Dangerous Liaisons

Victoria Corderi Correspondent • Profile

AKRON, OHIO - By all appearances, Cythnia George had a picture perfect life...and as a contestant in the Mrs. Ohio contest seven years ago, she was ready for her closeup.

Cindy seemed to have it all. The wife of a well-known, wealthy Akron restaurateur, and lived in a sprawling mansion on 18 acres, raising seven loving children.

George daughter: My mom’s just such a loving person.  I mean she’s open to anyone.

George daughter: I have never met a more charismatic person than my mom

She was proud of her life, and of her husband, Ed George.

Cyndi George first met her husband in 1978 when she walked into Ed George’s supper club, the Tangier, a hulking block-long Moroccan-themed entertainment spot. He was a serious, self-confessed workaholic—a 40-year-old confirmed bachelor. She was 16 years younger, outgoing, and fun-loving. They had in common a devout Catholicism.

After a five-year courtship, the couple had a fairy tale wedding in 1984. Then, a succession of pregnancies, followed by two adoptions. Over the years, the George family—and the family business—prospered.

Phil Trexler, reporter, Akron Beacon Journal: Everyone knows the George family and Tangier restaurant.

Phil Trexler is a veteran reporter who works for the Akron Beacon Journal

Trexler: The Georges are part of the old tradition of Akron—wealth and prominence.

Cindy George had come a long way from her humble beginnings as a factory worker’s daughter.

She was beaming on stage with a fourth place finish. But little did people know, that behind the swimsuits and smiles, a lurid scandal was unfolding. Before long, it would tarnish the patina of perfection Cynthia George liked to show the world. Infidelity... Jealousy... Murder.... More the stuff of soap operas than beauty pageants. And it all began to unfold a year after that contest with an execution in broad daylight that stunned the police and the public alike. It was a murder that seemed to have nothing to do with Cindy George.

911: What is your emergency?

Caller: I need immediate help. We have gunshot wound at BJ’s Wholesale club.

On Father’s Day weekend in 2001, a man drove his motorcycle into this gas station. He calmly stepped off, pulled out a gun, blew a hole into a customer’s head and sped away.

Caller: He’s bleeding profusely.

911: Is he conscious?

Caller: Barely.

The violence stunned many in Akron. This rust belt city was once the home to the rich tire barons Goodyear and Firestone. Trexler says Akron is now a simpler place and such a big city shooting seemed out of place.

Trexler: It was—almost right out of "The Godfather," the way this killing went down.

Corderi: It looked like a contract killing.

Lt. Whiddon: Yes.  It was definitely unusual. And, that’s something we don’t get too often around here.

Akron homicide detectives Dave Whiddon and Vince Felber did not have a lot to go on. Other than this grainy security camera video, a bullet fragment and eyewitness descriptions of the getaway bike.

Det. Felber: Lime green and black, ninja-style motorcycle. Some call it a crotch rocket, some call it a ninja-style motorcycle.

People at the scene said the killer wore a dark helmet that didn’t reveal any features, and was brutally efficient.

Det. Felber: The clerk that worked at the gas station—she was outside her booth.

Corderi: So the whole crime took, what?  Two minutes?

Det. Felber: Not even.  Thirty seconds.

Thirty seconds that would stretch out into years of titillating headlines, the unveiling of sordid family secrets.

Trexler: It had all the elements of a Hollywood novel.  It had beauty.  It had wealth.  It had adultery. You had five soap opera storylines all colliding at one time.

The victim? 44-year-old Jeff Zack.  Detectives wanted to find out who he was and why someone would want to kill him in such a cold-blooded way.

They learned that Zack left behind a wife and a son, and that he had struggled all of his life to find success. In his 20’s he tried to become a pilot in the Israeli military. Then went on to work as a stockbroker and headhunter, before giving the scrap metal business a try. At the time of his death he owned and serviced vending machines around Ohio.

His mother, Elayne Zack, said her son’s life had been difficult from the start.

Elayne Zack: He was severely rejected by his own father, his biological father. He had been very close to him. Then, when I divorced him he kind of rejected him.  It was weird. 

And that, she says affected him his entire life—in business and in relationships.

Zack: He couldn’t take rejection.  He couldn’t take it. 

Detectives also learned that Zack had a volatile temper and a police record that included domestic violence and harassment charges and involvement in a prostitution ring.

Det. Felber: Jeff Zack had a very colorful life.  He was hot tempered, stubborn.  He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, and we knew he had, more than likely, made some enemies.

Lt. Whiddon: We talked to several people that had confrontations with him. He wasn’t type of the—a person that would back down.

Reporter Trexler covered the case from the start.

Trexler: When we first—when we first looked at Jeff Zack, we understood him to be  a typical suburban father.  But as we started to tear away at who Jeff Zack really was, we found a—a complicated man.  We found a dark side to him that created a mountain of possible motives for his killing.

Police found that three days before Jeff Zack was killed, someone left a bizarre and threatening message on his answering machine.

Answering Machine Message: “All right buddy, you’ve got one more out. So you need to start answering your cell phone, okay?”

What did that strange message mean? Had a business deal gone bad? Did Jeff Zack’s temper get him into a dispute that turned deadly? As detectives investigated, they learned something else that surprised them. The struggling businessman had wealthy, successful friends...well-known to many In Akron—Ed and Cindy George.  They’d met a decade earlier at the George’s supper club.

