“What can you tell me about Cindy? What would Jeff say about her?”

  “Her husband, I know, was older. Jeff said he was very wealthy and he and Cindy were hoping maybe he would die soon so they could be together. Jeff also mentioned that Cindy had seven kids with her husband.”

  Williams could tell from Lisa’s voice she knew more—that she was perhaps holding something back, especially when the conversation turned to Cynthia’s kids. Although she had no proof and it was just a hunch at this point, Williams took a wild shot: “One of them kids was Jeff’s, huh?”

  Silence.

  “Yes,” Lisa said. “Ruby…”

  “Isn’t she the youngest?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Bonnie know about the child?”

  “I think so. I think Jeff told her during an argument one night in the heat of it, you know what I mean.”

  “Sure. But let me ask you, did Ed George, Cindy’s husband, know?”

  “I don’t think he did.”

  This was substantial to the investigation. So many possibilities had now opened up. The Ed George motive had gone from a simple, however complicated, extramarital affair to Jeff Zack possibly fathering one of Cynthia George’s children. Was there a better motive for murder? News that Jeff had fathered one of Ed George’s kids could destroy the man’s reputation. Maybe Jeff even threatened Ed, the CAPU considered, and tried extorting money from him to keep quiet. Who knew at this point?

  Later, while Ed Moriarty was in the office musing over the new information, he couldn’t help but think of something Jeff Zack had said to Bonnie one day regarding Ashton: “I’ll take the kid and move to Israel if you even try to divorce me and take him away.”

  Had Jeff said the same thing to Cynthia? Had Ed George found out about the child and, not realizing Cynthia was even having an affair, snapped? Once again, the more the CAPU learned about Jeff Zack, the more complicated the case became.

  “A true-to-life whodunit,” Moriarty said later. “This was it.”

  Detective Williams was only a half hour into her interview with Lisa and she had truly put more on the table in the form of relevant information than any of the dozens of witnesses the CAPU had interviewed over the past few days.

  Still, as Williams continued pumping Lisa for information, Lisa would drop yet another bombshell.

  27

  There was no doubt in Ed Moriarty’s mind that Bonnie Zack had more information to share with police. For all he knew, Bonnie could have suspected that Jeff fathered a child with Cynthia and, fed up with being treated like “the other woman” for the past decade, had her husband killed. If true, it wasn’t too incredible to ponder, considering the circumstances of Jeff Zack’s life and how he was killed.

  Moriarty headed over to Bonnie’s Temple Trail address late on Tuesday afternoon, June 19. She’d had a few days to deal with her emotions and allow Jeff’s death to settle on her. In no way did Moriarty believe she had gotten through the initial impact of it all. But her mind was still fresh with details. It was important the CAPU continue to put itself in a position to allow Bonnie to talk.

  “Hi, Bonnie,” Moriarty said pleasantly, walking in.

  Bonnie shook her head, but didn’t say much. It was obvious she was still in a lot of pain.

  “There are a few things we need to go over. You OK with that?”

  Bonnie said, “Come in. Yes, sure.”

  After going through a bit of Jeff’s financial history, Moriarty asked, “Listen, what do you think happened to Jeff?”

  “I just don’t have a clue. I don’t know. Jeff was so secretive. He was always telling me that I didn’t need to know what he was doing and he would take care of everything.” She stopped and thought about it. “I can tell you this—I know it’s not road rage,” Bonnie said, shaking her head, “like everyone else is saying.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Bonnie took a moment. She had tears in her eyes. This was difficult. Looking squarely at Moriarty, she managed to say, “Jeff told me Ed George was getting sick of the relationship he had with Cindy. This is what’s behind his death.”

  Moriarty had to be careful. He felt Bonnie was sincere. But he had to keep his objectivity in check. Bonnie was still a suspect—a prime suspect at that. There would come a time, he knew, when he would have to ask her to take a polygraph.

  “Is there any other reason you can think of that might have led to Jeff’s murder?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe that whole thing with [Seth and Carl]. I didn’t like [Seth] the first time I saw him.”

