If Looks Could Kill (7 page)

As it turned out, the brokerage firm Jeff Zack worked for in San Diego was nothing short of a scam operation. The company’s owners, according to Bonnie, had been conducting fraudulent business practices for years. But Jeff had nothing to do with any of it, she insisted. In fact, after an investigation, feds arrested the owners and charged them with a host of white-collar crimes. Jeff was interviewed several times—and cleared.

About six weeks after they moved to Ohio, Jeff started working for a scrap metal company in Hudson as a salesman, selling scrap-metal-recycling machinery. As he started along this new career path, he became paranoid that the investigation back in San Diego was going to put him and Bonnie on the IRS’s radar. He saw huge income tax “issues” in his and Bonnie’s future. Jeff sensed the feds were going to scrutinize his income and maybe come down on him because they didn’t have anything to nail him on during the initial investigation.

“So Jeff put all of our assets into his parents’ names.”

For Moriarty and King, that answered the question as to why Jeff’s Ford Explorer—the SUV he was driving on the day he was killed—was in his stepdad’s name. But there were plenty of unanswered questions looming. Bonnie needed to continue talking about Jeff’s career path and the plight of their marriage. “Please continue,” Moriarty suggested, stopping every so often to take notes and study Bonnie’s reactions.

By the time they put all of their assets in Jeff’s parents’ names, Bonnie said, she and Jeff had purchased a house and several cars, not to mention all of their personal belongings. So there was a lot at stake. They needed to provide for Ashton, keep a roof over his head and prepare to put him in a good school. Yet unbeknownst to Bonnie, while they were making sure their financial security was in order, Jeff was secretly communicating with Cynthia George on a weekly, if not daily, basis. “Friends,” Jeff told people who started asking questions. “We’re just friends.”

Indeed, Jeff Zack explained to the people in his life that he had found his soul mate, but then insisted that he and Cynthia were nothing more than “good friends.” She understood him. She had kids. Ashton had new friends. Bonnie could even get to know both the Georges. They could all hang out together.

By putting all of his and Bonnie’s assets in someone else’s name, Jeff felt a small sense of security. But that didn’t stop him from dabbling in the stock market, winning and losing, Bonnie said, thousands of dollars over the course of several years. By 1995, Jeff was once again looking for a new job after a falling-out with his boss at the recycling manufacturer. Tall, good-looking, with a fast-talking, charming deportment, Jeff had always been known as a ladies’ man. So as the economy blossomed during the mid-1990s, using those skills he’d developed wooing women, Jeff had no trouble getting work within his new field. He found another job immediately—but with one catch: the main office was based in South Carolina. Bonnie and Ashton wouldn’t have to move, but Jeff, who was now selling junk car-crushing equipment, said he was going to have to start traveling all over the world.

As the years went by, Jeff became unhappy with his new job. The company had been bought out and Jeff had a difference of business opinion with his new bosses. Yet throughout his years selling products related to metal, he believed he had an insider’s feel for the industry. So he took a reported $150,000 of his and Bonnie’s money—although Bonnie said later it was likely “two or three times” more—and dumped it into metal management stocks.

For the first few years, the stock did well, but Jeff got greedy. Instead of cashing out, he let it ride. And before he knew it, the metal market crashed—and with it, all of Jeff and Bonnie’s money disappeared. They were completely broke, she said. “Jeff lost everything. And when the stock fell apart,” she added, crying now, “
Jeff
fell apart.”

He eventually left his new job. Discouraged with the metal industry altogether, he started working a series of jobs he lost as quickly as he found. But it wasn’t the economy thwarting Jeff’s vocational opportunities; he spent much of his time, according to Bonnie, “goofing around” while at work, hitting on many of the women he came across throughout his workday, which didn’t sit well with his employers.

At this point, Jeff began doing odd jobs, anything at all to make money: landscaping, roofing, aluminum siding, deck work. Blue-collar jobs mostly. And then he started working for Ed George around his mansion, inside the restaurant at times, and any other odd jobs Ed needed done. The relationship between the Zacks and the Georges picked up, too. Soon they were spending holidays together. Celebrating birthdays. Having dinner parties. And throughout the entire time, Cynthia and Jeff were sneaking around, having sex, talking for hours a day on the telephone, and taking bike rides throughout the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Bonnie was emotionally exhausted by this point in the interview. She was visibly upset, knowing, of course, that the punch line to her hour-long diatribe regarding Jeff’s history was that his behavior may have finally caught up with him. She needed a break to compose herself. So Moriarty and King told her to take five and regroup. Have a glass of water. Relax. “We’ve got plenty of time, Mrs. Zack.”

