cynthia and Ed George bring Ruby down to the hospital for a buccal swab of her right cheek.

Cynthia and Ed were livid, of course. More Cynthia than Ed.

Moriarty was waiting at the hospital for Ed and Cynthia to arrive with Ruby. It was going to take all of five seconds to swab the inside of the child’s cheek and release her. “Cindy George was pissed,” Moriarty said. “She did not want us to do the test.”

Ruby was screaming as Cynthia and Ed walked into the hospital with the child. Cynthia confronted Moriarty, face-to-face, and yelled, “I cannot believe you’re making her do this.”

“Calm down,” Moriarty said.

“This is going to hurt you, Ruby,” Moriarty heard Cynthia say to the child, trying to put fear into her to make the test that much more difficult for the CAPU to complete. “They are going to hurt you, baby.”

Ed George was just standing there, shaking his head. He couldn’t believe it had come down to this: Here was his daughter being brought in like a common criminal to take a DNA test. Was this actually happening?

After a few minutes of yelling back and forth, Moriarty doing his best to calm everyone down, Ed put his daughter on his lap, while Moriarty managed to get Cynthia over to the door heading out of the room.

The nurse got the swab kit ready. While she did that, Moriarty recalled, “I shoved Cindy out the door and closed the door behind us.”

And that’s when Cynthia went ballistic. “You motherf- - - er,” Moriarty claimed she yelled at him. “Get out of my way. You son of a bitch. How could you do this? Get the f- - - out of my way. I want to see my daughter.”

“Relax, Cindy,” Moriarty said. “This is going to happen whether you agree to it or not. Don’t make it tougher than it is. Ruby will be fine.”

The child, likely confused and scared, began bawling. But it took only a few seconds to grab the oral swab of her cheek and send Ed and the child on their way.

Moriarty sent the swab to the lab with a request to have the results back as soon as possible.

It would take two weeks, he was told.

Detective Mike Shaeffer tracked down Rabbi Sasonkin, in whom Jeff Zack had confided over the years. At first, the rabbi was a bit apprehensive regarding talking to the police, not too thrilled about dishing on his private conversations with synagogue members. But after Shaeffer explained that the rabbi could provide potential information that could possibly help catch Jeff’s killer, he agreed.

According to the rabbi, Jeff showed up at the synagogue in 1996 after he was arrested for “sexual harassment.” Jeff’s boss at the time had suggested he go see the rabbi. Jeff was terrified of going to jail for the charge. “I’m possibly facing some prison time,” Jeff explained to Rabbi Sasonkin during their first face-to-face encounter. “I cannot do time in jail. I’d rather commit suicide.”

The rabbi gave Jeff the name of a high-powered local attorney. Through that relationship, Jeff was able to get probation without having to serve any jail time. The rabbi, however, believed Jeff was suicidal and encouraged him to seek shelter from his demons by attending service and talking things out privately.

“How did Jeff get into the situation that led him to being charged?” Shaeffer wondered.

“Jeff,” said the rabbi, “liked to talk to females.” The rabbi wouldn’t go any further than that; but was comfortable insinuating that Jeff had a hard time staying away from women and keeping his mouth shut when he was around them.

Going to court on sexual harassment charges changed Jeff. After it was over, he connected with the synagogue and started to attend service quite regularly. He even brought Ashton to “religion school,” Rabbi Sasonkin said. “But it didn’t last long,” the rabbi added. “He started coming maybe every two weeks. Then, in the last two years, he stopped coming altogether.”

Jeff was conflicted, the rabbi insisted. “The Jewish religion looks down on marrying non-Jews.” That was what drew Jeff away from the synagogue, in the rabbi’s opinion, more than anything else. “It is believed that your religion is passed through your mother. So in the Jewish religion, Jeff’s son was not considered Jewish, since his mother wasn’t Jewish. But he could become Jewish through conversion.”

“Jeff ever talk about his time in the Israeli Army?” Shaeffer asked. As they spoke, the rabbi and Shaeffer walked through the synagogue. It was dark and eerie, as any empty house of worship would be under the same set of circumstances. The rabbi, though, seemed comfortable talking about Jeff after his initial uneasiness passed.

“Jeff never talked about it,” the rabbi stated in a noticeable Yiddish accent. “But I can say that it is standard for all Israelis to go into the army for”—he held up two fingers—“two years.”

As they sat down in a pew, Shaeffer asked, “Jeff ever mention anything about the Mossad?”

“No, sir. We didn’t talk about his years in the army…. But I’ll say that if one is in the Mossad, one would not talk about it or tell people. If one was going around saying he or she is in the Mossad, it is likely he or she is
not
in the Mossad.”

Further along, the rabbi described Jeff in the same way many others had, saying he had a “big mouth,” seemed “confrontational,” used “rough language and was very aggressive.” Jeff could be intimidating to people, especially because of his size, the rabbi insisted. “But he did have a soft side to him, which usually came out when he was in trouble. He always seemed to be on edge and never happy. He wanted more.”

“That’s helpful, Rabbi, I appreciate it,” Shaeffer said.

While the rabbi walked the detective out, Shaeffer asked about a possible Israeli mob connection, and if perhaps the rabbi thought it played a role in Jeff’s murder. Rabbi Sasonkin insisted there wasn’t a strong “Israeli mob” presence in the Akron-Cleveland area, and didn’t suspect Jeff was tied to the Israeli underworld in any way. “It’s hard to find someone that is shot in America for their Israeli connections. I don’t believe Jeff was shot for being Jewish or Israeli. If that was the situation, the Jewish community would have been alerted and they would have tightened up security.”