  Money. That worked, too. But it didn’t seem to fit here. Jeff had burned people in his life before. Why now? Why this time?

  For the next few minutes, Bonnie explained all she could about Jeff’s youth in Detroit. But, she admitted, it was hard for her to believe anything Jeff said because he had told so many lies over the years. “He did say that his time in the Israeli Army was the best time of his life.”

  “Did he ever talk about being in combat?”

  There was that Arab connection Moriarty couldn’t abandon. A few of Jeff’s friends thought for sure there had been a hit put on Jeff by someone with a link to the Middle East. It didn’t make sense to Moriarty, but he needed to explore it and, if anything, cross it off the CAPU’s list.

  “He said he was involved in some combat, but again,” Bonnie said, shaking her head, more in disgust, Moriarty felt, than sorrow, “I don’t know if that was true or not.”

  By this point, Bonnie was quivering so violently from head to toe Moriarty couldn’t write it off as pure stress. It wasn’t out of fear, he thought, but emotional bondage. She was scared of talking, sitting there weighing the past ten years, the life she’d had with the guy, and how it all had turned out. Ashton was going to grow up without a father. When the toll of Jeff’s death hit the boy, it was going to devastate him—same as it had for Jeff, perhaps, when his own father left him. Bonnie knew that. Trying to hold back the tears best she could had internalized it all. Moriarty understood. He had interviewed scores of witnesses under the same duress. “You don’t know what that emotion is like or what it can do to you,” he said later, “until you’ve had to go in and tell a father that his only child is dead and he falls into your arms, holding on, hugging you and crying his eyes out…. Until you’ve gone through that, you don’t know how extended victims are in one murder.”

  After allowing Bonnie a few minutes to collect herself, Moriarty asked, “Do you know how long Jeff was in the Israeli Army?”

  “If he did tell me, it wouldn’t mean anything. One year. Two years. Three. Who knows?” she said, throwing up her arms. “I’m not really sure.”

  “Just a bit more of your time, Bonnie,” Moriarty said. He could sense she was getting uncomfortable and wanted to stop. “Jeff ever mention any problems with the Arab community because of his service in Israel?”

  Bonnie shifted a bit, noting the seriousness of the question. Looking down at the floor, then up toward the ceiling, she said, “Jeff told me he was involved in the Mossad. But he said I didn’t need to know any more than that. Listen, I’ll say it again. Jeff led a very secretive life.” She stopped herself. Then, getting up, “I’m done with this for now.”

  According to the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service, the Mossad is an “institute for Intelligence and Special Operations…appointed by the State of Israel to collect information, analyze intelligence and perform special covert operations beyond its borders.” In other words, the Mossad is Israel’s version of the CIA. Jeff had mentioned to several people that he was an agent for the Mossad. He couldn’t talk about it, he claimed, because his work was top secret. Some believed him, others didn’t.

  Moriarty wasn’t sure what Bonnie had implied by mentioning the Mossad, or if she was covering up something for Jeff. Nevertheless, it was time to send a few investigators back out to track down anyone who could tell the CAPU about the Mossad and the possibility that Jeff got himself caught up in an international conspiracy that ended in his death.

  “It was a long shot, sure,” Moriarty said later. “But that is what we were dealing with. We had to check out every possible lead and connection. In the end, when we found out who was responsible, none of it mattered. But we didn’t know it then.”

  28

  Over the course of the first week of the investigation, there were more suspects than witnesses; more open-ended questions than answers. At times, Ed Moriarty was overwhelmed by the scope of the potential suspect pool. Yet when he sat down and thought about it, some suspects seemed more important than others. Between June 20 and June 23, for example, detectives interviewed nearly a dozen more potential suspects. Many were brought in and immediately released, for one reason or another. One seventeen-year-old girl called and thought maybe her father had shot Jeff because Jeff had harassed her. She had worked at BJ’s. One day, Jeff came in to buy a cell phone and introduced himself. When she brushed him off, he followed her around the store and ended up with her phone number after watching her throw a receipt in the garbage for something she bought on her break. According to her, the next day Jeff called seven times, trying to get her to go out with him. The eighth time he called, the girl’s father answered the telephone and told Jeff she was only seventeen, raging, “Do not ever call her back again.”

