A man charged with murdering a guest at his hot tub get-together in Delray Beach must remain in jail before trial, a Palm Beach County judge ruled Monday, despite arguments made by his attorney about the strange behavior of the only two witnesses and a lack of motive.
Mark Anderson, 45, was arrested last September in the fatal shooting of Albert Camentz at his Delray Beach timeshare condo amid a night of drug-fueled partying with plans to hang out at the jacuzzi. Those plans never came to fruition.
At a hearing about Anderson’s bond in February, new details of the shooting came to light: An analysis of Anderson’s gun returned his DNA, but excluded that of the other two guests, who are now key witnesses.
The group was doing cocaine, ketamine, smoking pot and inhaling nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, a detective said.
One of the guests partaking in the drugs was Jack Feinberg, the former director of the Broward Addiction Recovery Center, according to Anderson’s attorney, Michael Dutko. The other guest was Feinberg’s wife, Susan Schneider.
The new evidence paints an increasingly bizarre picture of the murder, but has yet to offer an explanation for why the shooting occurred. Besides a religious argument, Feinberg said the mood that night was good-natured.
Dutko had argued at the hearing that Judge Cymonie Rowe should release Anderson on bond due to the lack of motive or credible witnesses. But prosecutors said that the lack of motive suggests that Anderson is capable of committing acts of violence at random, and should therefore remain locked away.
Rowe ultimately sided with the prosecution.
“At the time of the shooting, there was no justifiable provocation to excuse Defendant,” she wrote. “Based on the statements of Mr. Feinberg and Ms. Schneider, taken in the light most favorable to the State, Defendant shot Decedent with a depraved mind and without regard to human life.”
The events of the night
On Sept. 12, 2023, Schneider and Feinberg went to a concert for Crazy Fingers, a local Grateful Dead cover band, at the Funky Biscuit in Boca Raton, according to the probable cause affidavit. The two witnesses had already been using drugs and drinking during the day, the defense motion for bond states.
Feinberg was the director of BARC from 2018 until April 2023, five months before the party, according to his personnel file. He wrote in his March 2023 resignation letter that he was leaving “due to the worsening of my ongoing medical condition.”
Feinberg and Schneider met up with Anderson at some point that September night. Schneider and Feinberg were friends with Camentz through following Crazy Fingers, according to the affidavit, and invited him to join them at Anderson’s condo. He and Anderson didn’t know each other.
There, they continued to drink and do drugs without any issues, Delray Beach Police Detective John Caceres Duque said during cross-examination at the February hearing, though Schneider said she only watched the drug use. Feinberg would later recall to Duque that the only part of the night he remembered that could have seemed contentious was when he and Anderson had a conversation about religious views. Camentz was not a part of the religious conversation.
“That’s the only thing he mentioned that could have been a problem, or kind of not a good time,” Duque said. “But other than that, he’d mentioned that there was nothing contentious.”
Then, suddenly, as the foursome was preparing to head to the hot tub, Anderson emerged from his room, pointed his gun at Camentz, and shot him in the torso, Duque said. Camentz fell to the ground. Feinberg said he did as well, even though he was sitting on the couch.
At first, Camentz did not believe he was shot. He had Schneider and Feinberg take him to their house; once there, he began to feel increasingly unwell. By the time paramedics arrived, it was too late. Camentz later died in the hospital.
Witnesses to be believed?
Much of February’s hearing centered around the believability of the two witnesses, the key issue raised by the defense motion for bond. Without them, the motion argued, the evidence is insufficient to charge Anderson with second-degree murder or keep him in jail.
The defense argued that the witnesses’ testimony was “extremely suspect,” while prosecutors argued that their testimony lines up with the evidence.
When Duque first met Feinberg in the early morning hours of the shooting, he was in the hospital waiting room, having followed the ambulance there. Feinberg refused to talk, saying he had a cognitive impairment that causes memory loss, according to the probable cause affidavit. When Duque went to Schneider’s home, which she shared with Feinberg, he saw Feinberg already there, telling her not to talk.
