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Investigator: Accused rabbi misled them about having a mistress
By John Springer
FREEHOLD, New Jersey (Court TV) -- After finding his wife face down in a pool of her own blood, Rabbi Fred Neulander told police that his marriage was solid and that no one else had come between him and his mate of almost 29 years. That was during the wee hours of November 2, 1994, the morning after Carol Neulander, 52, was beaten to death in her home in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, by two men wielding lead pipes. But in the days and weeks that followed the murder, investigators learned that the rabbi wasn't the faithful husband he held himself out to be. There was another woman. Police also learned, according to testimony Tuesday at Neulander's capital murder retrial, that Carol Neulander asked her husband if he wanted a divorce two days before she was killed. Prosecutors allege that it was friction between the couple and Fred Neulander's desire to remove the marital bond keeping him from his mistress, that led him to pay confessed hit men Len Jenoff and Paul Daniels $30,000 to kill his wife. A month after Carol Neulander was found bludgeoned to death, investigators asked the rabbi outright about the issue of his mistress, then-Philadelphia radio personality Elaine Soncini, Camden County District Attorney's Office Lt. Arthur Folks testified Tuesday. "We asked him if he was having an affair. He answered no," said Folks, taking the stand for a second day. "That was the first time we asked him if he knew a lady by the name of Elaine Soncini." According to Folks, Neulander denied he was having an affair with Soncini but admitted he knew her. He claimed that he was paying the woman, a congregant of M'Kor Shalom Synagogue, to help him break into radio. The business arrangement required that the two meet at her home at least once a week and talk often on the telephone, Neulander told police, according to Folks' testimony. After confronting Fred Neulander about Soncini, police asked him again about his relationship with his wife. Pressed, he told investigators that two days before the murder Carol Neulander complained that the couple was not spending time together and she asked her husband if he wanted to divorce. Neulander told investigators that he assured his wife he did not, Folks testified. Investigators also uncovered other discrepancies between what Neulander told them initially, and then a month later, during a police interview on December 5, 1994. The "bathroom guy" was one. Carol Neulander told her daughter, Rebecca Neulander-Rockoff, that a man who came to be called the "bathroom guy" by family members, visited the Neulander house about a week before the murder and said he was delivering a package for the rabbi. But after using the family's bathroom, he only gave Carol Neulander an empty, white letter-sized enveloped and left. At the crime scene on the night of the murder, Fred Neulander denied knowing anything about the strange visitor, whom prosecutors allege was Jenoff, one of the hit men. On December 5 of that year, however, he told police that his wife discussed the "bathroom guy's" visit but did not seem concerned about it. Neulander denied during that interview that he ever told his wife "not to be surprised" if he received a delivery at the house on the day of the murder, something police were told by Rebecca Neulander-Rockoff. "That was the opposite of what we were told," Folks said, referring to the rabbi's denial. On cross-examination, defense lawyer Michael Riley tried to highlight inadequacies in the police investigation. Among other things, police did not compare a hair found in Carol Neulander's hand to either of the killers. "Well, Mr. Daniels and Mr. Jenoff confessed to the homicide," Folks said in explanation. Jurors sighed audibly several times during the cross-examination of Folks, the prosecution's third witness. Using a type-written "listening aid," jurors were expressionless as they listened to a recording of Fred Neulander's police interview at 3:20 a.m. on November 2, 1994. Neulander said he last spoke with his wife in a telephone call to Classic Cake Co., where she worked, on the previous day. He found her dead about 9:20 p.m. that night. "I called her about 3 o'clock. I said, 'I love you,' " Neulander, speaking a hushed tone, can be heard saying on the tape.
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