So police went the George’s home the day after the murder to speak with Cindy...a meeting that didn’t go as planned

Det. Felber: The detectives described her as being heavily medicated. She did know Jeff Zack and that they were friends.  After that she just said,  “Well I think my husband needs to be here and I don’t want to talk anymore.”

After that, the George’s hired lawyers and clammed up, and the detectives say the George’s friends and family also refused to cooperate.

Lt. Whiddon:  We kept getting the same answer.  Ed George told me not to talk to you.

Corderi: So, the fact that they were closing ranks, did that make you suspicious?

Det. Felber: Of course.  In my experience, somebody that doesn’t want to talk to the police is almost always guilty.

Corderi: Or has something to hide.

Det. Felber: Right, right.

Was that the case? Or was the George family — prominent people held in high regard in the community — just trying keep the family name from being associated with such an unseemly crime?

Police continued investigating all leads and learned more unflattering details about Jeff Zack. His widow told investigators he’d been openly unfaithful to her and recently ended a long-term affair with a married woman.

Corderi: So his wife not only knew about the affair, but knew about when the affair went sour?

Lt. Whiddon: Yes.

Det. Felber: He had broken up with someone he loved for a long time and he was distraught over it.

The affair quickly became the focus of the investigation.

Det. Felber:  Two married people having an affair, cheating on both their spouses.  That’s a motive for many homicides. 

It would take more than a year of detective work to get close to the truth and it was a complicated path full of surprises.

Detectives were able to rule out Zack’s widow as a suspect. And so they focused on Zack’s former lover — someone with a lot of secrets.

Lt. Whiddon:  I don’t think anybody realized that she had another life.

They’d soon discover, she was a dangerously desperate housewife.

Det. Felber: There was no one big piece of information.  There was no witness. There was no gun.

Detectives Vince Felber and Dave Whiddon faced many obstacles as they tried to find out who shot Jeff Zack execution style at a busy Ohio gas station in June 2001.

Det. Felber: We had to get little bits and pieces here and there from any sources we could and just put ‘em all together. 

Some of those bits of information were titillating, especially when detectives learned the name of that married woman Zack had been romancing—Cindy George...the stylish stay-at-home mother of seven young children, the affluent wife of one of Akron’s biggest restaurateurs.

Elayne Zack, Jeff Zack's mother: She was a beauty queen. She lived in this mansion.  All of this attracted Jeffrey.

Zack’s mother, Elayne, said the affair was an open secret.

Zack: She was very attractive.  And Jeffrey was a typical egocentric male that probably enjoyed having this beautiful blonde.

Now detectives understood why Cindy George and her husband Ed didn’t want to talk them. Remember, the Zack and George families became friends in 1992, but at some point, the relationship between Cindy and Jeff evolved into a 10-year affair. When Cindy broke it off, Zack’s mother says, she also broke her son’s heart.

Zack: He wasn’t his usual self.  So, I knew that there was probably some trouble.

About a month later, Zack was dead. Detectives wondered, could the affair or the breakup somehow have led to the murder? With Zack’s widow already ruled out as a suspect, who else would be so angry? Who else might have a motive?

As detectives probed more deeply, they learned that before the killing, Ed George had complained to police that Zack was calling his house constantly and harassing his wife.

Det. Felber: So that kind of lead us to believe that Ed was not happy with Jeff Zack, and the fact that Jeff Zack was dead.  There might be a connection.

Zack:  I suspected Ed George.

Corderi: Why did you suspect Ed George?

Zeck: Because I knew that Jeffrey was having an affair, and  just assumed that Ed George finally had it.

But Ed George had an ironclad alibi — he and Cindy and the kids were at a family wedding the day of the shooting, seen her in this picture. Still, the murder looked like a contract hit. Detectives say they could not ignore the possibility that Ed George had hired someone to kill his wife’s lover.

Det.:  Mr. George was such a rich, powerful man—who possibly could have had—connections which could have done a hit. 

Getting answers was difficult. Ed George was not talking to the cops, and detectives say he had convinced most of his friends and relatives not to cooperate... everyone listened, except for this woman.

Marianne Brewer, Georges' nanny:  I didn’t want to talk, but I felt it was my duty at that time to talk.

And she had plenty to say.  Marianne Brewer had seen a lot in her 13 years as a nanny for the Georges'. She told detectives that Ed George was a good and devoted father, but Cindy? Well, that was a different story.

Brewer: She was always—“Look at me.  Look how great I look.  What—Look at all these children I had.” It was always a big show.

She says behind the facade of the perfect mother and dutiful wife was a manipulative, adulterous woman who spent much of her time either out of the house or talking on the phone incessantly. She says Cindy even carried on with Jeff Zack in her own home.

Brewer: I saw ‘em kissing And sometimes in the evenings he would come over there.  And they’d disappear someplace.

But over time, the former nanny says Zack became jealous and abusive. After a heated phone call approximately one year before the murder, Marianne Brewer says Cindy was shaken up and terrified.

Brewer: I said, “Why do you put up with this?  Why do you talk to him?” “Why do you let him come around here,” She says, “You don’t understand.  He threatened to take my baby away from me and go to Israel.”

What did that mean, "take her baby to Israel"?  Detectives believed the answer might be a motive for murder.

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