If Looks Could Kill (17 page)

While detectives worked the Ed George angle, reaching out to former and current Tangier employees, continuing to build a profile of Ed, tips continued to pour in for the CAPU. Until a viable suspect was brought in for questioning, and tangible evidence to support a possible arrest was in hand, the CAPU couldn’t give up talking to people and checking out new (and old) leads. “We couldn’t let up,” Moriarty said. “Even knowing Jeff had fathered one of Cindy’s children, we still didn’t have anything. [Seth and Carl] looked real good, still. When you looked them over, on paper, they seemed like practical suspects. We never took that for granted—even after the polygraph.”

An interesting call came into the APD over the Fourth of July holiday weekend. A local lawyer made a telephone call to the CAPU on the afternoon of the Fourth, saying she “had information in reference to the shooting of Jeff Zack.” Bertina King took the call and interviewed the woman, who was certain a client of the law firm she worked for had had something to do with Jeff’s murder.

“I had a conversation with a client one day, two years ago,” the woman explained. “We were standing in the hall. We were talking about his case.” The guy had been arrested for breaking into a car. “I told him he needed to be truthful with me concerning his case. I didn’t feel that he was.”

When the lawyer brought up the idea that he might be lying, the guy became incensed. “The trouble I’m in right now,” he said, “is nothing. I’m going to kill a guy that has been messing with a friend of mine. This weekend this guy is going down. You are going to read about what I did in the newspaper.”

Detective King thought it was interesting, yet didn’t fit. The comment was made two years ago.

“Listen,” said the lawyer, “he has a motorcycle.”

“Well, thanks for the information,” King said.

She wrote it up and put it in the stack of reports.

Over the next week, that tip and about a dozen others were checked out thoroughly, but all led nowhere. It seemed the case, every time the CAPU thought that maybe it was heading in a different direction, always turned back to the same people.

Ed Moriarty caught up with
Janice Hagin,
a contact Red had given him. Janice was a good-looking forty-two-year-old former bartender at the Tangier. She had worked there for “several years.” Janice was well aware of Jeff Zack’s presence at the establishment and, like many, didn’t like him. “He was cocky and arrogant. I only spoke to him when I had to take his order.”

Cynthia George had introduced Janice to Jeff. Cynthia seemed proud to show Jeff off, as if he were some sort of prize. It was like a game for Cynthia: parading around the Tangier with her catch. Part of it was, probably, designed to make Ed George pay more attention to her, seeing that he was always wrapped up in his work.

Jeff was one of Tangier’s regular customers who had a house account. He could walk in and put anything he wanted on a tab. His normal time was between 2:00 and 4:00
P.M
., Janice explained. And Jeff shunned all alcohol, opting instead for diet soda.

Beyond the things Moriarty had heard already from several different sources, Janice, if nothing else, backed up what the CAPU knew. Most important, the fact that Cynthia and Jeff had no trouble displaying affection for each other inside the bar and cabaret—which, Janice said, Jeff never paid to get in—laughing, joking and hanging all over each other. “They were always together,” said Janice. “Always! And Jeff had been over to the Georges’ house.”

Moriarty was also beginning to learn a bit more about Cynthia herself. According to Janice, when she first started working at the Tangier, she noticed Cynthia had “very little to do with the day-to-day operations of the restaurant.” But more recently, Cynthia became a fixture in the place, taking on the responsibility of what was an enormous remodeling effort. This caused problems, she said, between Ed George and his mother, who believed Cynthia should be at home with the kids.

In June 2001, Ed and Cynthia George celebrated their seventeenth wedding anniversary. When they married in 1984, amid some five hundred guests at St. Joseph Catholic Church in downtown Akron, Cynthia was a twenty-nine-year-old woman still living at home; Ed, a forty-four-year-old bachelor, was living at home as well. A self-proclaimed “country girl,” she was born Cynthia Mae Rohr, into what published reports have described as a “strict Catholic family.” One of four Rohr children, Cynthia grew up in North Canton, a town of mostly German immigrants, about twenty miles south of Akron. She went to North Canton’s Hoover High School. At a young age, Cynthia seemed to embody the spirit of a woman unhappy with the life she had been born into, and when she spoke to a psychologist many years later, having lived for so long by then in the quintessence of luxury and leisure with Ed George, she admitted that one of her biggest fears was returning to a life of poverty. She couldn’t imagine having to fall back into that lifestyle all over again, not after living like a queen in Ed George’s castle.