  Jeff called a couple more times—and saw her at BJ’s on another day—and then left her alone. It was the first week of June, she explained to detectives.

  But that lead, like many of them, turned up nothing. A father wasn’t going to shoot a guy in the head because he had called his daughter a few times. It seemed possible, but not all that practical.

  Other suspects, reportedly seen driving lime-green-and-black Ninja-style motorcycles, were still being brought in, questioned and, quite quickly, released. The APD crime scene unit (CSU) had lifted a sample of rubber from the motorcycle in question at the scene. The murderer had driven over a curb and cut through a parking lot, but had to slow down to miss a car, before he or she then took off at a high rate of speed, leaving a rubber mark behind. The CAPU had a sample of the tire. Although it was a very common rubber, it was still possible to rule out several brands of tires.

  So it was back to good old-fashioned police work—and learning all they could about Jeff Zack. Many of Jeff’s problems later in life, according to one of his brothers that Detective Mike Shaeffer interviewed, were manifestations of his upbringing. Marc Zack basically repeated what Elayne Zack had been saying all along: Jeff couldn’t take rejection. As far as Jeff’s other brother not attending Jeff’s wake or funeral, investigators learned that Jeff and his other brother often got physical with each other throughout their relationship and never really got along, “but not to the point of fighting,” Marc said. Even so, the reason he hadn’t attended Jeff’s funeral turned out to be a clash of circumstances. He was out of town camping and wasn’t notified until late on Sunday night. He couldn’t get into town in time.

  “Jeff always lived on the edge,” said a source. “He was a risk taker. He always seemed to seek others’ approval.”

  Rejection was such a major issue for Jeff that when a girlfriend once broke up with him—it was right after high school, shortly before he left for Israel (he and the girl had planned on getting married)—he went over to the house she lived in and moved all of her belongings into the apartment they had rented together.

  David Zack had initiated Jeff into the scrap-metal-recycling business when Jeff returned from Israel. They worked together, but it didn’t last long. David found out Jeff was going back into the scrap metal yard at night, stealing metals and selling them. When David realized what Jeff was doing, he “threw him out of the business.”

  Few in the family trusted Jeff. There were times, Marc Zack said, when years would go by without Marc and Jeff talking, solely based on the way Jeff had treated Marc and his wife. Jeff was rude and offensive when he didn’t get his way. Often verbally abusive, Marc said, to his wife over the telephone. That’s why it seemed so strange to Marc and the rest of the family when Jeff showed up in Arizona for Mother’s Day and began apologizing to everyone in the family for the problems he had caused, even going so far as mentioning specific episodes where Jeff admitted he was out of line. “He acted strange and had a peculiar look in his eyes [that weekend],” Marc told Shaeffer. “He looked as if he was afraid of something…extra nervous. I felt he was hiding something and running from someone.”

  It wasn’t only Marc who noticed this. Elayne and David also saw a different Jeff Zack that week. “He knew something was going to happen to him,” Elayne said later.

  Whereas Jeff never mentioned his affair with Cynthia to friends and coworkers, Marc claimed Jeff had no trouble bragging about it to him. “Jeff was hurt by the end of the affair, I could tell that.” While Jeff was in Arizona, he pulled Marc aside one day and told him, “It’s over now.” Verbalizing it upset Jeff.

  “How come?” Marc asked.

  “Ah…her husband wants it to end. He told me not to come around there anymore, to ‘get out of the scenario.’”

  Jeff had spoken to Cynthia while he was in Arizona. Marc was sure of it. Add to that the opinion that Ed George had put his foot down about the affair and demanded it come to an end, it seemed Ed had good reason to want Jeff out of the picture. Maybe Jeff and Cynthia didn’t end the affair, after all, but only acted like they did to fool Ed and Bonnie?

