Defense Grills Former Mistress

The former mistress of a rabbi charged with arranging the murder of his wife faced fierce cross-examination Wednesday over her memory of statements she claims he made about wanting his spouse dead.

Former Philadelphia radio personality Elaine Soncini said she didn't mention the comments by Rabbi Fred Neulander for three years, because of the shock she felt after being told about the killing.

"When I found out about Carol Neulander's murder my response was a scream," Soncini said. "That scream stayed with me a long time. I didn't want to remember. I blocked out a lot of stuff. As time went by, things came back to me slowly."

Her testimony came in the third day of Neulander's retrial on the murder charges. A Camden County jury that heard the case last year deadlocked and a mistrial was declared. The retrial was moved to Monmouth County because of the extensive media coverage of the case.

Neulander defense attorney Michael Riley spent Wednesday morning cross-examining Soncini on her Tuesday testimony about the nearly two-year affair she had with the rabbi.

Prosecutors contend that Neulander arranged the murder because upset that Soncini said she was breaking off their affair. The defense claims the two men who have pleaded guilty to the killing lied about being hired by the rabbi to carry it out.

Riley's line of questioning was fairly uneventful until near the end, when he began quizzing Soncini about her recollection that Neulander told her he wished his wife would just disappear and that he had dreams about her car going into the river.

The defense attorney got Soncini to admit that she didn't tell police about those statements initially, despite repeated questioning over several months, and only revealed them when she went before a grand jury investigating the case in 1997.

"Do you have the kind of memory that over time seems to get better?" Riley asked.

Soncini also reiterated that she did not believe she gave Neulander an ultimatum when she told him in the summer of 1994 that the relationship would be over by the end of the year.

She admitted misleading police initially by claiming there was no affair. But she denied that she only told police about it after they informed her the rabbi had affairs with other women.

"My increasing concern was that the man I loved had something to do with the murder of his wife and he was going to do it to me, too," she said.

Riley also asked Soncini about her relationship with Lawrence Leaf. Leaf was a Cherry Hill police officer who was assigned to guard her in December 1994 after she felt she may be in danger from Neulander. Soncini and Leaf began seeing each other socially within several days of meeting and made plans to marry within a month.

Soncini testified that she started seeing Leaf because she thought she had met someone nice. But Riley questioned her choice of romantic interest by saying, "Who also happened to be working for one of the agencies investigating the murder?"

Soncini was also asked about new testimony she gave about Neulander trying to get a job for Len Jenoff with the Israeli consulate. Jenoff is one of men who pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter in Carol Neulander's death.

Soncini said she only remembered the information after reviewing Neulander's testimony from the first trial and told prosecutors about it last Friday.

After Soncini finished her testimony Neulander's daughter, Rebecca Neulander Rockoff, took the stand.

Rockoff told the jury she was on the phone with her mother, just moments before Carol Neulander was killed.

Rockoff said that at that time, eight years ago, she called her mother every day. She said that a week before her mother was killed she was talking to her mother on the phone. Carol Neulander was on her cell phone in the driveway of her home.

"She said, 'There's somebody here. He's here to drop off a letter for daddy and daddy told me to expect it so I shouldn't be surprised.' Then she said, "The only strange thing is he wants to come in and use the bathroom.' She said that he had come in, she had let him use the bathroom and that he had left the envelope. The only strange thing was the envelope was empty," Rockoff testified.

Rockoff went on to say that the day Carol Neulander was murdered they had another phone conversation.

"All of the sudden, almost out of nowhere as a nonsequiter to the conversation, she said, 'Oh, it's the bathroom guy.' I said, 'You mean the same person that was here last week?' And she said, 'Yes.'"

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