Rabbi’s Trial in ’94 Slaying of Wife Opens

The murder trial of a charismatic New Jersey rabbi opened Monday with the prosecution arguing that Fred J. Neulander hired a hit man to brutally beat his wife to death.

“This was a man, ladies and gentlemen, who had it all,” Camden County, N.J., prosecutor James Lynch told jurors in his opening statement. “He is a man who had the respect and admiration of his congregation. He had the love and support of his family. But it just wasn’t enough for this man.”

Neulander, who has insisted he is innocent, could face the death penalty if convicted. The first U.S. rabbi to face capital murder charges, Neulander has said he will testify in his own defense.

The case is being watched by many legal experts as a bellwether of how willing juries may be to impose the death penalty on members of the clergy.

The slaying caused a sensation in suburban Cherry Hill, N.J., when Carol Neulander’s bloodstained body was found in her living room the night of Nov. 1, 1994.

During their investigation, police learned that the rabbi had a series of extramarital affairs in the years leading up to his wife’s death; those revelations forced him to resign in disgrace from the Reform congregation he had founded with her in 1973.

Prosecutors have argued that the 59-year-old Neulander wanted to have his wife killed because one of the women he was seeing--Philadelphia talk radio host Elaine Soncini--had threatened to leave him if he did not end the marriage. They suggested that the rabbi engaged in “phony play-acting” when he came home nearly seven years ago, found his wife dead on the floor and made a tearful 911 call.

“He knew [the slaying] was going to happen,” Lynch said Monday, mocking Neulander’s gasps and sobs on a recording of the call that was played for the jury. “He planned it. He conspired to bring it about.”

But Neulander’s attorney, Jeffrey Zucker, said the rabbi’s moral failings did not prove he ordered his wife’s slaying.

“There is no question that Mr. Fred Neulander betrayed his family, his wife and his three children,” Zucker said. “He betrayed his synagogue and his religion. But it’s a giant step from adultery to the crime of murder.”

Just how the slaying was carried out--and who did it--baffled police for several years; there was no murder weapon and no forensic evidence linking Neulander to the crime. Police arrested him and charged him with murder in 1998, but the case broke wide open last year when the alleged hit man came forward to confess.

Len Jenoff, a recovering alcoholic who said he “loved” the rabbi, told Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Nancy Phillips that Neulander had offered him $30,000 and a job with the Israeli secret service in exchange for killing his wife. Jenoff had worked on the case as a private investigator for Neulander. He said he felt compelled to confess because, as the rabbi’s trial approached last year, he feared Neulander would not be convicted.

In a confession at a New Jersey roadside diner, Jenoff told police he and an accomplice, Paul Daniels, had gone to the rabbi’s home when his wife was alone and had brutally beaten her to death. Jenoff said he stole Carol Neulander’s purse to make it appear as though she was killed during a robbery. Both men have pleaded guilty and will be sentenced after their testimony is finished.

Neulander’s lawyers served notice Monday that they will make Jenoff’s lack of credibility the centerpiece of their strategy. The hit man, they said, has admitted living a fantasy life in which he claimed to be a member of the CIA. Jenoff is a “proven liar,” defense attorney Dennis Wixted said, and “no jury could possibly believe him.”