It made perfect sense.

“If you need help translating any information,” the rabbi said as he walked the detective to his car, “or conversations, call me and I’d be glad to help.”

“We appreciate that, Rabbi.”

Jeff Zack’s old business acquaintance, Carl, agreed to take a polygraph on June 27. Although the test wasn’t going to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, one way or another, Carl’s involvement in Jeff’s murder, it was a starting point. The test would tell CAPU detectives how much they should trust the guy.

“Do you know for sure who killed Jeff Zack?”

“No.”

“Did you kill Jeff Zack?”

“No.”

“Did you conspire with anyone to kill Jeff Zack?”

“No.”

“Were you involved in an insurance scam with Jeff Zack and Carl?”

“No.”

After a “careful review of the polygrams,” Sergeant Terry Hudnall reported afterward, he believed that the “physiological change indicative of truthfulness occurred on all the relevant questions.” According to Hudnall, Carl was telling the truth.

When the test results came back, the lab confirmed Ed Moriarty’s suspicion that Jeff Zack was the father of Cynthia George’s youngest child, Ruby.

This revelation changed some things for the CAPU. Realizing the investigation had taken a stunning turn, Ed Moriarty thought back to that threat he heard Jeff had made to Bonnie regarding taking Ashton and running away to Israel. “Knowing that,” Moriarty recalled later, “I had to consider,
Did Jeff threaten Cindy with the same thing?
It seemed possible…. Now, speaking of motive, let’s say Cindy wants to get rid of Jeff. She wants to end the affair. He doesn’t want to end it. Threatening, on its face, didn’t seem like a motive in this case. But you threaten to take a person’s child and the entire scope of that threat changes.”

All of a sudden, Cynthia was now a suspect. In fact, when the CAPU looked at all the pieces of the puzzle they had collected thus far, it seemed a hired hit had been sanctioned—which put Ed George back on the radar. Jeff Zack had been murdered in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon inside the parking lot of a very popular and busy warehouse store outlet. Only a professional, it seemed, could have pulled it off. By all accounts, Jeff’s murder had been a clean strike; definitely not the work—or so everyone thought early on—of an inexperienced killer. And now, with Jeff Zack tied to Cynthia in the way of a child, the thought that Ed George had found out and decided to clean up a mess his wife had created took center stage.

On Thursday, June 28, Moriarty spoke to fifty-seven-year-old Richard “Red” Stanick, who worked for the City of Akron, Police and Fire Communications. But it wasn’t Red’s current job, or the fact that he was an Akron police officer during the late 1960s and early 1970s, that Moriarty was interested in. Before becoming a city employee, Red had spent nearly twenty years working for Ed George as a security guard. If there was anyone who knew the ebb and flow of the Tangier, and could explain how Ed and Cynthia interacted on a day-to-day basis, Red was the guy. He had spent more time at the Tangier than anyone the CAPU had spoken to. Red knew something. Moriarty was sure of it.

Moriarty and Red knew each other because at one time they walked the beat as cops under the same badge. It was thought that Red had left the job because of a savage beating he once endured. The CAPU had talked to Red quite a bit throughout the years regarding other crimes, only because he knew many of the people coming and going at the Tangier.

Moriarty first asked Red about Jeff Zack.

He said he knew him. He had read about Jeff’s murder in the newspaper the day after it happened. Putting the newspaper down that morning, Red explained, he immediately telephoned a friend, a woman who still worked at the Tangier. “We both had the feeling,” Red told Moriarty, “that Ed George probably made the call that resulted in Zack’s death.”

“Did Jeff and Ed have a business relationship?” Moriarty wondered.

The CAPU had heard from several different sources that Jeff had worked for Ed throughout the years. If they’d had a falling-out, coupled with Jeff sleeping with Ed George’s wife and fathering one of her children, Ed had even more explaining to do.

Red clarified that business between Jeff and Ed was minimal. Jeff may have bought things from Ed—tools and the like—but beyond that, they had no real business relationship. On that note, however, Red made a point to say that it was hard to work for Ed. He had a “very volatile temper…and treats his employees very gruffly.”

Moriarty had sensed this side of Ed from being around him. The guy just had that look of hardness to him. If he treated his employees like that, how would he treat a guy who screwed around with his wife and fathered one of her children?

“You ever see Cynthia and Jeff together?” Moriarty asked.

“Jeff was an overbearing son of a bitch. He came to the restaurant all the time. He liked to act like a big shot, you know, but didn’t have the clout to back it up.”

Red then explained how Jeff started coming to the restaurant eight years before his death and usually hung all over Cynthia right there in the bar or restaurant for everyone to see. This, mind you, while Bonnie was right there. Red estimated that Jeff brought Bonnie with him about 80 percent of the time. It was the talk of the restaurant for a while: how Jeff would bring in his wife to seemingly humiliate her in front of everyone. Nobody could believe the gall the man had.

“Jeff followed Cindy wherever she went. Everyone knew Jeff and Cindy had something going on.”

“How was Ed with that?”

“I’m not sure he was aware of it, to be quite honest. You have to understand that anything that didn’t make Ed money, well, he wasn’t interested in it. He was oblivious.”

Moriarty shook his head. “Wow, no kidding. You don’t think he’d be interested in who his wife was sleeping with?”

“I’m not saying that.”

Jeff never drank alcohol, Red continued—or, rather, Red never saw him drunk. Cynthia liked her cocktails, but she never overdid it.

Red gave Moriarty a few names he thought would help.