Fred Neulander was the founding rabbi of Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, who in 2002 was convicted of hiring two men to bludgeon his wife, Carol, to death in 1994 so he could continue an affair with a Philadelphia radio personality. He was sentenced to life in prison with a thirty-year parole disqualifier and died behind bars on April 17, 2024, at age 82.1NBC Philadelphia. Fred Neulander, NJ Rabbi Who Hired 2 Men to Kill His Wife, Dies in Prison The case took nearly a decade to resolve, produced two trials, and devastated a Reform Jewish congregation that had grown to more than a thousand families under his leadership.
The Murder of Carol Neulander
On the evening of November 1, 1994, Carol Neulander, 52, was attacked inside the family’s home in the Wexford Leas neighborhood of Cherry Hill. She was struck at least twelve times with a metal pipe. The two assailants, Leonard Jenoff and Paul Michael Daniels, staged the scene to look like a robbery gone wrong. Jenoff gained entry by telling Carol he had a delivery for the rabbi. Once inside, he struck her with the pipe, and Daniels continued the beating until she was dead.
Carol’s daughter, Rebecca, was on the phone with her mother when the attackers entered the home. Her son Matthew, an emergency medical technician, responded to the scene but was prevented from going inside. Carol had co-founded Classic Cake, a bakery she and partner Judy Stern had started in 1982 in Audubon, New Jersey. She left three children: Rebecca, Matthew, and Benjamin.
The Affair That Drove the Plot
Fred Neulander began a sexual relationship with Elaine Soncini, a Philadelphia-area radio broadcaster, in December 1992, the same day her husband died. Within two weeks they were sexually involved. By the end of 1993 they were seeing each other daily, speaking by phone five to ten times a day, exchanging expensive gifts, and Neulander was routinely hiding his car in Soncini’s garage during visits.
Prosecutors established that the affair was the driving force behind the murder plot. Neulander told Soncini he feared being fired from the synagogue if his adultery were discovered and believed divorce would be too difficult for his children and the congregation. He was also aware that Soncini had inherited more than a million dollars from her late husband. In the summer of 1994, Soncini told Neulander she intended to end the relationship, saying she planned to “move on to a new life” by January 1, 1995. Neulander reportedly “cried and begged her to stay,” telling her to “just hang in there, trust me” and promising they would be together by her birthday on December 17, 1994.
Before the murder, Neulander made a series of chilling remarks to Soncini. He told her he wished Carol’s car would go into the river so she would be “gone, poof.” He said he “dreamed that violence was coming to Carol” and that it would be a “tumultuous fall.” The morning after Carol was killed, Neulander called Soncini to say he did not want to lose her. Nine days later, he asked her to marry him “as soon as appropriately possible.” He also instructed Soncini to lie to police and claim he was merely her rabbi who had helped with her conversion to Judaism after her husband’s death.
Soncini eventually contacted a lawyer and admitted the affair to police on December 6, 1994. When Neulander learned she had spoken to authorities, he went silent, and Soncini ended the relationship.
How Neulander Recruited the Killers
Leonard Jenoff was a self-styled private investigator whom the appellate court later described as having “low self-esteem.” He met Neulander in June 1993. Over the following year, the rabbi manipulated Jenoff by offering him $30,000 and a fabricated job with the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service. Neulander provided Jenoff with a hand-drawn map of the family home and told him to make the killing look like a botched robbery.
Jenoff recruited his roommate, Paul Michael Daniels, whom he had met in an alcoholism recovery program. Daniels later said he took part in the murder to get money for drugs. Jenoff paid Daniels $7,500 out of the funds Neulander provided.
Investigation, Arrest, and Two Trials
The investigation moved slowly. Neulander was a person of interest from the start, but for years prosecutors lacked a cooperating witness to tie him directly to the killing. The first significant break came in December 1994, when Soncini revealed the affair. In September and October 1997, it became public that Neulander was the target of a Camden County grand jury investigation. Testimony by a man named Myron “Peppy” Levin indicated that the rabbi had asked him to help arrange Carol’s murder a few weeks before the killing.
Neulander was arrested in September 1998 and arraigned on charges of accomplice murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He pleaded not guilty and was released on $400,000 bail. A second grand jury indicted him on the same charges in January 1999.
The case against the rabbi hardened in 2000. On April 28 of that year, Jenoff confessed to a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter and then gave police a detailed recorded statement on May 5 explicitly implicating the rabbi. Three days earlier, on May 1, Jenoff had worn a wire and helped police obtain a confession from Daniels. Jenoff pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated manslaughter on June 1, 2000; Daniels pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated manslaughter and robbery on June 8, 2000. Both were sentenced to 23-year prison terms in January 2003. A grand jury upgraded Neulander’s charges to capital murder in June 2000, and he was ordered held without bail.
