Odd Pieces Added to Puzzle of Murder of Rabbi’s Wife

CHERRY HILL, N.J. —  On Tuesday, the rabbi hired a hit man. Or did he?

When the wife of a prominent rabbi was found bludgeoned to death on her living room floor, residents of this affluent suburb were stunned by the accompanying news: Her husband, a popular and charismatic figure in the community, a man who had helped build its largest reform synagogue, was a key suspect in the brutal 1994 killing.

Rabbi Fred J. Neulander, investigators said, had been involved in several extramarital affairs, the most recent with a Philadelphia talk show host, and she had pressured him to end his 29-year marriage. The rabbi, fearing a loss in stature if he went through a messy divorce, allegedly hired someone to get rid of his wife, Carol Neulander, a bakery shop owner and mother of their three children.

But where was the evidence? Who were the hit men? And how did they carry out the crime? As Neulander loudly proclaimed his innocence, Cherry Hill police were stumped for six years. Some locals couldn’t help but see parallels to “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” the Woody Allen film in which a Jewish doctor has his mistress murdered to cover up an affair--and gets away with the crime. Although Neulander was indicted for murder last year, investigators still had only a circumstantial case.

Now, amid dramatic revelations this week, the sordid Jersey saga is once again back in the news, and this time it seems more like a bumbling take on “The Sopranos”: Two men, roommates at a halfway house for recovering alcoholics, confessed to murdering Carol Neulander, 52, at the direction of her husband. Their disclosures, prompted in part by a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who has covered the story for six years, have thrown the Neulander case--and Cherry Hill--into a new uproar.

The rabbi’s trial, which had been scheduled to begin in June, has been delayed, probably until next year. While prosecutors initially said that they would not seek the death penalty for the 58-year-old Neulander, who is free on $400,000 bail, they may now decide to refile the case as a capital crime.

“These new disclosures changed things because we never had the smoking gun, the identity of the killer before,” said Rabbi Gary Mazo, who worked as an assistant to Neulander at Congregation M’kor Shalom, the synagogue that Neulander and his wife founded in 1973. Mazo took over the traumatized congregation of more than 1,000 people when his boss resigned in 1995, following disclosures about his sexual affairs with two female congregants.

“I can’t tell you how this has filled people with anger, rage and disillusionment,” added Mazo, who has since moved to a Cape Cod, Mass., congregation and says the rabbi deserves his day in court. “It’s a classic Greek tragedy. This man [Neulander] had everything in life, yet now there is complete devastation--for him, his family and the whole community.”

A handsome man with silver hair and blue eyes, Neulander spent years enriching the spiritual life of this community of 77,000 people four miles from Philadelphia, and alongside him was a wife whom many people adored. But what has riveted the town is the unfolding revelations of his apparent double life.

The story, rich in peculiar characters, has more twists than a challah bread. Leonard Jenoff, 54, the alleged lead hit man and a licensed private investigator, told authorities he had no idea the woman whom Neulander asked him to kill was the rabbi’s wife. He said his friend only told him she was an “enemy of Israel” and that Jenoff would earn $30,000, plus a job with the Mossad, Israel’s secret service, if he carried out the task.

But Jenoff, who had represented himself for years as an investigator working for Neulander on the murder case, got cold feet, and said he turned the job over to an unemployed companion, Paul M. Daniels, 26. Asked at his arraignment on murder charges last week if he had a job, Daniels quietly answered: “I have a mental illness.”

Then there’s Meyer “Pep” Levin, a convicted arsonist who used to play racquetball with the rabbi. He told police that Neulander had complained about his marriage several weeks before the Nov. 1, 1994, murder and wished aloud that he could come home and find his wife dead on the floor. Levin--who is believed to have connections with the criminal underworld, according to court documents--has his own beef with Neulander: He said he gave the rabbi $16,000 to buy a Torah so Levin could donate it to the synagogue in memory of his late wife; he later learned from investigators that the Torah in question was only worth $3,000. Neulander has flatly denied any illegal behavior.

