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By MICHAEL T. BURKHART
Courier-Post Staff
CAMDEN
It was Rabbi Fred J. Neulander's own remarks upon discovering his murdered wife that never seemed believable to James P. Lynch.
It was the rabbi's refusal to cooperate with investigators nearing the truth that disturbed him.
And it was the rabbi's smug grin after escaping a guilty verdict at his first murder trial that motivated Lynch, his chief accuser, to keep fighting to put the killer behind bars.
Lynch won that fight Nov. 20 when a jury convicted Neulander of hiring two hit men to bludgeon his wife, Carol, to death. The case came to a close Thursday when Neulander was sentenced to life in state prison with no chance of parole for 30 years.
Along the way, Lynch said, he was never frustrated by the slow pace of the eight-year case.
"This was not a witch hunt," Lynch, Camden County's first assistant prosecutor, recently told the Courier-Post in his first in-depth interview since securing the guilty verdict. "This was not a situation where we selected a likely target and pinned our ears back and went after him. This was a very detailed and careful investigation that was determined to follow the path of wherever the facts would lead us."
When Lee A. Solomon heard the tape of the rabbi's 9-1-1 call - made after he found his wife's bloody body on the floor of the Neulanders' Cherry Hill home - he knew something wasn't right.
"Should I touch her?" Neulander asks an emergency dispatcher in the call made Nov. 1, 1994.
Those four words remain lodged in Solomon's mind years after hearing them for the first time in summer 1996.
"In my mind, it was an incredibly damaging piece of evidence," said Solomon, the county's prosecutor at the time. "Those words just hit me like a sledgehammer."
Solomon walked across the hall to the office of his top assistant, Lynch. The rabbi's words were unbelievable, he told Lynch, who was also struck by the call.
They listened to the tape a few more times. They reread the transcript.
But a hasty arrest wasn't made. They needed much more evidence.
"I thought that the 9-1-1 call did not ring true," Lynch said. "The primary thing was that it was some substantial period of time into the call and (Neulander) was talking about his son being a paramedic and talking about the blood and talking about `Shall I touch her? Shall I not touch her?' - which was unusual in and of itself - but he never said `This is the Neulander residence at 204 Highgate, get an ambulance out here.'"
Lynch said it was remarkable that Neulander, a bright and well-educated man, didn't tell the dispatcher his address. Later, under questioning in court, Neulander seemed surprised his address flashed on a screen in the emergency center when he made the call, alerting paramedics to the location of the emergency.
Carol Neulander, 52, who founded a successful bakery, died in a pool of blood on her living room floor. Yet her husband never tried to help, let alone just hold or comfort her, when he came upon the murder scene. His suit and hands remained spotless.
"The one thing that was absolutely obvious was that any loved one, family member, friend, acquaintance - perhaps even a stranger - that came upon a scene like that and tried to render any kind of assistance would have to be bloodied," Lynch said. "If this is your wife in a situation like this, you would have to have blood all over your hands, you'd have to have blood all over your clothing, you' d have to have a volume of blood from being near her and from trying to give comfort and assistance. And we had reports from multiple witnesses that there was not a speck of blood on his person or his clothing."
Lynch, 52, worked for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office from 1982 to early 1994. After that, he worked 2 1/2 years for the Gloucester County prosecutor before returning to Camden County in August 1996.
Soon afterward, Lynch was handed the Neulander file.
But long before that, in the first days after the murder, evidence already pointed to Neulander, the prominent senior rabbi at Cherry Hill's Congregation M'kor Shalom.
The 9-1-1 tape, as well as statements Neulander gave to police the morning after the slaying and a month later, on Dec. 5, were important, Lynch said. After the December interview, the rabbi broke at least one appointment to talk with investigators, and he eventually ended all contact with investigators.
"Obviously, that's not something a jury can consider because every person has an absolute right to not cooperate and not to answer questions if he chooses," Lynch said. " But the notion that he would be less than 100 percent cooperative with people who were doing their utmost to fairly and comprehensively investigate the murder of his wife was certainly disturbing."
Still, Lynch said, he never felt discouraged by the slow pace of the investigation as detectives from Cherry Hill and Camden spent thousands of hours trying to crack the case, one of the most sensational in South Jersey's history.
"I thought there was a lot of information and I thought there were a lot of avenues which could be pursued and which were in fact already being pursued," he said.
And even if Lynch had never come back to Camden, he said, he's confident that the murder would have been prosecuted successfully.
"I don't want the suggestion to be that this case lay dormant in a drawer somewhere and I came on the scene and somehow breathed life into it. Nothing could be further from the truth."
By fall 1998, Solomon felt there was enough evidence to arrest Neulander for conspiracy to commit murder, having pieced together much of the chain of events a result of an investigative grand jury inquiry.
"We didn't think it was going to be an easy path and frankly thought it was a case that could go either way," Lynch said.