His first trial took place in the fall of 2001 in Camden County Superior Court before Judge Linda G. Baxter. Jenoff testified that Neulander had promised him $30,000 and directed the murder. Soncini recounted the affair and Neulander’s pre-murder remarks about violence coming to Carol. Assistant Prosecuting Attorney James Lynch called Neulander “a man who had it all … but it wasn’t enough for him.” Defense attorney Jeffrey Zucker conceded that Neulander’s affairs were “morally reprehensible” but argued there was “a long way from adultery to murder,” attacking Jenoff as a “habitual liar.” After seven days of deliberations, the jury deadlocked on all three counts, and Judge Baxter declared a mistrial on November 13, 2001.
The second trial, again before Judge Baxter, ended on November 20, 2002, with the jury convicting Neulander of capital murder, felony murder, and second-degree conspiracy to commit murder. The defense had tried to introduce evidence tying Jenoff to the unsolved 1995 stabbing death of Janice Bell in Voorhees, New Jersey, through a jailhouse witness named David Beardsley. Judge Baxter ruled the evidence inadmissible, finding it would create a “murder trial within a murder trial.”
The prosecution sought the death penalty. Two days after the conviction, the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on the sentence. On January 17, 2003, Judge Baxter sentenced Neulander to life in prison with a thirty-year parole disqualifier, calling it the “only legal option available.”2The New York Times. Convicted of Arranging His Wife’s Murder, Rabbi Gets a Life Sentence Neulander spoke to the court for twenty minutes, maintaining his innocence. The judge responded: “You had a fair trial.” His son Benjamin, then 26, had asked the jury to spare his father’s life.3The New York Times. Younger Son Asks Jury to Spare Rabbi’s Life
Appeals and Jenoff’s Recantation
Neulander’s conviction was affirmed on direct appeal, and the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to hear his case in 2007.4CBS News. Confessed Hit Man Recants Claims Against Rabbi in Notorious Slaying In January 2009, Jenoff signed a two-page affidavit recanting his trial testimony. “Fred Neulander never asked me to kill his wife, and to the best of my knowledge he’s never had any idea of any attempt on his wife’s life,” Jenoff wrote.5Jewish Standard. Key Witness Recants in Rabbi’s Murder Case He claimed police had pressured him and that Carol’s death had been a “robbery gone bad.”
Neulander’s court-appointed attorney filed the affidavit in June 2009 as part of a petition for post-conviction relief, arguing ineffective assistance of counsel and that prosecutors had withheld information about a lenient plea deal promised to Jenoff. Defense attorney Michael Riley pointed out that Jenoff had appeared “totally stunned” when he received a 23-year sentence, suggesting the deal had been different from what he expected.
Jenoff later reversed himself again, saying he had been truthful at trial and had lied in the 2009 affidavit only because of depression over his incarceration.6San Diego Union-Tribune. Confessed Hit Man Hired by Rabbi Set for Release On July 28, 2016, a two-judge panel of the New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division denied Neulander’s petition in a 28-page decision, finding Jenoff’s testimony had not been proven false or perjured and describing Neulander’s arguments as “without sufficient merit to warrant discussion.”7Courier-Post. Neulander Loses Latest Appeal in Murder Case Jenoff was released from prison in January 2014; Daniels followed in October of the same year.
Death in Prison
Neulander spent more than two decades at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. On April 17, 2024, correctional officers found him unresponsive in the prison’s infirmary unit. Staff administered CPR and used an automated external defibrillator, then transported him to a Trenton hospital, where he was pronounced dead at approximately 6:15 p.m.1NBC Philadelphia. Fred Neulander, NJ Rabbi Who Hired 2 Men to Kill His Wife, Dies in Prison He was 82. Officials did not release a cause of death. He is listed as “deceased” in the New Jersey corrections inmate locator.8Newsday. Rabbi Neulander Dies; Wife Slain
What Happened to the Congregation He Founded
Neulander founded Congregation M’kor Shalom in 1974 and built it into a major Reform Jewish congregation with more than 1,000 member households at its peak.9Jewish Exponent. Rabbi Fred Neulander, Convicted in Plot to Kill His Wife, Dies in Prison The murder and the years of investigation plunged the synagogue into what members described as a “terrible crisis.” Rabbi Gary Mazo, 30 and four years out of seminary, was the assistant rabbi at the time of Carol’s death and was thrust into leading roughly 950 families through shock, anger, and shame.10The New York Times. The Shame, and the Pride, in Cherry Hill Mazo left M’kor Shalom in July 1999, citing the toll on his family, and became rabbi of the Cape Cod Synagogue in Massachusetts.
Membership at M’kor Shalom declined to fewer than 350 households by the time the congregation merged with Temple Emanuel in 2022 to form Congregation Kol Ami, which now serves approximately 700 households. Kol Ami’s leadership said Neulander’s tenure “ended many years ago under well-publicized circumstances that ran counter to the values our congregation holds dear.”