If Looks Could Kill (5 page)

Ed Moriarty had a man shot at point-blank range in his vehicle, a bullet wound through his face, the fragment of a projectile, and several stories that told him Jeff Zack wasn’t the most well-liked man in Akron. There were any number of possibilities that could have taken place, any number of people who could have wanted Jeff Zack dead. Moriarty had spent just about his entire adult life as a cop. He was slated to retire in a matter of months. Now this. As morbid as it sounded, or maybe even as disrespectful as it seemed (which it wasn’t), Moriarty was excited about showing up for work again. There was a homicide to investigate. It kept things fresh. Police work could get awfully monotonous. Having a new case kept things interesting. But this one, Moriarty could smell from the beginning, had the hallmarks of an extensive, detailed investigation that would take months, if not years.

“We knew it was either going to be cut-and-dry, or a long, drawn-out investigation that would put us to the test,” Moriarty said later.

Finding the bullet was a critical starting point. Also, Moriarty found out that evening, the black-and-white videotape surveillance from BJ’s had picked up a man on a motorcycle flying out of the parking lot at 12:01:21
P.M
. The image was grainy and diluted, but nonetheless proved each witness had been accurate with his or her description of the suspect and his motorcycle. “The only thing that videotape really told us,” Moriarty explained, “was that yes, we had one individual involved in this, the time it occurred was documented, and there was no doubt that this individual was on a motorcycle. So we knew that was all true. Many times, when you get a lot of witness statements, you cannot put a whole lot of credence in them. But in this particular case, that videotape helped us establish that the information we were getting was pretty much on point.”

Having the videotape back up what witnesses were saying was enough for Moriarty to put out a detailed description of the motorcycle—which was going to cause an entire new set of investigative difficulties.

Still, as Moriarty worked back at the department putting his team together and rationing different jobs, Bertina King was about to uncover an important piece of information. Back at Bonnie and Jeff’s house, King continued asking Ashton about Ed and Cynthia George. What else did Jeff’s son know about the relationship Jeff had with Cynthia and Ed?

Ashton explained that while he and his dad had watched ABC’s
20/20,
a news magazine show, one night a few weeks back, Jeff said something startling. The show was about a man who had hired a hit man to kill someone he knew. While they were watching the show, Jeff turned toward his son and uttered, in a soft and serious voice, a profound statement that, knowing what had occurred at BJ’s, Ashton had a hard time writing off as a coincidence. “If anything ever happens to me,” Jeff Zack told his son as they sat on the couch watching the show, “tell the cops to look at Ed George. He’s got a lot of money and can afford to hire someone.”

A consummate professional, King was able to contain any excitement she might have felt. Having a thirteen-year-old boy come out with such a powerful accusation made it even more profound. Kids tend to overexaggerate things to an extent without trying, and perhaps forget details, overlooking the obvious. But for a kid to come out with a story such as the one Ashton was telling, basing it on the memory of a television show, it was extremely credible on face value alone.

No sooner had Ashton given up Ed George, however, did he complicate matters by involving two other potential suspects, whom Jeff had had a run-in with recently.

“You think your dad had any other enemies?” King asked.

“No,” said Ashton, “except for [two guys the family has known for quite some time].” One man by the name of
Carl
was a “family friend.” The other,
Seth,
helped coach Ashton’s peewee football team. Carl and Jeff had been good friends at one time. But a siding job Carl and Seth were supposed to do for Jeff had turned into a situation over the possible theft of a $6,200 check that, Ashton said, the two guys had taken for a job they never did. They had even possibly forged Jeff’s signature in order to turn the paper into cash. Seth was the one who had gotten especially heated one day when he and Jeff were talking. They were out behind Stow High School. Ashton was there. He said he heard Seth say, at one point during the argument, “I’ll rip your throat out with a hot butter knife.”

“No kidding,” King said. “He said that?”

“Yeah. I remember.”

After a few more inconsequential questions, King thanked Ashton for the courage he displayed talking about his father so shortly after hearing probably the worst news of his life. The investigation, only a few hours old, was moving along. Although King knew there would be more questions for Ashton down the road, she was energized by what the child had to say this early on.

“You take care, OK, Ashton,” King said. “Call me if you need anything.”

“Thanks.”