Several helpful items came out of the grand jury investigation, Lynch said. One of the biggest was testimony from Myron "Peppy" Levin, Neulander's friend and former racquetball partner. Levin testified the rabbi said he wanted Carol Neulander dead.
"(Levin) said that not only was he approached by the defendant with the idea of killing Mrs. Neulander, but that the defendant also said words to the effect, `Do you know anybody that could do this?'" Lynch said. "That was a significant advance in the investigation."
Levin never recommended a hit man for the rabbi.
In January 1999, another grand jury indicted Neulander on charges of conspiring to kill his wife and being an accomplice, even though authorities didn't know the actual killers' identities.
Those identities became clear in spring 2000, when Collingswood private investigator Leonard Jenoff came forward and admitted to being one of the hit men. He and Paul Michael Daniels confessed, and the charges against Neulander were upgraded to capital murder.
It was a surprise to everyone when Jenoff contacted prosecutors to admit his role, Lynch said. Throughout the investigation, Jenoff hadn't been a suspect, he said.
"I never had reason to suspect Jenoff's involvement," Lynch said.
Still, Lynch said he feels Jenoff wouldn't have come forward had Neulander's trial not been looming just months away. "I think it was weighing on his conscience," Lynch said.
Daniels and Jenoff are slated to be sentenced Jan. 30.
Lynch said Carol Neulander's family was his inspiration for the first trial, held in Camden in fall 2001, which ended without a verdict when jurors deadlocked.
But Lynch's inspiration for the retrial, held in Monmouth County, came from newspaper photos of a smiling Neulander just after the mistrial was declared.
"When I saw that picture, all the weariness, frustration departed and I was ready to pick another jury that very afternoon," Lynch said. "It reflected to me a man who had beaten the system."
For Neulander, Solomon said, a mistrial looked like victory.
"I remember seeing that they were so incredibly pleased with a hung jury," Solomon said of the rabbi and his defense team. "We were going to do it again to get justice to be served."
Lynch, a seasoned prosecutor, said his worst fear at both trials was a hung jury. But, he said, "I didn't believe 12 citizens who heard all the evidence in this case would allow this defendant to walk out of the courtroom."
As jury deliberations dragged on during the retrial, Lynch thought the panel might be encountering problems. In the end, jurors asked to decide whether Neulander was guilty of capital murder, felony murder and conspiracy reached a unanimous decision Nov. 20 after 27 hours and 37 minutes of discussion.
"Once I heard there was a verdict I was very pleased, and I was confident that it would be the right verdict," Lynch said. "The expectation was that win or lose, the jury would make the same finding on all three counts."
Lynch's first feeling after hearing the guilty verdicts was one of relief. Not just for himself, but for Carol Neulander's family.
"The ordeal those people have been through over more than eight years is just unimaginable to an outsider," he said. " I was thrilled for them that the system had worked and at least a portion of their ordeal ended. That's not to suggest that any courtroom verdict or resolution in a matter of this type ever accomplishes or approaches closure for family members of the victim. Their loss is one that they will carry to their own graves."
The verdict wasn't even the end of the trial. An important part remained.
A brief two-day proceeding immediately followed, in which Lynch asked jurors to decide whether Neulander, 61, should be executed for his murder-for-hire plot.
It marked the first time that jury heard Neulander testify. Although the rabbi took the witness stand in his first trial, he chose not to testify in the retrial - a move that didn't surprise Lynch.
Neulander's retrial attorney, Michael Riley, was panned by some observers for not calling the rabbi as a witness, but that criticism disappeared after Neulander's Scripture- filled allocution to jurors during the penalty phase as he pleaded for his life.
"This defendant presented himself as if he were being introduced to a group of strangers for the first time and wanted to make a good impression on them," Lynch said. " Unfortunately for him, this jury already knew him and already knew who he was and what he was, and viewed his comments in the context of the case."
Added Lynch: "I don't believe he helped himself. I don't believe he fooled anybody."
Lynch has heard some observers suggest the state's presentation in the penalty phase did not push for the death penalty. He said those characterizations are untrue.
"I have never argued to a jury in a penalty phase that it was necessary to put a defendant to death," Lynch said. "I' m simply not comfortable with the idea of a public prosecutor demanding of his fellow citizens that they take the life.
"My approach - rightly or wrongly - has been to discuss the aggravating and mitigating factors and to discuss the evidence, and to allow the jurors to make an intellectual judgment as to the proper penalty. I don't think it's right to try to whip the jury into a frenzy of passion and blood lust and send them out to deliberate in that frame of mind as to a person's life."
In the end, the Monmouth County jury could not decide between death by lethal injection or life in prison, and thus the rabbi's life was spared.
Lynch said there is no way to quantify the expense it took to bring Neulander to justice.
"Anytime you make judgments and decisions on matters as important as homicides on the basis of time, effort and money," he said, "you're going down the wrong road."
Reach Michael T. Burkhart at (856) 486-2474 or mburkhart@courierpostonline.com