Several neighbors of Cynthia’s viewed her childhood slightly differently. “She had a loving family, they were close,” said one neighbor. “I never saw Cindy unhappy as a child,” said another. “She seemed to have anything she ever wanted. Her parents were great people. Loving. Caring. Always there for her. Her siblings were the same.”

In high school, Cynthia excelled, as any beautiful blond cheerleader might, involving herself in the homecoming and pep club aspect of extracurricular activities, championing Hoover’s sports stars, keeping herself busy by jumping into any popular group that would accept her.

If Cynthia later saw her childhood as underprivileged, the reality of it was quite common for the times. The house the Rohrs lived in off Main Street was a modest, one-story ranch, built during the war years, the late 1940s, early 1950s. The Canton region was booming then; Akron was known as the “Rubber Capital of the World,” BFGoodrich having set up shop there in the early 1900s. Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson began his crusade in Akron for alcoholics all over the world. Houses were built at an astounding rate, two times more than any year before or since; the rubber boom and coal mines offering jobs for the undereducated, blue-collar sect. In fact, Mr. Rohr was a hardworking, dedicated father, who spent many back-breaking years in the Ohio coal mines. Like most families during the 1950s and 1960s money was tight for the Rohrs, but they had a roof over their heads, food and clothing for their children.

As many pretty young girls do, possibly born from playing with dolls and acting out runway fantasies with girlfriends, Cynthia had always talked about winning the Miss America pageant one day, and had a hard time letting go of that dream as she settled into adulthood, setting her sights on art and design school after graduation.

But money kept Cynthia from fulfilling either goal. It wasn’t looks; she had that in the bag, often fighting men off with a stick anywhere she went. Instead of college, she ended up as an optician at an optical company, which was not a bad gig considering her background. Then she went into the airline industry, at first working for US Airway’s VIP club in Pittsburgh, before meeting Ed George.

On Saturday, July 14, 2001, Detective Vince Felber contacted Helen Rohr, Cynthia’s eighty-six-year-old mother. Helen was a bit hostile and standoffish right off the bat. It was obvious to Felber that, despite her age, the woman was sharp and unwilling to give out any information without being asked.

Felber told Rohr that he was investigating the murder of Jeff Zack. He wanted to talk to her for a moment about the case. Would she mind?

“Why?” Mrs. Rohr asked.

“I want to talk about Cindy,” Felber said.

“I hardly knew Jeff Zack and can’t tell you anything.”

“I understand, ma’am…but I’d still like to talk to you and your daughter (Cynthia’s sister).”

“I’ll see,” Mrs. Rohr said. Felber could sense the resentment in her voice. “Let me call her and see if she’s free. I’ll call you back in thirty minutes.”

Felber waited, but Mrs. Rohr never called. After forty minutes, Felber telephoned her again.

“I couldn’t get hold of [Cynthia’s sister].
What
do you want?”

The persistent detective wanted to pinpoint Mrs. Rohr down to a day and time to meet. He wanted Cynthia’s sister there, too. Could she agree to that?

“I don’t know. I’m busy. She’s busy. I don’t know when.”

“There’s no time in the next few days, ma’am?” Felber expressed how important it was that they talk.

“I have a birthday party on Sunday. I’ll call you Monday to set something up. I have to go now.”

“Can you give me [Cynthia’s sister’s] number?”

“It’s unlisted.”

“I’m a police officer, ma’am. I’m investigating a homicide. It’s OK to give me the number.”

Mrs. Rohr spouted off a number. Felber would find out soon enough that she made it up on the spot. That Monday, Felber called Mrs. Rohr back and asked her again about setting up a meeting. Why was she being so evasive? Didn’t she want to help the investigation move forward?

“Look, my attorney, Bob Meeker (Ed and Cynthia’s lawyer), told me not to talk to you.”

“Why, ma’am?” Felber was a bit peeved. He hadn’t accused anyone of anything. He was only doing his job, looking into a homicide. The CAPU knew Cynthia George had connections to the victim.

“Well, Detective Felber, I have a heart condition. This is making me nervous.”

What about Cynthia’s sister? Felber wanted to know if Mrs. Rohr had spoken to her daughter on his behalf.

“Mr. Meeker is also her attorney and he told her not to talk to you. Now, sir, I have to go.”

