2 murders called a lesson
Published in the Asbury Park Press 2/10/00
By JAMES W. PRADO ROBERTS
STAFF WRITER
Two penny-stock promoters shot to death in a Colts Neck mansion nearly four months ago may have been murdered by someone to whom they owed money and who knew it would never be collected.
Monmouth County Prosecutor John Kaye also said the person -- or persons -- who pulled the triggers were only messengers, not the person sending the message. And he said there could be arrests in a few week.
For the first time, Kaye confirmed that two guns were used, but he wouldn't say if he suspected there was one killer or two. Ten bullets were fired in the slayings of Albert Alain Chalem of Colts Neck, and Maier S. Lehmann, of Woodmere, N.Y., Oct. 25.
Kaye called the crime "a professional hit, a hired hit." Whoever was owed money was not the one who fired the fatal shots, Kaye said. He would not say how much money may have been owed, but said it was a significant amount.
"The motive is complex, and it extends over a period of time. It's not just the immediate transactions" the two men were engaged in when they were shot, Kaye said.
"If someone owes you money, you don't kill them -- you want your money. You do that only when you're convinced you're not going to get your money, and you want to show other people that you are an important and powerful force," he said. The killings were intended to "teach a lesson," he added.
"I'm not going to say mob, but the pieces are there," Kaye said.
Chalem was shot in the eyes, ears, mouth and neck, the prosecutor said. Lehmann was shot in the leg and three times in the back of the head.
The shootings, in the mansion where Chalem lived with his girlfriend, shocked Colts Neck and sent chills through the penny-stock world. People familiar with the risky investing were unable to recall any other murder related to it. But authorities say this business is increasingly being infiltrated by organized crime and con artists.
Investigators also have turned to an unusual test in an attempt to solve the killings -- dog DNA.
Kaye would not say why the investigation hinged in part on the results of dog DNA testing, but Chalem owned two English bulldogs, Sophia and Spikey. According to people who knew him, Chalem was devoted to the dogs and was rarely separated from them.
Spikey, at 55 to 60 pounds, might have knocked someone down or bitten to protect her owner, said Margie Weaver, the North Carolina English bulldog breeder who sold Chalem both his dogs.
The dogs were not hurt in the shootings.
"She (Spikey) was very athletic and she would, probably try to grab (an attacker's) arm or their leg," Weaver said.
If Chalem's dogs or another dog had left DNA evidence such as hair, saliva or blood, a DNA test could be as accurate as a human DNA test, according to an animal genetic testing expert.
"If the dog bit somebody, most likely, the dog would leave its DNA in the clothing he bit through, or in the wound himself," said John Duffendack, president of VetGen, Ann Arbor, Mich., an animal genetics research lab. "In the clothing, it would last forever, in the wound, not as long. You'd run a profile test on the clothing, and then on the dog itself, and then you'd show that dog bit that person."
In what Duffendack believed was the first criminal case to use dog DNA, two men were convicted in 1998 of killing a Washington State couple and their pit bull.
Blood from the dog was later linked to the jackets of the killers, a jury found.
Kaye said Chalem and Lehmann appeared to have committed a "lot of crimes -- financial crimes."
Chalem and Lehman hyped cheap stocks, also known as microcaps, on at least one Internet Web site that they ran at the time of their deaths. Chalem had also worked in the now-defunct brokerage house A.S. Goldmen, a brokerage with an office in Woodbridge.
A Manhattan grand jury indicted the brokerage last summer on charges of running a criminal enterprise that bilked investors out of nearly $100 million. Chalem was not among the 33 indicted, however.
In 1998, Lehmann paid $630,000 to the federal Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges that he helped illegally manipulate the stock of a small company that cheated unsuspecting investors of $12 million.
Following the murders, the Wall Street Journal and Barron's reported that Lehmann began a crusade several years ago to become an informant to securities regulators in the world of penny stocks.
The Monmouth prosecutor said the case put members of Kaye's investigation team and Kaye himself at risk.
"I definitely feel that the lives of the people involved in the investigation are threatened," Kaye said. Until recently, Kaye said, he took measures to protect himself. He declined to elaborate.
Shortly after the murders, the investigation was bogged down because of the huge number of potential suspects who lost money because of Chalem's and Lehmann's businesses, Kaye said.
"We had a lot of disinformation in the beginning," Kaye said.
"There were so many suspects we would have had to have had a lineup at the Meadowlands, and these two victims here were involved with so many transactions where people lost money, and they had enemies," he said.
James W. Prado Roberts: (732) 922-6000, ext. 4317; or jwr@app.com. Staff writer Jason Method contributed to this story.
Published on February 10, 2000
app.com |
