Nancy Sonnenfeld decided last year to take up the piano, and her husband surprised her with a grand piano. "She started out big," Leek said. Both husband and wife were successful in their professions. She was a manager at BSA Advertising, while Sonnenfeld carved out a career as a videographer of disaster sites for FEMA, Argonne National Laboratory and other clients, developing a reputation for working technological miracles with limited resources. Last fall, he was part of a FEMA team that spent three weeks in New York photographing and videotaping Ground Zero, site of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. In December, he and FEMA videographer Jim Chesnutt were featured in TV Technology magazine for their work in New York. But friends said Nancy Sonnenfeld confided that her marriage was in trouble, that her husband had promised to change, but she told them, "Actions speak louder than words." Seewald disputed accounts of Sonnenfeld's drug abuse, saying he understood that Nancy was upset about her husband's drinking and going out with friends without her. But Seewald said he never knew his friend to use illegal drugs except for the Thailand trip. "That was unacceptable to her, and I don't blame her," Seewald said. "It put both of them in danger. She was tired of other things he had done, and this was the last straw of whatever was going on." At last week's preliminary hearing, public defender Carrie Thompson drew a different picture. She said Nancy Sonnenfeld returned to Denver distraught, with her marriage crumbling and her husband still in Asia. She tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pills, Thompson said. But Leek said that was fiction, that a suicide attempt never happened. Still, by Nov. 27, Nancy Sonnenfeld had filed for legal separation. Prosecutor Michelle Amico said the couple's debts mounted without Nancy's knowledge as her husband obtained funds to support his drug habit. But Seewald, who said he has been paying Sonnenfeld's bills since his friend was arrested, disputed that account of the couple's finances. In any event, at some point during the past year, friends said, Sonnenfeld began a drug rehabilitation program and his wife stood by him. "She was completely ready to move on and do whatever she needed to do, but she was still trying to work it out," Leek said. Family and friends are still reeling from the shock of her death. "This is something that I never dreamed would have happened for these two," said Nancy Sonnenfeld's cousin and close friend, Leslie Lindberg. "It's absolutely shattering." At 1:40 a.m. New Year's Day, officers went to the Sonnenfelds' home on a possible suicide call and broke into the house through a window after Sonnenfeld couldn't, or wouldn't, open the door. They found Nancy Sonnenfeld on a chaise lounge in the bedroom with a gunshot wound to her head. "It's hard to believe," said Nancy's Sonnenfeld's father, Bill Campbell. "We don't hate Kurt. He was a wonderful guy and they had a wonderful marriage for 10 years. I know he loved our Nancy. We knew they were beginning to have problems, but we absolutely don't know what happened that night. "My wife and I are Christians and we gave it to the Lord. We feel our daughter is at peace now with God." Contact Sue Lindsay at (303) 892-5181 or lindsays@RockyMountainNews.com.
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