Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

'Suspect' in Sarah Fox's Murder Says He's Returned to Clear His Name

By  Carla Zanoni and Murray Weiss | June 8, 2012 7:07am 

MANHATTAN — The "prime suspect" in the brutal slaying of jogging coed Sarah Fox insists he did not return to New York City to taunt the NYPD with his "new information" about the killing — but to clear his name and help them find the Juilliard School of Music student’s killer.

Law enforcement sources told DNAinfo.com New York that Dimitry Sheinman, 47, remains the No. 1 suspect in Fox's 2004 murder, and that some of them believe Sheinman's suddem return to New York City this week, first reported by DNAinfo, was a form of taunting investigators.

Sheinman, however, said he has a moral duty to share the information he said he's gathered in the cold case of the 21-year-old Juilliard School of Music student’s murder, and denied his return to the city is to taunt police who have failed to charge him with the crime.

Dimitry Sheinman in Inwood Hill Park around the time of Sarah Fox's murder in 2004..
Dimitry Sheinman in Inwood Hill Park around the time of Sarah Fox's murder in 2004..
View Full Caption
www.thesheinmansource.com

Fox, who moved to Inwood only a month before she disappeared in 2004 and was found after a week of searching, lying naked in Inwood Hill Park in a posed position, tulip petals scattered around her.

“We have an envelope with new information gathered clairvoyantly that we will share only with police,” he said. “It could be detrimental to the case to share it publicly.

“I can’t just sit on this information,” said Sheinman, who has lived in South Africa with his wife, Jane, and two children for the past five years.

“I have no moral choice” but to share it with the NYPD, he said.

Asked why he would put himself again in the crosshairs of a murder probe where he remains the No.1 suspect, Sheinman told DNAInfo.com New York that “it requires courage.”

“I could just stay and be anonymous,” he continued. “But it is ridiculous. I could never have done this thing.”

As for suspicions that he is merely trying to taunt his former hunters and return to the limelight, the Soviet-born painter said, “people can be incompetent or stubborn.

“I am not responsible for how institutions work.”

DNAinfo.com New York broke the news on Wednesday that Sheinman was back in New York, peddling a 250,000 word book on his life and experience with the NYPD called “Is He Friendly?” It's a reference to a question he was always asked while walking his Rhodesian Ridgeback dog, Barundi, in Inwood Hill Park.

In 2004, when Fox disappeared, Sheinman lived one block east of the park. 

Her disappearance sparked one of the city’s largest missing person manhunts, with cops literally locking arms in the park until she was found on a ledge.

When cops questioned Sheinman, he claimed he was psychic and provided police with clues only the killer and cops could know, such as the way Fox’s body was left in a reposed position.

Despite the evidence against him, then Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau declined to charge Sheinman.

He was later charged with punching another dog walker in the park, served a couple of months in Rikers then moved to South Africa. 

Dimitry Sheinman handed out a poster describing his experience as the "No 1 suspect" in the Sarah Fox murder.
Dimitry Sheinman handed out a poster describing his experience as the "No 1 suspect" in the Sarah Fox murder.
View Full Caption
Dimitry Sheinman

“Killers do need to be caught," he said.

"They need to be punished.”

Sheinman said that he has a one-page document for police which is concise and lays out new information he and other mediums he has worked with have discovered through clairvoyance. 

“I am not holding anything against the police department, we need the police to stop crime,” said Sheinman.

At the same time, he criticised the department's work in pursuing him.

“The police try to drown you," he said.

"I had no criminal record. I had no record of violence toward women.”

Sheinman said that he believes many people are inherently clairvoyant, and that the name of a possible killer came to him in white letters, and he discovered that such a person exists by checking Google.

“There is a penalty for being clairvoyant and this is mine,” Sheinman said, adding that his experience with the police left him feeling disenchanted with the city. “I never thought I’d leave New York. I was connected to it.” 

Sheinman said the media colluded with police in 2004 to conduct a “trial by media.”

Sheinman said he has “specific instructions” from the clairvoyant “energy” he feels within to shed light on who the real killer is.

He says he has started a new religion called The Power, which espouses the spiritual evolution of human beings.