  During that Mother’s Day trip, Jeff went out to dinner with Marc, his wife, their new baby, Elayne and David Zack. It was a pleasant time. Yet Jeff seemed to want to hold the small child all throughout the dinner, bouncing the child on his leg, making baby talk, smiling, just having a grand time enjoying the bond between them.

  For the family, this was “unusual” behavior on Jeff’s part. Marc and his wife, when they got home that night, discussed it. “Maybe Jeff has a baby with Cindy,” Marc told his wife. “Maybe…”

  “And maybe he’s unable to see it…that’s why he was so excited tonight.”

  Shaeffer asked Marc why he thought Jeff had been murdered. It was the same question detectives had put to everyone. It was important to keep asking. Going over scenarios a second and third time with the same witness could yield new leads.

  “It wasn’t road rage,” insisted Marc. Instead, Marc was with those who believed Seth and Carl were behind it. Covering up for monies stolen from an insurance company, he said, was good motivation for murder. Jeff was determined to get Seth and Carl back for what he believed they did to him. The situation had escalated.

  “Nothing else?” Shaeffer wondered. “You don’t see any other possibility?”

  “Well,” Marc said, “it could have occurred due to Jeff’s involvement with Cindy.”

  Marc seemed to know Jeff’s last words to Ashton, which, looking back, were quite emblematic of Jeff’s life leading up to that final moment. After a “heated” argument with Bonnie and Ashton, Jeff went for the door, according to Marc, turned and, directing his words straight to Ashton, said, “See what’s it’s like when I’m not here.”

  29

  Earlier in his career, while working undercover, Ed Moriarty got into a bit of a jam. Looking back now, he figured it had somewhat of a connection to Jeff Zack’s murder, if only in the substance of what happened. Moriarty was working drug detail, initiating buys and busting drug dealers in the Akron area. The FBI had called the APD one day and warned Moriarty they had information that a “hit” had been put on his life. The hit, claimed the FBI, was sanctioned by a group of Arabs.

  “That report,” Moriarty recalled, “had come in through [a source connected to Ed George].”

  Moriarty was called into his lieutenant’s office, who told him about the hit. When the Ed George connection was made and Moriarty later heard that there could be an Arab connection involved in Jeff Zack’s murder, he said, “We couldn’t rule that out, especially knowing what I knew about [that Arab connection] and the hit that was supposedly put on me years before.”

  As the second week of the investigation got under way, Moriarty and the CAPU ruled out the possibility that Jeff was murdered by an Arab group. “There were just so many possibilities in this, that the Arab connection didn’t fit,” Moriarty said. “I mean, at about the same time we found out that Jeff was also involved in [some very shady business] in Phoenix when he was younger…. The stock market scams he was involved in. The scams with his various businesses. He was even involved with a credit card scam at some point right before his death. He had his fingers in so many different things. He spoke fluent Russian. We got a tip that the Russian mafia was behind it all because, reportedly, Jeff had somehow scammed them while overseas in Israel. We also had word that he was running drugs in Israel.”

  None of it, however, as far as Moriarty and the CAPU could tell, turned out to be true. Jeff had bragged about being part of an Israeli intelligence team for Israeli airline El Al. But the APD couldn’t confirm or disprove it. To add more seasoning to a melting pot of suspects, it was common knowledge that Jeff and his neighbors didn’t get along. Jeff had hit on a neighbor’s wife and gotten into several altercations with her husband. But again, the idea that one of Jeff Zack’s neighbors had murdered him in an act of revenge or anger—well, it just didn’t fit.

  When members of the CAPU sat down, compared notes and looked at all the possibilities, the investigation turned to four specific suspects. And so, when they scratched all those potential suspects off the list, one by one, the CAPU found themselves focused on Bonnie Zack, Ed George, and Seth and Carl, the two men Jeff had a gripe with regarding an aluminum-siding job. “When you look at murder,” Moriarty observed, “and you’ve been around murder investigations all your life, you know that it usually comes down to two things—love or money.”