There was one pressing issue CAPU detectives couldn’t scratch from their growing list of suspicions. Tangier owner Ed George, according to his somewhat evasive wife, Cynthia, claimed he was dealing with sewer problems at the restaurant before heading off to a wedding with Cynthia and the kids late Saturday morning. The time frame Cynthia had given Moriarty and his colleagues when they interviewed her on that Sunday morning after Jeff’s death fell right in line with the crime’s timing. Looking at Ed George, a proportionately slim, rather tall, foreign-looking man with stringy gray hair, he did not seem the type to dash around town on a Ninja motorcycle looking to put a bullet at point-blank range in the head of his wife’s lover. Not to mention that Ed George was a personality in town; he had built a reputation for affluence, standing in the community, access to Ohio’s more glamorous and important social circles, with a pipeline into some of the country’s most famous celebrities. On the walls of the Tangier, Ed had photographs of himself standing, arm in arm, with the likes of Joan Rivers, Redd Foxx, Slappy White and Buddy Greco, alongside Charo and many others. Lola Falana dedicated a photograph to Ed, writing,
With great and fond memories, always.
Doc Severinsen penned how he had
[a] great time!
at the Tangier when he appeared.
Thank God for the restaurant…[but] your golf stinks,
PGA professional Fuzzy Zoeller wrote.

Ed George wasn’t the easiest man to get along with, some claimed. Yet as others sharply pointed out, he didn’t come across as a man who would likely kill anyone—especially a con artist and womanizer like Jeff Zack. And who said he knew about the affair Jeff Zack was having with Cynthia, anyway?

All the same, Ed George’s star credentials didn’t rule out the suggestion that he could have hired someone to do the deed for him. It was no secret that Jeff Zack and Cynthia George were, at one time, an item—that they had been fooling around under Ed’s nose for the better part of ten years. In fact, a murder-for-hire scenario lent itself more to the professional nature of the crime and Ed’s standing. If the CAPU could pinpoint Ed knowing about the affair, they might have something to go on.

Late on Monday morning, June 18, detectives tracked down the environmental health official who had allegedly been with Ed around the time of Jeff Zack’s murder. “I was with Ed George,” the man said when he was questioned, “on Friday night, from four
P.M
. to seven
P.M
.” Further, he said, he had met with Ed and several other men at the restaurant to assess a few sewer problems. Once he had a good look at the main problem, he informed Ed that the restaurant was going to be shut down until repairs were made. This riled the restaurateur a bit, but Ed understood the health concerns a sewer backup posed a business centered around food and drink. The main reason Ed was so upset was that someone from the restaurant was going to have to stay overnight on that Friday with a crew of workmen to see that the problem was fixed by the following morning. Saturday was a busy day and night for the restaurant, banquet hall and nightclub. It was imperative the place be open. The environmental official told Ed to call him when they were finished so he could come back, inspect it and clear the restaurant for reopening.

“What about Saturday? Did he call you?” asked one of the CAPU detectives interviewing the environmental official.

“Oh, yes. About ten-thirty
A.M
. He said the corrections would be done around noon.” With that, the guy said he then picked up his partner and headed over to the Tangier. They arrived “shortly before noon,” he remembered. The Tangier’s “fiscal manager” was there with several other young men, said to be Ed George’s nephews.

According to a police report, Ed George didn’t show up on the site of the inspection until somewhere between 1:00 to 1:15
P.M
. The inspector said he was under the impression, however, that Ed had been in the restaurant for the entire duration of the inspection, just not in the section of the building where the problem was located.

After giving the restaurant a passing grade, the two inspectors left somewhere around quarter to two. “When we left, Ed George was still there.”

Detectives wanted to know if Ed had made or received any telephone calls while in their presence. “Not that I know of, not that I can recall,” said one of the inspectors.

In theory, Ed George had somewhat of an alibi in place for the time of Jeff Zack’s murder. Yet detectives still believed he could have been involved on a mastermind level, and no one, by that point, could say where he was definitively between 11:30
A.M
. and about 1:00
P.M
. on Saturday.

The more witnesses detectives spoke to regarding Jeff Zack’s life, the more it appeared as if there were not enough adjectives available to describe Jeff’s attitude toward women—his wife, Bonnie, in particular. Calling Jeff a ladies’ man was an understatement. If anything, Jeff Zack was a chronic womanizer—that much was clear as friends, relatives and acquaintances began opening up.

