Rabbi awaits trial for wife’s murder

PHILADELPHIA -- Thursday, June 21 marked one full year since Rabbi Fred J. Neulander's bail was revoked and he started measuring out his days in a jail cell, according to defense counsel Jeffrey Zucker.

"He's hanging in," Zucker said as he waited for a hearing in U.S. District Court in Camden, N.J., to get under way.

The 59-year-old Neulander stands charged with capital murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the Nov. 1, 1994 bludgeoning death of his wife, Carol, in their Cherry Hill, N.J., home.

He is currently being held in the Camden County Correctional Facility in Camden as he awaits his trial, which is now expected to begin sometime in October. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

"It's not pleasant for anybody to be in jail for any amount of time," Zucker observed, "but he's borne up very well.

"He missed his son's graduation from medical school," the attorney added, referring to Matthew Neulander's graduation from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey last month, "and he's going to miss his impending marriage. Those things you can never get back.

"It's tough, but he's doing his best."

Despite the hardships, Neulander was smiling as he entered the federal courtroom. His hands were shackled, and he was wearing an orange prison jumpsuit.

The matter at hand was a hearing on a defense application to see the redacted, or blocked-out, portions of a file the defense has already received from the FBI's Philadelphia office.

The file involves interviews with Len Jenoff, 54, the former private investigator who came forward in May 2000 and confessed that he and an accomplice, Paul Michael Daniels, 26, had beaten Carol Neulander to death at the rabbi's behest.

At the hearing, District Court Judge Joseph Irenas denied the defense application, finding that the redacted portions neither impair the sense of the document nor compromise Neulander's right to a fair trial in any way.

The ruling was not unexpected, Zucker and his co-counsel, Dennis Wixted, said after the hearing. According to Wixted, the unredacted portions of the FBI file show that in August 1994, at the same time Jenoff alleges the rabbi was talking to him about the possibility of murdering Carol Neulander, Jenoff was fabricating scenarios claiming that he was a CIA agent and was being considered for Israel's espionage agency, the Mossad.

"It goes a long way toward impairing his otherwise uncorroborated allegations," Wixted said. "It goes to show this is a fantasy life.'' The next step in the path toward trial will be jury selection, scheduled to begin on Aug. 20. Some 1,200 potential jurors are being called for the process, which is expected to take up to two months.