Re: 10/29/99 - Lab tests 10 bullets; police hope to learn if 2 killers hit 2 slain men
Lab tests 10 bullets; police hope to learn if 2 killers hit 2 slain men
Published in the Asbury Park Press
By AMY ZURZOLA
STAFF WRITER
WITHOUT A WEAPON or a suspect in custody, investigators are counting on forensic tests on bullets taken from the bodies of two stock promoters to tell whether both were shot with the same gun.
Results of an autopsy performed yesterday on Alain Chalem, 41, show he was shot six times, once in the chest and five more times in the head and neck, Second Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor Robert Honecker Jr. said.
Chalem's business partner, Maier Lehmann, 37, was hit by four bullets, and all appear to be from the same caliber semiautomatic weapon. Honecker declined to say what caliber. He would not say exactly how many shots had been fired.
The two were gunned down inside a lavish Colts Neck mansion Monday night or very early Tuesday.
Prosecutor John Kaye has said he believes more than one shooter may have been involved. The ballistics tests being performed at the state police crime lab will help make that determination.
The FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission have joined the prosecutor's office in investigating what happened inside the sprawling $1.1 million house at 3 Bluebell Road, Honecker said. Investigators are checking out several possible leads, but for now, the case that shocked the affluent community with its violence remains a "whodunit."
"We're at the very beginning stages of this investigation, and we're taking it one step at a time," Honecker said. He did not rule out involvement by foreign authorities.
The Web site the two men operated, which touted cheap stocks, was registered to a post office box in Panama, and the man listed as the site's administrator, Moos Gabor, is in Budapest, Hungary. Lehmann, whose funeral was held yesterday at a Long Island chapel, is part of a family that includes well-regarded German rabbinical scholars.
The men's bodies were found by two acquaintances in a dining room that sits to the left of a large center hall in the colonial-style mansion, and bullets and shell casings were found in that area. Search warrants are being sought to allow detectives to retrieve nearly 100 voice-mail messages left on the two victimes' cellular telephones, which were found near their bodies, Honecker said.
One person -- Jesse Scarola, the ex-husband of Chalem's fiancee, Kimberly -- has been ruled out as a suspect in the slayings. Kimberly Scarola, who lived with Chalem and her 13-year-old son at the house, was in Florida at the time of the shootings. Honecker would not discuss why Jesse Scarola was ruled out, or why any others close to the dead men were not.
The men's work together relied on the volatile combination of the Internet and the stock market, and so far, the only theory behind the shootings Kaye has publicly discussed is a business-related transaction or relationship gone bad.
Investigators would not discuss the identity of a third business partner whom they questioned.
The Web site, www.stockinvestor.com, touted new stock listings and small-cap businesses. The men also sent out mass e-mail messages talking up the stocks to potential investors, and received discounted shares in return. Once investors bit, driving up the stock prices, the men sold their shares.
Registering the Web site outside the United States kept the operation free of SEC scrutiny, but some of Lehmann's past business dealings didn't fare so well.
An SEC case against a company connected to Lehmann was delayed this year pending the outcome of a criminal investigation, a U.S. attorney's office spokesman said yesterday.
"We moved to stay a narrow part of the SEC case, which was granted. The defendants then moved to stay the entire action, in light of a parallel federal criminal investigation," said Herbert Hadad, a spokesman for the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney's Office. He declined to elaborate.
According to the SEC records, the case was delayed prior to May 19, 1999.
Lehmann was listed as a primary defendant in the case against Electro Optical System Inc., a penny-stock company which rose from 50 cents to over $5 in one day. The SEC said defendants distributed false information about the company in news releases and over Internet newsletters, then made a hefty profit from the inflated price.
Lehmann settled with the SEC after paying $630,000 to cover fines and his profit.
Amy Zurzola: (732) 922-6000, Ext. 4624, or at azurzola@app.com.
Staff writer Jason Method contributed to this story.
from the Asbury Park Press
Published on October 29, 1999
injersey.com |