Schneider originally told a detective that the shooting took place outside, at the hot tub area; later she would say it took place inside Anderson’s apartment.
Feinberg also called Duque later and agreed to share what he knew, saying the couple had “corroborated” their stories, Dutko said, which the detective confirmed on the stand.
The defense attorney painted the picture of a married couple who lied, then “got together on their story.”
“People lie to law enforcement when they’re covering something up that they don’t want to reveal. Did you ever determine what it was he was covering up?” Dutko asked Duque at one point, referring to Feinberg.
Duque said he believed it was the drug use. Asked about Feinberg’s former position as the leader of Broward’s addiction recovery program, the detective replied that Feinberg “did make mention to holding such a position” though he didn’t mention BARC specifically.
Defense attorney Dutko thinks that the witnesses’ lies make their later recollections of events impossible to believe.
“If they lied about that stuff, what else would they lie about?” he told the Sun Sentinel after the hearing in February. “Once somebody starts lying to the cops, it’s kind of hard to draw a line and say, ‘Yeah, that was a lie. But now what I’m telling you is the truth.'”
Assistant State Attorney Jo Wilensky argued that Feinberg’s behavior aligns with that of someone who would not want their drug use exposed, but it doesn’t make him untrustworthy as a witness.
In her own cross-examination, she pointed to specific details recalled by the witnesses that line up with physical evidence. Rowe later cited the consistency of their stories with the facts in her decision not to set bond.
Anderson’s DNA was on his gun, testing showed. The testing excluded the three other guests.
Camentz leaned against the balcony wall after he was shot, Schneider told police. His blood was later found on that balcony.
Feinberg said he did not witness the shooting itself, but recalled the sight of green smoke. Anderson’s gun has an integrated green laser, Duque said.
The paraphernalia found inside matched the events of the night that Schneider had recalled: A straw with powder in it, empty bottles of alcohol, a bowl for weed. Anderson was later taken to the hospital after his arrest, where he told health professionals about the drug use, Duque said, based on medical records he had received.
Rowe ultimately sided with the prosecution, writing that “while Defendant’s arguments against the sufficiency and credibility of the evidence are well taken, the Court finds that, after reviewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, the evidence satisfies the burden of proof.”
A ‘cordial gathering’ turned deadly?
At the February hearing, each side interpreted the lack of known motive for the shooting in opposite ways; its seeming randomness either makes the second-degree murder charge too harsh or suggests Anderson is a danger to society.
Dutko said that the existing evidence against Anderson supports a culpable negligent manslaughter charge, not second-degree murder, which requires evidence of ill will, hatred, spite, or intent.
“This appears to be a shock that came from nowhere,” he said, pointing to the supposedly conflict-free night. He asked for Anderson to be released on $100,000 bond with electronic monitoring.
Prosecutors argued that Anderson’s apparent snap means he should be kept behind bars.
“Someone that can flip on a dime this quickly, this cordial gathering can turn into a person being shot in the chest, that is someone who poses a danger to community,” Wilensky said, adding that family members of Camentz do not want Anderson released.
Anderson’s behavior also does not suggest negligence, Wilensky said, describing the shooting as “a specific and purposeful act.”
Rowe agreed in her ruling, saying “there is unrebutted evidence that the shooting occurred and was unprovoked. Reviewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State there was no evidence presented at the hearing, to support any negligent actions by Defendant.”
Dutko told the Sun Sentinel Wednesday that, though he doesn’t agree with the decision, getting a client released on bond in a second-degree murder case, where the evidence weighs in the state’s favor, presents “a bit of an uphill task.”
“I respectfully disagree with her ruling,” he said, “but I don’t know that there’s a clear error in her reasoning.”
Dutko hopes that the discovery process will present more evidence in his client’s favor. A case management conference is set for May 22.
