Re: 10/28/99 - Two who pitched stocks on Internet are killed execution-style
October 28, 1999
Two who pitched stocks on Internet are killed execution-style
They were shot at an estate in Colts Neck, N.J. Their business probably figured in the motive, police said.
By Mike Madden
INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF
COLTS NECK, N.J. - Two men who ran an Internet site promoting over-the-counter stocks were killed Tuesday night at the mansion where one of them lived, in an execution-style slaying that left investigators baffled.
Alain Chalem, 41, and Mayir Lehmann, 37, of Woodmere, N.Y., were found early yesterday by friends, lying facedown in the marble foyer of the house on a 16-acre estate that Chalem shared with his girlfriend, Monmouth County Prosecutor John Kaye said. Both men had been shot several times in the head. The men's cellular phones were lying inches from their hands.
"In this county, there are about a dozen homicides a year, and they are not 'whodunits,' " Kaye said. "This is an unusual killing."
Authorities said the killing had something to do with the Internet business - www.stockinvestor.com <http://www.stockinvestor.com> - where the men pitched penny stocks over a mass e-mail list, receiving commissions from securities firms. The Web site, which offers free subscriptions to the mass e-mails, was registered in early 1997 to a post office box in Panama, according to Internet-domain name records.
Exactly how the killing related to the business, however, was uncertain.
"It doesn't make any sense to kill somebody if you were swindled and want your money," Kaye said. "If you want your money, you terrorize them, you threaten them, you beat them up, and you get your money. You don't shoot them to pieces."
The friends who found the brokers had come from North Jersey to spend the night at Chalem's house in Colts Neck, about 10 miles northwest of Asbury Park, Kaye said.
They last spoke to the two about 7:30 Tuesday night and called frequently between 8 p.m. Tuesday and 1 a.m. yesterday, when they arrived in Colts Neck to find the mansion's gates open, the front door unlocked, and Chalem and Lehmann dead on the floor, Kaye said.
Chalem's girlfriend, Kimberly Scarola, 39, who lived with Chalem and her 13-year-old son, Jeffrey, had gone to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., days before the killing, Kaye said. Friends told police that Chalem had planned to drive to Tennessee and then fly to Florida to meet Scarola.
Investigators have ruled out Scarola's former husband as a suspect, but they are looking at nearly everyone else involved with the victims, Kaye said.
It appeared that whoever killed the men immobilized them first, shooting them in the head only after ensuring that they could not run away, Kaye said. There was no sign of forced entry to the house.
Chalem was shot once in the chest and then five times in the head. Lehmann was shot once in the leg and then three times in the head.
The house in Colts Neck belongs to Russell Candela of Brooklyn, N.Y., Scarola's father, authorities said.
A man who answered the phone at Candela's house declined to comment yesterday afternoon.
"This is a definite 'whodunit,' " Kaye said. "In the majority of homicides, we have a pretty clear-cut idea. Even if we can't prove who did it right away, we at least have a pretty good idea who did it. This is very different."
This article contains information from the Associated Press. |
