Chauffer Backs Up Earlier Testimony

CAMDEN, N.J.: A man who once served as a part-time chauffeur for a friend of Rabbi Fred J. Neulander said his boss suggested he kill Neulander's wife in 1994. In the seventh day of testimony Wednesday in the capital murder trial of the former Cherry Hill rabbi, Anthony Federici said his former boss, Myron "Pep" Levin, mentioned to him three times that the rabbi said he wanted his wife killed.

"He was implying it," Federici said.

Neulander, 60, is accused of arranging the Nov. 1, 1994, killing of his 52-year-old wife Carol. If convicted, Neulander could be sentenced to death.

Federici, 41, now lives in Cape Coral, Fla. But in 1994, he lived in Pennsauken and spent two days a month driving for Levin In earlier testimony, Levin, 76, said Neulander, his racquetball partner at a Cherry Hill health club, told him he wanted to come home to find his wife dead.

Jeffrey Zucker, a lawyer for Neulander, questioned Federici about why he only told investigators about the implied offer from Levin after he had appeared before a grand jury in 1997. Federici said he was afraid of Levin.

"He had a reputation as someone you don't cross," he said of the man who spent more than two years in a federal prison after a racketeering conviction some 20 years ago.

Two other men have said they did kill Mrs. Neulander. Neulander's defense team Wednesday questioned one of those men, Len Jenoff, 56, for the third day. The other man, Paul M. Daniels, 28, was expected to be called to testify Thursday.

The defense lawyers tried to show that Jenoff's story continued to change even after he confessed on April 28, 2000, and agreed to cooperate fully with authorities in the case.

In his initial statements to authorities in April and May 2000, Jenoff said he set up the killing, but did not know the target was Mrs. Neulander and did not strike any of the blows to the head that killed her. But in a three-hour formal statement on May 5, 2000, Jenoff said his earlier claims were not true.

During cross-examination of Jenoff on Wednesday, the jury also heard a tape recording of him trying to convince Daniels, his former roommate to confess.

Both were at the Camden County prosecutor's office on May 1, 2000. Jenoff had already confessed and was wired with a hidden microphone. He was sent to an interview room to talk with Daniels, who sometimes called Jenoff "Uncle Lenny."

During the recording Jenoff was heard saying it was Neulander, then scheduled to go on trial within two months, who had turned them in. "They know because they've already talked to Fred," Jenoff said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he's 30 feet away from here giving us up."

Jenoff did most of the talking on the tape. "He hired me," Jenoff said. "I hired you. We both went in there that night. ... When we left that house, she was dead."

At the beginning of the tape, which lasted about 45 minutes, Jenoff suggested that Daniels was the only one to strike Mrs. Neulander. But later Daniels said, "You hit her one time."

Both men pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and remain in Camden County Jail awaiting sentencing.

Prosecutors say Neulander wanted his wife dead so he could carry on an affair with Elaine Soncini, who was then a Philadelphia radio host. Gary Mazo, who was then the associate rabbi at M'kor Shalom, said the ceremony during which Soncini converted to Judaism was an odd one.

He said Neulander told Mazo, now a rabbi in Cape Cod, Mass., and the few other people who were there to leave because Soncini was nervous. Neulander said he would handle the cleansing ritual himself.

"It was unusual," said Mazo, who wrote a spiritual book based on M'kor Shalom's experience after Mrs. Neulander was killed, "from a proprietary standpoint, the male rabbi alone when the person in the other room is naked."

Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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Author: 6 ABC - Action News