Cops know when witnesses are being elusive and cantankerous; when they are either scared to say the wrong thing, or hiding something important. It doesn’t necessarily mean they have crucial knowledge of a crime or are guilty of anything; but red flags pop up and cops become hungrier than ever to find out what those witnesses are so desperate to conceal.

Vince Felber had worked at the Tangier before becoming a cop. He knew some of the people who had worked there. After talking to Red Stanick a second time in late July, Felber got a name from the former Tangier security guard, someone he knew who could possibly provide information. Red was a bit hesitant; he didn’t want to be known as a snitch. But when Felber said he knew the guy, Red opened up and suggested the detective track him down and talk to him. He might know something.

The Diamond Deli, on South Main Street, in downtown Akron, over by Canal Park and the University of Akron, seemed like the perfect place to meet. It was always busy, full of college students focused on themselves, oblivious to what was going on around them. If the CI was frightened of someone in town seeing him with Felber, the Diamond Deli could help curb that anxiety.

Aaron Brown
was a forty-five-year-old former employee of Ed George’s who hadn’t worked at the Tangier in two years. The guy appeared hard and weathered, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, squinted eyes, an air of mystery about him. Since leaving the Tangier, Brown had been hired by a local brewing company as a sales associate and had been doing pretty well for himself. His major concern was that he and Ed were still friends. They had spoken a few days ago, but, Brown said, “there wasn’t any mention of Jeff Zack’s murder, nor has there ever been.”

Ed George had always treated Brown as a friend, and Brown believed that if he ever asked Ed for anything, he would oblige without question.

A waitress brought Felber and Brown coffee. They were quiet until she walked away.

Felber asked Brown about Jeff Zack specifically: his comings and goings around the Tangier, how he acted inside the restaurant and bar. “Jeff would come in a lot during some time periods and then stop for a while,” Brown said. “He was friends with Ed and Cindy. Jeff and Ed would sit down and talk like they were friends, sometimes in Ed’s office. Jeff and Cindy were also friends, but I never had any reason to believe they were having an affair. I don’t think they were.”

If Ed George seemed like the CAPU’s prime suspect on paper, the alternative question was: what would stop Ed from killing Jeff Zack? If there were reasons why he could have killed Jeff Zack, there were reasons why he wouldn’t.

“I never heard Ed say anything bad about Jeff,” Brown claimed. “I don’t think he had anything to do with his murder.”

“What makes you say that?” asked Felber.

“He had too much to lose.”

That made sense. Would Ed George, sitting on millions of dollars in real estate and a successful restaurant, bar and cabaret, which had been in the family for decades, risk losing it all for a guy like Jeff Zack? It was the only broken spoke in the wheel.

Brown went on to say that, as far as he knew, everyone that hung around the Tangier was “on the straight and narrow…. There aren’t any ‘shady’ characters that are regulars at the Tangier.”

Detective Felber asked Brown a series of questions about Ed George’s brothers and the various businesses the family was involved in. As Felber got deeper into Ed George’s life, he noticed Brown had become more nervous and fidgety. He had a tough time maintaining eye contact with the detective. Not to mention the inflection in his voice became wary, almost reticent. His body language, Felber wrote later in his report of the clandestine meeting, was strange: he looked around the restaurant at times, searching the place for a familiar face maybe, moving and shifting in his chair. This worried Felber. He felt Brown was holding back. “His answers to my questions seemed guarded, short,” said Felber’s report. “He didn’t divulge much that I didn’t specifically ask about.”

Moreover, when Felber asked, Brown agreed to talk to “other detectives” working on the case, but said he would only do it if Felber was present.

Near the end of the conversation, Felber brought up the fact that Brown’s girlfriend was at the scene of Jeff Zack’s murder; there at BJ’s that Saturday afternoon. Was it a coincidence? Felber wanted to know how Brown had heard about Jeff’s death. Brown had mentioned earlier in the conversation that he read about it in the newspaper. Did he want to rethink that answer?

“She was out getting something to eat, or visiting her mother,” Brown answered, keeping his remarks brief. “I…I…was shocked when she told me about the murder.”

But Felber was curious—Brown had said he first read about the murder in the newspaper. Which was it? Hadn’t his girlfriend, witnessing such a spectacle, mentioned it to him that day when they later saw each other?

“Well,” said Brown, again acting jumpy, “she did tell me about it, but we didn’t realize it was Jeff Zack until we saw his name in the newspaper. We’d been having problems,” Brown added, “and Jeff Zack’s murder didn’t help.”