Neulander Faces Tough Questioning

CAMDEN MJ: The rabbi, accused of arranging his wife's Murder, said they had agreed they could seek sexual companionship outside their marriage. "It was wrong," Fred J. Neulander said Tuesday, testifying in his own defense in his murder trial. "It is wrong."

But Neulander, 60, denied that he paid a private investigator to kill his wife or even discussed the possibility. In about five hours of questioning, Neulander denied several key points of testimony offered by prosecution witnesses, including his daughter and one of his sons, in the nine previous days of testimony.

Neulander is charged with arranging the Nov. 1, 1994, slaying of his wife Carol, 52, in their Cherry Hill home. Authorities charge that Neulander wanted his wife dead so he could continue an affair with Elaine Soncini, a Philadelphia radio host. Neulander said he had been seeing Soncini, but did not intend to marry her or leave his wife to be with her. "It was just a relationship that was what it was and it wasn't going to go anywhere," he said.

Neulander initially said he did not love Soncini. But as portions of a letter he wrote to her two months after his wife was killed were read, Neulander said he did love Soncini at the time.

Camden County First Assistant Prosecutor James Lynch asked what changed before he wrote the letter to make him feel that way. "I don't know," the rabbi said.

Lynch's voice got louder and sharper: "Carol was dead. That changed, didn't it?"

In her testimony two weeks ago, Soncini said Neulander had given her a pin that belonged to his late mother. Neulander said that was untrue and that he had never seen the item.

Earlier in the trial, Len Jenoff told the jury of seven men and seven women that he and an accomplice were promised $30,000 to kill Mrs. Neulander and that they collected part of that money.

Answering mostly "no" or "never" to a list of questions posed by defense attorney Dennis Wixted, Neulander said he never discussed killing his wife, paying Jenoff to do it or promising Jenoff a job with the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.

"As you sit here today, sir," Wixted asked, "are you guilty or innocent?"

"I'm innocent," said Neulander, who looked at Wixted on most questions, but turned to the jury and used his hands as he explained religious points.

Neulander appeared to be near tears as he described coming home from the synagogue to find his wife dead on the living room floor. Witnesses including his son, Matthew Neulander, associate rabbi Gary Mazo, and Mrs. Neulander's sister, Margaret Miele, had said Neulander did not seem to be grieving in a normal way in the hours after finding his wife's body.

Neulander said that was because he grew up being told to be stoic. "My father taught us you don't bother people with your problems," Neulander said. "Right or wrong, my dad was a man who held it in, who didn't bother other people."

Lynch asked Neulander why he didn't touch, hold or kiss his wife after he found her body and why in his 911 call he didn't demand immediately that an ambulance be sent to the home. "I don't know how anyone would react," Neulander said.

"Sir, we're talking about how you reacted," Lynch responded.

Neulander said he didn't remember details of what happened after he found his wife's body. "It's not a convenient lack of memory," he told Lynch. "I was horrified."

Neulander said that in Judaism it is important not to "overgrieve." He said that was why he opened his home after his wife's death to a naming ceremony, religious dinners and Jenoff's wedding.

Jenoff was married Aug. 10, 1997, on nearly the same spot where Mrs. Neulander's body had been found.

Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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