Re: 10/31/99 - Investigators searching for clues at Colts Neck house
Investigators searching for clues at Colts Neck house
Published in the Asbury Park Press
By SHERI TABACHNIK
STAFF WRITER
Why Albert Alain Chalem and Maier Lehmann were gunned down in a Colts Neck mansion might not be known until the killers are arrested, but what has become obvious during the past five days is how much the two men were loved by their family and friends.
At 1 a.m. Tuesday, 41-year-old Chalem and 37-year-old Lehmann were found shot to death on a marble floor in the dining room of Chalem's Bluebell Road home. A long table in the sparsely furnished house was filled with papers relating to the men's online stock promoting business, Monmouth County Prosecutor John Kaye has said.
As of yesterday, no weapon had been found and no arrests had been made, said Second Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor Robert Honecker. Investigators were continuing to search for clues on the Colts Neck property.
The scene of the crime was a sprawling white colonial surrounded by a black and gold wrought-iron fence and owned by Russell Candela, of Brooklyn and East Hampton, N.Y., the father of Chalem's fiancee. Candela purchased the house in December for $1.1 million. His daughter, Kimberly Scarola, 39, her son, Jeffrey, 13, and Chalem moved into their new home in the beginning of the summer. Neither Scarola nor her son were home at the time of the murders.
The men most likely knew their killers, Kaye has said.
The murders, which Kaye has described as "execution-style" killings, have sparked an investigation that reaches around the globe.
Chalem, Lehmann, of Woodmere, Long Island, and an unidentified Clifton man were partners in www.stockinvestor.com, a Web site managed out of Budapest, Hungary, and registered in Panama. Using electronic mail, the men talked up certain low-priced stocks to potential investors. Once buyers bit, authorities said, they sold their own shares for a profit.
"What they're saying in the papers are lies," Candela has said, adding that his daughter loved Chalem and was devastated by the murders. "You didn't know him. He was a great guy -- real strong."
At Lehmann's Orthodox Jewish funeral, which took place on what would have been the couple's 15th wedding anniversary, his wife, Tamir Lehmann, grieved alongside the couple's five young children. Several family members cried as they eulogized a man his brother called "generous to a fault."
Both men were buried last week after the county medical examiner performed autopsies on their bodies.
Published on October 31, 1999
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