THOU SHALT NOT KILL OR COMMIT ADULTERY – CHEATING N.J. RABBI CHARGED IN WIFE’S SLAY

A BIZARRE and chilling saga of lust and murder, of sex and betrayal, hidden passions and labyrinthine deceit that began on a winter’s evening in 1994 is drawing to a close. That night, a rabbi’s wife, and mother of three, was beaten to death in the immaculate living room of her home on a quiet street in Cherry Hill, N.J.

If prosecutors have their way, the saga will end soon in the conviction and execution of Rabbi Fred J. Neulander, 58, the woman’s philandering husband.

Between now and then, a jury will have the unenviable task of sifting through an avalanche of conflicting information from an urban zoo of unlikely characters and sorting out plot twists that read like one of James Ellroy’s nightmares.

In some legal maneuvering yesterday, Neulander’s lawyers filed a motion in a Camden, N.J., court to move the trial because of extensive publicity. The murder has sent shock waves through the tight-knit, affluent community.

“We just think we can get a fairer trial in a different jurisdiction,” Neulander’s lawyer Jeffrey Zucker said, noting he’d like “to get us out of this general television area.”

Neul♏ander, 58, has long maintained his innocence while he spends his days in the Camden County Jail. No date has been set ♍for his trial.

“The rabbi says he trusts the system. He expects to be acquitted. He deserves to be acquitted,” Zucker has asserted. “We will go to trial.”

NEULANDER, who had been a popular young rabbi at Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue, left New York in 1974 with his wife, Carol, and founded Congregation M’Kor Shalom in pastoral Cherry Hill. It began with only 18 families meeting in a vacant house, and grew over the years to 930 families, supporting a Hebrew school and community center.

M’Kor Shalom means Source of Peace, and the Neulanders’ russet-leaf-strewn world seemed truly that. Carol Neulander became a model rebbetzin, or rabbi’s wife.

Gary Mazo, a friend of the Neulanders, became senior rabbi at M’Kor Shalom and knew both well.

“Carol was like an adoptive parent,” he says. “She took us under her wing. She would have us to her home for holidays.

“When we came to Cherry Hill with one child, she made it clear she was going to be Aunt Carol.”

But the idyll was shattered on a December night when Rabbi Neulander said he came home to find drops of blood in the hallway. In the living room was a scene of unimaginable butchery. Blood had soaked the carpet and splatꩵtered the walls. Carol Neu🔯lander lay on the floor, her skull shattered.

At first, the murder appeared to be a botched robbery, although the only item missing was her purse. Then, in the weeks that followed, Rabbi Neulander’s public image began to unravel.

First, a woman came forward and confessed to being his lover – one of several mistresses he had among the congregation.

Elaine Soncini, an attractive former Philadelphia radio personality, told police that Neulander had counseled her when her husband was dying. Wit🅷hin two days of the funeral, Neulander was putting the moves on her over lunch.

So began a two-year affair conducted on temple property. Soncini told police she converted to Judaism just to be closer to Neulander. She would go to his office at M’Kor Shalom, draw the deadbolt and make passionate love – over the desk, on the floor, on the sofa.

“We were madly in love,” she later told a grand jury.

Soncini began to pester Neulander about their double life. Prosecutors claim he told her: “Trust me. Trust me. Something is going to happen by the end of the year.”

After the murder, Soncini claims Neulander told her, “See, I told you to trust me.”

“There were rumors very early on that the rabbi was involved romantically with other members of the congregation,” Mazo says. “And there were rumors shortly thereafter there was an involvement in terms of the murder.”

MAZO says Neulander had a magnetic personality that drew women li🌸ke moths to a flame.

“There was charisma about him that really inspired people and literally inspired people to follow him and be close to him,” he said.

News of Soncini’s affair with Neulander was enough to force his resignation from the temple he founded, and enough to make him a murder suspect, but not enough to bring his arrest. Slowly, painstakingly, detectives built a circumstantial case.