John, Bonnie’s brother, sat with King next. He was obviously disturbed by the news of his brother-in-law’s death, but, by the same token, knew there were major problems between his sister and Jeff. John had lived in Arizona for most of his life, but he had been back in the Akron area for the past year.

“I last saw Jeff on Thursday night,” John offered. Two days ago. “I stopped here around six
P.M
. to pick up Ashton. Jeff was sitting at the table eating something.”

“How’d you get along with Jeff?”

“We were, you know, on good terms. Sure.”

“Ever seen your sister and Jeff argue?”

“No. She’s always told me that they got along good, but of course had some stressers.”

“What about Cindy George?”

“Those rumors have been circulating through the family for years. Everyone had speculated. I heard once that Cindy and Jeff were seen riding bikes together.”

“This is helpful,” King said. “What about any enemies, you know of anyone that might have wanted to see Jeff dead?”

“If I had to speculate about who killed Jeff, I’d say Cindy George had something to do with it, or either Seth or Carl, because of that aluminum-siding deal that went bad. Jeff told me he was going to send someone to jail over it. But he never said he was fearful of either of them.”

As they spoke, John shook his head. No one could believe it had come to this. Further along, he explained how Jeff had told him one night that he wanted to set both Seth and Carl up. His plan was to have them come over to the house and admit how they were scamming people out of thousands of dollars. Jeff was going to have an undercover cop in the house with him to hear it all. But as the CAPU would soon learn, it was just another elaborate plan of Jeff’s that had never materialized.

“He had been receiving strange calls lately,” John said next. “I know that.”

“What types of calls?” King wanted to know.

“Derogatory and threatening in nature.”

“No kidding.”

“I don’t know who they were from.”

Same as she had with Ashton and Bonnie, King took copious notes as John spoke, and later wrote about the conversations, using pointed detail in her report. In just a few hours, the APD’s list of potential suspects had grown with each person detectives spoke to. While he sat and talked, John added another suspect to the pool. He said someone was messing with several of Jeff’s vending machines, moving and smashing them. Jeff was extremely angered by this, John suggested. He could see how perhaps Jeff might have waited one night for someone to vandalize one of his machines and from that a feud might have developed, which later escalated to murder.

Jeff himself had raised the eyebrows of most of the people in his life the last four weeks, John explained. Jeff was generally known inside the family circle as hot-headed, mean, even nasty at times. For some reason, over the past month or so, he had been acting “extremely nice.” Everyone in the family had noticed it.

“It was like,” John said, “he was trying to make amends or something.”

Just recently, Jeff had flown out to Arizona to visit family members. Jeff’s sister and mother both noticed the change; for the first time since anyone could remember, Jeff was actually nice to everyone during the visit. He didn’t argue. He didn’t put anyone down. He was polite. Caring. Quite the change from the arrogant SOB family members had known Jeff could be at times.

John believed Jeff’s murder had something to do with the threats he had received recently, saying, “Jeff never told me who he thought was doing it. He never acted like the threats scared him. But I knew they
bothered
him.”

King was thrilled by what John had to say. The CAPU had plenty to go on. It appeared as though the best place to start was with Jeff Zack himself. Take a look back into his life over the past year or more and try to track his movements through the people he knew.

John had one other important comment to make before King concluded the interview. “I felt like,” he said before pausing, “I felt…he was making amends with everyone the last month, because he was so nice, like he
knew
something was going to happen to him.”

When King left Bonnie’s, she called Ed Moriarty and told him what Ashton and John had said.

“Good work, Tina. Looks like we’ll have to go out and pay Ed and Cindy George a visit.”

Tips drive the fluidness of any homicide investigation. Law enforcement rely on them as a normal process of elimination to help cross off suspects and add new ones. With Ed Moriarty releasing the road rage story to the press, watchdogs all over the state of Ohio started calling in, all of whom claimed to have seen the now-infamous “lime green Ninja-style” motorcycle sometimes called a “crotch rocket.”

Each tip had to be checked out. It didn’t matter how much credence was put into it by detectives. One call in particular from an anonymous female at first seemed promising. “Me and my husband have seen a motorcycle driving by our home that matches the one in the newspaper.” Upon further talking to the woman, however, detectives learned that some people have a hard time paying attention to even the most obvious details.

“What color was the bike you saw, ma’am?” asked one detective.

“I’m not sure of the colors, but I think it was red, white and green.”

