Tragic end to a tragic story

Sunday’s shoot-out at Rimonim Prison spelled a violent end for 34-year-old Samuel Sheinbein, who first achieved fame two decades earlier when he and a friend bludgeoned and stabbed 19-year-old Alfredo Enrique Tello Jr. to death. Tello’s body was so badly beaten, dismembered, and burned that the real estate agent who found it in a vacant house thought it was a deer carcass, according to a report in The Washington Post at the time. Days after the body was found, Sheinbein fled to Israel to avoid being tried for murder in Maryland, claiming Israeli citizenship through his father. He was driven to JFK Airport by his father, Sol Sheinbein, who bought him a ticket and provided him with a passport. Sheinbein was disbarred in 2002 as a Maryland patent

lawyer and faces an American arrest warrant for helping his son flee the US. He lives in Israel, where he reportedly works as a consultant for a patent law firm. Sheinbein’s accomplice in the murder, Aaron Benjamin Needle, fled by train to the Washington, DC area, where he was apprehended. He hanged himself in his jail cell seven months later. Sheinbein was apprehended not long after arriving in Israel. According to media reports at the time, he had a drug overdose while partying in a hotel room with his brother and a prostitute. After being treated at a hospital, the Israel Police discovered he was in the country. According to the law in Israel at the time, Sheinbein could not be extradited despite the fierce protests from authorities in the US. After a highly publicized court battle, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected the US extradition request, spurring the Knesset to enact a law in April 1999 to make it easier to extradite Israelis charged with crimes abroad. Under the law, Israeli citizens who are not residents can face extradition, while residents will be tried in Israel. •