When Detective Mike Shaeffer caught up with Bonnie’s other brother Robert Boucher, on Monday afternoon, the middle-aged man was quick to brand Jeff “erratic, volatile, crude, obnoxious, hot tempered, and
very
secretive.”

After hearing that, Shaeffer stopped to reflect. The guy was dead and yet still being talked about in an unsavory manner. Shaeffer was concerned by this. “People hated that guy,” Shaeffer commented later. “This made our job that much tougher.”

“Yeah, Jeff was very verbally abusive to Bonnie and Ashton….” They had discussed divorce, Robert Boucher claimed, as far back as ten years ago. “They’ve had their ups and downs since then, but have been trying to maintain a family.”

“They ever seek family counseling—a marriage counselor?” Shaeffer had a way about him. He wasn’t involved in the investigation on day one only because he was at sniper training. A former U.S. Marine, father of five, Shaeffer was solidly built, yet spoke softly, in a soothing manner, so as not to overstep his boundaries as a detective.

“I don’t know,” Robert said. He seemed a bit unnerved by Jeff’s death, although not at all shocked by it.

After explaining a bit of Jeff’s work history, Robert brought up Ed and Cynthia George, saying, “Jeff is a friend of Ed and his wife, Cindy.”

“How’d he know them?”

“I guess he did some work for Ed a while back. Bonnie, however, told me that Jeff had an affair with Cindy. But Jeff went to her a few months ago and told her that Cindy and him were no longer friends.”

By now, it was apparent that Jeff hadn’t been a faithful husband. So Shaeffer asked Boucher about any other women Jeff might have slept with over the years. Any female Jeff had had relations with, at this point in the investigation, could be a potential suspect or witness. There was a chance detectives would be knocking on doors for the next two weeks, tracking down any female Jeff had come into contact with. But Boucher couldn’t recall seeing Jeff with any other women. It was Cynthia, he said, all the time, adding, “Jeff lived a separate life from his family. He wouldn’t let them get involved in any part of his life.”

After explaining to Shaeffer that Jeff often lied to Bonnie about the “bike trips” he took with a friend of his, Robert brought up a “conflict,” as he called it, Jeff had with someone he thought had been messing around with Jeff’s vending machine business.

Robert admitted that he rarely had a one-on-one conversation with Jeff. It was only during family functions, with everyone around, that he had spoken to him on any real personal level. And even then, all Jeff ever talked about was, well, Jeff Zack. “[He] mostly bragged about his accomplishments, being a paratrooper in the Israeli Army, his possessions, the yard work he did.”

It was becoming clear to the CAPU that Jeff’s murder was perhaps prompted by his own behavior—that someone had obviously had it out for him and followed through with threats Jeff had been receiving via telephone and in person for months leading up to his death. It didn’t make it right, or justify killing the man. But detectives needed to look at the murder from the point of view of the perpetrator and get inside his or her mind. Shaeffer was a sharp interrogator; he knew how to get people to loosen up. Part of that skill, he said later, was how, as an interviewer, you always make people feel as though you’re on their level. “For example, you would never stand and interview a witness or suspect if he or she was sitting. Regardless how you perceive it, they feel inferior to you, which makes them uncomfortable.”

With the theory playing out in his mind that Jeff had brought on his own demise, the next question Shaeffer had for Robert Boucher became: “What is your opinion of what happened to your brother-in-law? Who do you think is involved?”

Robert thought about it. Then, “I think a
woman
was involved.”

“No kidding?” Shaeffer said, shaking his head.

“I don’t believe it had anything to do with Jeff’s vending business. Jeff’s been keeping himself scarce lately,” which, Robert intimated, seemed a bit alarming. “It was like he was hiding from someone.”

Then something else came up. Those two business partners of Jeff’s, Seth and Carl, the two guys he’d gotten involved with while doing an aluminum-siding job on his house, and recently had a falling-out with—they worried Robert Boucher. “I believe that it might have been [Seth] who left that message on Jeff’s answering machine,” Robert said. “[Ashton] said he recognized the voice as Seth’s. Someone likely followed Jeff when he left the house that morning and then phoned the person on the motorcycle…. Jeff was mad when he left.”

After giving up a few more details, Shaeffer thanked Robert, saying, “Listen, here’s my card. If you think of anything else, hear something, or have any new concerns, please give me a call.”

Robert Boucher held the card out in front of himself. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll do that.”