Nonetheless, the CAPU did a cross-reference check and located all of the woman’s neighbors: each one checked out. None had anything to do with Jeff Zack’s murder.

Ed Moriarty sent two detectives to the Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office at 10:30
A.M
. on Sunday morning, June 17, to attend Jeff Zack’s autopsy. Although they felt confident in knowing the cause of Jeff’s death, the autopsy could yield some useful information. Detectives found rolling papers and a small amount of marijuana in Jeff’s pocket. If he smoked pot, it was possible he had taken harder drugs, which could lead to different scenarios, and the autopsy would bear that out. Who’s to say Jeff Zack hadn’t liquored himself up, taken a handful of pills and hired someone to shoot him in the head? He had made a point of spending the last month telling family members how sorry he was for the chaos he had been causing. He was distraught, a source had come forward and claimed, over an alleged breakup with his longtime (nearly ten years) mistress, Cynthia George. He had, said this same source, spent the morning of his death on the computer searching for Cynthia’s new telephone number. She had apparently broken off their relationship several weeks before his death, changed her cell phone number and told Jeff she never wanted to see or hear from him again. Several people reported how upset and depressed Jeff had become over the breakup—and that he had been possibly harassing Cynthia.

As everyone had surmised, the bullet that killed Jeff had entered his left cheek and exited just underneath his right earlobe. What the medical examiner was quick to confirm was that the bullet had traveled through the roof of Jeff’s mouth and the base of his tongue. Both of his lungs had filled with blood. The bullet had not hit any major arteries. By all accounts, Jeff would have survived the gunshot wound if he hadn’t drowned in his own blood.

When detectives started to learn about Jeff Zack’s life, within their list of growing suspects, no one in particular stood out. Moriarty had known Tangier owner Ed George for a number of years. Perhaps he had snapped, Moriarty thought, and hired someone to kill his wife’s lover? “Because the obscure cannot be understood,” so says a Latin proverb, “[it] does not mean that the obvious should be denied.”

“I called this case,” Moriarty remembered later, “once we started to learn about Mr. Zack’s life, one of the longest-running suicides in history. Zack was involved in things that could have brought somebody out to harm him. As a result of that, not only did we have to find out who did it, but we had to eliminate, for prosecution purposes, several other suspects.”

And that’s where all of the work stood as the second day of the investigation commenced—in the minutia. Those minor details that could bring forth a tangible suspect, not just a person who looked good on paper.

Moriarty had a practical way of viewing suspects and making sure that when one of his homicide cases was sent to the prosecutor’s office, he was sure they had the right guy. For Moriarty, what made him realize how important it was to be certain his team wasn’t putting the wrong man in prison was a trip he once took to the infamous Mansfield Reformatory, a prison. He and several of his law enforcement colleagues had put together a softball team and went in to play the inmates in an exhibition game. “After that experience, having never quite seen anything like it, I was determined in my career that no one I investigated would end up in prison unless I knew one hundred percent they were guilty. I didn’t want to be responsible for having somebody in
that
kind of a situation who may have been innocent.”

Along with Deputy Chief Paul Callahan, Bertina King and Captain Elizabeth Daugherty, Moriarty headed out to the George estate in Medina County on Sunday afternoon to speak with Ed and Cynthia George regarding the comments Ashton Zack had made to Detective King the previous day. The Georges lived in an 8,100-square-foot French-style monster of a brick house that Ed George had built from the ground up in 1992. Located in Medina County, Ed had purchased nearly 130 acres of land in the late 1980s and built the house for his rather large family of Cynthia, a housekeeper and seven kids. “Ed George Manor,” if you will, was located about fifteen miles west of BJ’s, near the Bath Nature Preserve, approximately twenty miles south of Cleveland. When you look at it from the street, Batman’s Wayne Manor comes to mind. It is an immense piece of property, the home quite contemporary. Located a foot or two from the road is a rather direct, albeit small, neon yellow sign with black lettering: “
POSTED
:
PRIVATE PROPERTY…VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
.”

Ed and Cynthia George wanted to be left alone.