Finally, there’s the other woman, WPEN radio host Elaine Soncini. Neulander officiated at her husband’s funeral in 1992, and the grieving widow told prosecutors the rabbi offered her extraordinary counseling. They soon began a 20-month affair, which included steamy sex in Neulander’s rabbinical study. Soncini, who converted to Judaism during the affair, has since publicly apologized for her indiscretions.

“I was as shocked as anyone else,” she told a local TV station, as news spread of Jenoff’s and Daniels’ confessions. “Maybe finally now this whole very tragic situation will have a quicker solution.. . . There’s been so much pain.”

Neulander and his lawyers have ridiculed Jenoff’s story, dismissing him as a mentally unstable person seeking publicity. Jeffrey C. Zucker, one of the rabbi’s lawyers, said the allegations will unravel when he proves that Jenoff did know Carol Neulander and, thus, is lying.

Defense attorneys have subpoenaed all the notes taken by Inquirer reporter Nancy Phillips, saying she “crossed the line” from being a reporter to a participant when, at Jenoff’s request, she helped him arrange an April 28 meeting with Camden County prosecutors.

The alleged hit man confessed during that meeting; Daniels was arrested soon after and also confessed, prosecutors say.

Both Jenoff, who failed to post $200,000 bail, and Daniels, who could not post $400,000 bail, were ordered held in custody. The two suspects, pending negotiations with the Camden County prosecutor’s office, entered pleas of not guilty to charges of murder and conspiracy.

Neulander insists he is absolutely innocent of his wife’s murder and denies any improprieties beyond his sexual affairs. During recent years, the rabbi said he has written a book about his experiences and continues to counsel people in the community.

On a sunny afternoon last week, he stood in the doorway of his two-story Colonial home, a few feet from where his wife was slain, and politely declined to comment on the case. He simultaneously spoke on a cell phone with a student whom he said he is counseling and said sarcastically to her: “It’s me. The man you love to hate.”

Minutes later, two women power-walking past the rabbi’s house on a leafy, winding street voiced the neighborhood’s deep ambivalence. “I know people who didn’t want to believe that he could have done such a thing,” said Janet Siebold. “But now, with all this latest news, I hear a lot of people saying that this is it, they know he’s guilty. Boom. It’s over.”

At Cohen’s Springdale Deli, manager John Kugler described the rabbi as a kind and popular figure. Many people were distressed at the idea that such a man could engage in hanky-panky, he said, “but love and money can get you to do terrible things. Nothing surprises me anymore.”

According to Jenoff, Neulander approached him in the spring of 1994, saying he had a special assignment for him to carry out. The private investigator, who said he had sought out the rabbi for counseling after his marriage fell apart, described himself to the Inquirer as a “poor Jew” who admired Neulander and would have done anything he asked.

Investigators believe Jenoff and Michaels approached Carol Neulander as she pulled up in her driveway on a Tuesday night in November. One of the men had already approached her a week or so earlier, according to conversations recollected by her daughter, Rebecca. Mrs. Neulander, a trusting sort, let the two men in when they visited her a second time, a fact recollected by Rebecca, who again happened to be on the phone with her mother during the second, fatal encounter.

About 40 minutes later, Neulander came home from a night of tutoring students and found his wife dead on the living room floor, lying face down in a pool of blood. She had been struck seven times in the head with a blunt object. Jenoff said he vomited when he learned on the radio the next morning that the woman whose death he arranged was Mrs. Neulander.

The visibly shaken man, who appeared in court wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, told authorities he finally came forward because he felt that Neulander might be acquitted at his trial. Jenoff said he could no longer live with his guilt and confessed that he had wished for death--anything to help him end his deadly charade.

“I never would have done it if I had known it was his [the rabbi’s] wife,” he told prosecutors. “I’m not a bad person. I just did a bad thing.”

Many in Cherry Hill still mourn Mrs. Neulander, recalling an upbeat, caring woman, and her quiet grave site has attracted a stream of visitors through the years, according to workers at the Crescent Park Cemetery in Pennsauken. Her simple, flat tombstone, shaded by a canopy of trees, describes her as a beloved wife, mother and sister. According to tradition, it reserves space alongside for Mr. Neulander.