They gathered enough information for a charge of conspiracy to murder. But as the trial date neared, it seemed Neulander was almost certain to be acquitted. Then came the prosecutors’ big break in the case.

Apparently frustrated that the police investigation had focus�🥂�ed solely on him, Neulander hired a private detective, Leonard Jenoff. Jenoff was a former drunk and self-publicist whom Neulander had counseled for his alcohol problem.

Jenoff, 54, a Collingswood, N.J., resident, spent much of his time laying false trails, leaking 🌄misleading information to the media and muddying whatever waters he could, authorities said.

Along the way,💞 he developed a friendship with Philadelph𓄧ia Inquirer journalist Nancy Phillips.

She started out 🐻as a reporter on the case, but ultimately played a pivotal role in the drama.

Jenoff had a crush on Phillips – one she apparently did little to discourage, according to defense attorneys – and he ultimately confessed to her that he was one of two hit men Neulander hired to kill his wife for $30,000.

Jenoff claims that he, in turn, hired drug addict Paul Michael Daniels, 27, of Pennsauken, N.J., to help him carry out the killing. Hiring Jenoff as a private detective on the case was a way to funnel money to him without arousing the suspicions🦂 of curious detectives, prosecutors say. They say his fees as a private detective were, in fact, his pay as a killer.

Jenoff and Daniels, who both admitted beating Carol to death, cut deals to testify against the rabbi in return for light sentences. How light may not be revealed until after Neulander’s trial.

Suddenly, the prosecution’s case wasn’t so circumstantial anymore.

But it may still be an uphill battle to convince a jury that Jenoff and Daniels did not commit the murder on their own volition. All the major witnesses against Neulander have severe credibility problems that will give defense attorneys Zucker and Dennis Wixted ample ammunition on c🌟ross-examination.

Jenoff, for example,𒉰 claimed several times during the investigation to be a former CIA operative in order to enhance his credibility as a private detective. He has no association with the CIA. He has changed his account of the murder at least once, and told numerous lies to reporters prior to his arrest.

Daniels is a former drug addict and co༒nfessed killer who had no direct contact with Neulander.

Soon after breaking with Neulander, Soncini began an affair with a Cherry Hill police officꦯer assigned to protect her. They have si꧙nce married.

Defense attorneys will try to show that Soncini had access to information from the police i𝔍nvestigation that tainted her own account of the killing.

Neulander, meanwhile, has never wavered from aꦡ statement he made when he firstও emerged as the prime suspect in the case.

“I categorically deny that I murdered my wife or in any way arranged to have her killed,” he said. “I could not live with my conscience if I were responsible in any way for Carol’s death.”

A HEARING is scheduled for Sept. 1 on a request by Neulander attorneys to obtain Phillips’ notes. The newspaper’s lawyers are trying to block that request, officials said.

The newspaper has filed court documents saying any information Phillips gathered is protected by New Jersey’s so-called shield law to prevent news reporters from being forced to testify or hand over their notes.

The newspaper also wants to block Neulander’s lawyers from calling Phillips to appear at the hearing.

Wixted and Zucker assert Phillips “crossed the line from reporter to witness” in her dealings with Jenoff, and became an agent for the Camden County prosecutor’s office.

Neulander’s lawyers said Phillips should be ordered to give the defense any notes of interviews with Jenoff and with law-enforcement officials in the prosecutor’s office and the Cherry Hill Police Department since the killing.

Meanwhile, Superior C🌞ourt Judge Linda G. Rosenzweig will 🌟decide the venue for the trial. She may keep the trial in the county and bring in a jury from another county, one that Zucker said he would want sequestered.

Although the judge would instruct juro💧rs not to read newspapers or watch television reports of the trial, it would be hard to avoid some coverage, Zucker complained.

“Going out to lunch, they’re exposed to the same publicity,” Zucker said.

“I’d much prefer to have the trial moved.”