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By JIM WALSH
Courier-Post Staff
The murder of Carol Neulander was sudden and savage, a brutal beating by hired killers sent to her Cherry Hill home.
In contrast, the search for justice in the case was a slow, uncertain process - a marathon that lasted more than eight years for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office.
But a milestone will come Thursday. A Superior Court judge is to sentence the victim's husband, Rabbi Fred J. Neulander, to life in prison for ordering his wife's slaying on Nov. 1, 1994.
And Camden County prosecutors who oversaw the case - there were three between the murder and Neulander's conviction this past November - see important lessons in that long pursuit.
Some also see damning mistakes by the rabbi, a one-time community leader exposed as an adulterer, hypocrite and and murderer.
"One message is: There are no closed homicide files in the Camden County Prosecutor's Office," said Vincent Sarubbi, the current prosecutor. "We continue to look at every case. ... Even when evidence leads to difficult areas, we continue to try to forge ahead."
And while the Neulander case was marked by a string of bombshell developments and two tense trials, the government owes its victory largely to the unseen diligence of law enforcement officials, said former prosecutor Lee Solomon.
"There is no substitute for good, hard-nosed police work," he said, citing homicide investigator Martin Devlin of the prosecutor's office and many other detectives.
"And we have to be mindful that every case isn't solved and brought to justice quickly," Solomon said. "It's real life. Real life is more tragic than TV and more work."
Solomon said the rabbi may have miscalculated the determination of authorities to catch Carol Neulander's killers.
"He purportedly referred to Marty (Devlin) with a derogatory term," said Solomon, alluding to statements that the rabbi used an ethnic slur to describe the detective.
"And I've heard secondhand that he was happy when I became prosecutor because I'm Jewish and he thought I would not have the nerve to prosecute him," Solomon said.
"He clearly didn't know me," said Solomon, now a deputy U. S. attorney in Camden. "He also didn't know the office. The investigators in that office are bound to do the right thing."
Shortly after the murder, investigators began building "a very powerful circumstantial case" against the rabbi, said Edward F. Borden Jr., the prosecutor in 1994.
"We just didn't know the actual killer," said Borden, who left office in May 1995 and now is a private attorney in in Westmont. "But my mind-set was that, sooner or later, the case would come together."
Solomon charged the rabbi in September 1998, accusing him of conspiring with then-unknown accomplices to murder Carol Neulander so he could continue an affair.
Solomon noted the case rested in part on an eerie coincidence. The suspected killer, who posed as a deliveryman, visited the Neulander house on two occasions - and each time Carol Neulander was talking on the phone with her daughter, Rebecca.
Carol Neulander told her daughter that the rabbi had said to expect the deliveryman. But just hours after the murder, the rabbi initially insisted he knew nothing about a delivery.
"That was Carol crying out from the grave," Solomon said. " It was as if from the moment it (the murder) occurred, it was bound to unravel."
Just weeks before the rabbi's trial was to begin in June 2000, one of the hit men - described as guilt-ridden by his attorney - surrendered to Solomon at an Audubon diner.
"Len Jenoff was an important piece of evidence. He corroborated things we already knew and we corroborated his statements," said Solomon, who upgraded charges against the rabbi to include capital murder - a potential death-penalty offense - after the confession.
Jenoff and an accomplice, Paul Michael Daniels of Pennsauken, agreed to testify against the rabbi - causing the trial to be delayed for more than a year, until autumn 2001.
Jurors began hearing testimony Oct. 15, but declared themselves hopelessly deadlocked Nov. 13 after 44 hours of deliberation.
A second trial took place this past fall, held in Monmouth County to avoid extensive publicity in South Jersey.
Solomon, a six-year prosecutor who left the post last year before the second trial, said he did not celebrate the rabbi's conviction.
"There's always a sense of relief in every case when the jury reached the same conclusion we did. I wouldn't say it was more than that," he said.
"I was glad justice was served. I was glad for the family and sad for the family."
But Solomon noted he's still frustrated by one aspect of the Neulander case - when people ask why the rabbi did it.
"If we understood the why, then there's probably something wrong with us," he said.
"It's as if by explaining some motivation that we can understand, that will restore our faith in human nature. By definition, people that commit these kinds of acts under these circumstances are not capable of being understood by the rest of us."
Reach Jim Walsh at (856) 486-2646 or jwalsh@courierpostonline.com