Driving up from Bath Road, taking a right toward the blacktop road leading to Ed’s home, the enormous structure, equipped with a garage larger than many of the homes in the surrounding neighborhoods, stood tall and wide. Castlelike, and surrounded by so much land, it was hard to believe a family of nine alone lived there. The house was a far cry from the humble condominium Ed and Cynthia had lived in before building the house. Ed George told an
Akron Beacon Journal
reporter the year work was completed on the mansion, “My wife says she needed room to breathe. We’re going to have a lot of room to breathe now.”

And for years—at least on the surface—that so-called “breathing room” had existed inside the George household without complication or disruption. Cynthia had grown so accustomed to her life of luxury and quasi-celebrity status, Ed hired a nanny to help with their rather large family. After all, Cynthia had other business—mainly, being the glamorous wife of a millionaire. She needed to work out in order to stay fit and trim for her appearances with Ed and walks down the runway of the Mrs. Ohio America pageant. They had the money. Why not free up her afternoons so she could come and go as she pleased? At five feet four inches, extremely petite, Cynthia wasn’t as tall as a supermodel, but she could certainly hold a candle to any of those women walking the runway. Born on July 8, 1954, Cynthia was forty-six in the year 2000 when she not only entered the Mrs. Ohio America pageant, but finished as third runner-up. With her captivating blue eyes, dazzling and engaging, her flawless porcelain skin, she was still a “wow” type of looker heading into her late forties, a woman who had given birth to six children (she and Ed adopted one) and spent the time necessary to keep that baby weight off. Several of her pregnancies, she later admitted in interviews, were wrought with problems, which had kept her confined to bed for months at a time and had sent her spiraling into a depression. When she wasn’t held up in bed dealing with her pregnancies, Cynthia loved bike riding, especially down into the Cuyahoga Valley National Park area, not too far from the Tangier. She’d even met Jeff Zack down there countless times and rode the bike trails for miles and miles. After all, she and Jeff were friends, like buddies. They adored each other’s company. Cynthia said later she helped Jeff deal with life, as any friend might.

Regardless of the woman she was, or the status Ed’s money afforded her, Cynthia and Ed were going to have to answer a few questions. Someone was accusing Ed of hiring a hit man. At the very least, the Georges needed to give an alibi to the CAPU.

Moriarty rang the doorbell after he, Callahan, Daugherty and King made their way up the long, exotic entranceway to the home.

The nanny answered.

“Can we come in?” Moriarty asked.

Cynthia was standing in the lobbylike entryway of the George home. She didn’t look thrilled, but nonetheless invited the detectives in.

It was odd, Moriarty noticed right away, that here it was the end of June and the Georges still had most of their Christmas decorations up in the house. Secondly, with all the expensive furniture and furnishings inside the home, not to mention a kitchen larger than most condominiums Moriarty had set foot in, the Georges had cages of animals sitting on the tile floor near the sink.

After explaining why they were there, Moriarty asked Cynthia if Ed was around. “At the restaurant,” Cynthia said. She seemed standoffish, like she didn’t want to say much.

Where else would Ed be? Tangier had been in the George family for the past fifty-plus years. Ed had taken it over some thirty years ago and seen the establishment through good and bad times. But the one constant in all of it was Ed George’s time away from home and his utter determination to see the business work. The restaurant had sucked any free time Ed had away from the family. But Ed still found the time—when Cynthia was off doing her own thing—to drive the kids to dance rehearsal, soccer practice and any other extracurricular activities they had. He was a super father, many later said. As for his workaholic ways, Cynthia knew the deal when she married Ed. Still, she likely had no idea how much it would actually affect their marriage—that is, until she lived it.

Walking around, scoping out the place, Moriarty was curious. There was a cockiness about the detective. Although he tried, he had a hard time shaking it off. So he used it instead to his advantage when questioning witnesses and suspects. Moriarty wanted to know where Ed George was the previous day. It was a simple question.

“Ed was in Akron,” Cynthia said. Now she seemed nervous and broken. She was uncomfortable talking. “He was with the City of Akron Health Inspectors.” There had been a sewer backup in the restaurant and Ed had to close the place until the problem was resolved. “He left around eight-thirty
A.M
. I didn’t see him until about one-thirty
P.M
. that same day. I met him at St. Vincent’s Church on West Market Street (right down the street from the restaurant). I had spent the entire morning getting the children ready for a wedding we attended.”

Moriarty shook his head. He later said he had a sense that Cynthia was hiding something, holding back, and was going to throw them out of the house as soon as possible.