Rabbi Denies Murder Role in Capital Case

For much of his career, New Jersey rabbi Fred J. Neulander has spoken from a pulpit. But on Tuesday he began what may be the most crucial sermon of his life, from the witness stand, denying that he had hired hit men to bludgeon his wife to death.

Neulander rejected prosecution arguments that he had paid $30,000 to have his wife, Carol, murdered in 1994. He denied suggestions that he had her killed to satisfy Elaine Soncini, a Philadelphia radio talk show host who had threatened to break off their secret 18-month affair if he failed to leave his wife.

“No, no, never,” the rabbi said calmly in response to questions from defense attorney Dennis Wixted, denying any role in his wife’s murder.

But Neulander, who could be the first U.S. rabbi to face capital charges, was forced to admit under a tough cross-examination that he had lied repeatedly to cover up a series of sexual liaisons and that in doing so he had misled police who were investigating his wife’s death.

The case, broadcast on Court TV, is being watched as a bellwether of how willing juries may be to impose the death penalty on members of the clergy. It is expected to go to the jury later this week.

“I betrayed Carol, I betrayed my family, I betrayed the community, I betrayed the synagogue,” the 60-year-old rabbi said, describing his simultaneous affairs with Soncini and a second woman, Robin Rapport, while his wife was alive. He choked up when he described the night he found her lifeless body in a pool of blood on the living room floor of their suburban home.

But Camden County prosecutor James Lynch questioned Neulander’s grief, noting that in the weeks after the murder, “you were grieving, heartfelt grief, but you still found time to share sexual moments with Elaine Soncini?” There was a lengthy pause before Neulander answered: “Yes.”

The murder shocked Cherry Hill, a rich suburb, because Neulander and his wife had both founded Congregation M’kor Shalom and were prominent members of the community. Carol Neulander, who also helped run a local bakery, had come home from work on the night of Nov. 1, 1994, when she was beaten to death.

Police suspected the rabbi immediately, especially when they learned that he had lied to them about his extramarital affairs. Those revelations rocked the community, forcing Neulander to resign his pulpit the next year.

Soncini became a key witness against him, saying he had promised her that “the problem” with his wife would disappear by December. Neulander was indicted for murder and conspiracy in 1999, yet the case against him was largely circumstantial. There was no murder weapon, no physical evidence of any kind tying the rabbi to the death of his 52-year-old wife.

All that changed in May 2000.

Len Jenoff, a recovering alcoholic who had worked as a private investigator for the rabbi, confessed to police that Neulander promised him $30,000 to kill his wife. Jenoff told police that he and Paul Michael Daniels, a schizophrenic and recovering drug addict who lived with him in a halfway house, had murdered Carol Neulander with a lead pipe. Both were arrested, charged with murder and are awaiting sentencing.

Jenoff, who said he was overcome with guilt, told prosecutors that he was prompted to come forward by Nancy Phillips, a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who had been covering the sensational murder case from the start. On June 20 last year, a grand jury indicted Neulander on one count of felony murder, leading New Jersey prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

From the start, the trial shaped up as a credibility contest between two dishonest men. Neulander concedes he cheated on his wife but insists he did not kill her. Jenoff admits that he has told numerous lies about his past to impress people, including stories of a fictitious CIA career and bogus military exploits, but said Neulander recruited him in 1994 to kill his wife, calling her “an enemy of Israel” who had to be eliminated.

Other key players seem equally compromised, and the result has been a trial that is equal parts soap opera and whodunit. Soncini testified that she became sexually involved with Neulander two weeks after he officiated at her husband’s funeral. She said they held frequent afternoon trysts in her home and his rabbinical study.

Although her testimony was damning to the rabbi, defense attorneys forced her to concede that she was a woman of “low moral standards” when she began their affair. She admitted being angry with the rabbi when police informed her that he had been seeing another woman at the same time.

“He dreamed that violence was coming to Carol,” Soncini said, discussing Neulander’s alleged desire to get rid of his wife. The rabbi “just wished she were gone” and that “her car would go into the river.”

Another witness, Meyer “Pep” Levin, testified that the rabbi had complained to him about his wife after a racquetball match, saying he wished he could go home and find her dead. Defense lawyers attacked Levin’s credibility as well, noting that he once ran an illegal silver-smelting operation and had been convicted of conspiracy to commit arson, tax evasion and fraud.

They also suggested Levin had a financial disagreement with the rabbi over the cost of a Torah he had purchased in his late wife’s memory; they suggested this resentment had fueled his explosive testimony.

Defense witnesses fared no better. David Beardsley, who is serving time for sexually abusing a retarded child, testified that Jenoff had boasted to him in jail that he murdered Carol Neulander on his own, not at the rabbi’s behest. Lynch ridiculed this jailhouse story, and some jurors seemed taken aback when Beardsley said he has become a “Christian author.”

Defense lawyers had hoped that Phillips, the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who persuaded Jenoff to confess, might further attack Jenoff’s credibility. Indeed, Beardsley said Jenoff had boasted to him that he had been having a lengthy affair with Phillips, and that she had reportedly promised him “a lifetime” of great sex if he confessed to killing Carol Neulander. Phillips angrily denied those stories, but she has said several times that Jenoff’s midnight-hour confession to murder was credible.

The trial has had its poignant and disturbing moments: Carol Neulander’s sister, Margaret Miele, told the jury that the rabbi “was very calm, I saw no signs of grief” when he greeted her in his home days after the murder.

The suspicious Miele said Neulander was “almost cavalier” when he told her that, in his opinion, police would never track down his wife’s killer.

“I was disturbed,” she said. “How could he know?”