N.J. Rabbi Fred Neulander, convicted of a murder-for-hire plot to kill his wife, has died in prison

Fred Neulander, the former senior rabbi of a Cherry Hill synagogue who promised to pay $30,000 for two hitmen to kill his wife so he could pursue an affair with a local radio personality, has died.

Neulander was found nonresponsive by correctional police officers Wednesday in an infirmary unit where he’d been housed in New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, according to a statement released Friday afternoon by the New Jersey Department of Corrections.

Staff immediately administered CPR and applied an automated external defibrillator, then transported Neulander by Trenton EMS to Capital Health Regional Medical Center.

State officials were notified of his death at 6:13 p.m. on Wednesday. No cause of death has been given.

Neulander, 82, had been in the Trenton prison since 2002 when he was sentenced to life behind bars after a conviction on murder charges. An initial trial ended in a hung jury.

Neulander’s death comes 30 years after Carol Neulander, 52, the mother of Neulander’s three children, was bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe in the couple’s home in 1994. The scene was staged to look like a robbery but nearly nothing in the house had been disturbed, a detail that investigators found suspicious at the time. Neulander was talking on the phone to her adult daughter, Rebecca Neulander Rockoff, when the assailants entered the family’s home.

A beloved volunteer in South Jersey’s tight-knit Jewish community and the cofounder of Cherry Hill’s Classic Cake bakery, Carol Neulander was mourned by more than 2,000 congregants, relatives and friends who came to her funeral.

The case stunned the Philadelphia region and gradually morphed into a grisly piece of popular culture after the trial became a fixture on cable television, inspired multiple true-crime docudramas and, in 2022, a true-crime musical, A Wicked Soul in Cherry Hill. The production, written by playwright Matt Schatz and described by the Los Angeles Times as “charming albeit troubling,” was protested by officials at the Neulanders’ former congregation and the Neulanders’ children before a brief run at a Los Angeles theater.

For two decades, Fred Neulander had been a prominent figure in Cherry Hill. In 1974, he cofounded Congregation M’kor Shalom, now called Congregation Kol Ami.

On Friday, Kol Ami Rabbi Jennifer Frenkel released a statement, saying, “Fred Neulander’s ... leadership of the congregation ended many years ago under well-publicized circumstances that ran counter to the values our congregation holds dear.

“Rather than dwell on the past, we at Congregation Kol Ami ... choose to focus on our future. ... We are building a vibrant and inclusive Jewish community guided by shared values and traditions, supporting each other through life’s joys and sorrows, and finding purpose and connection through prayer, learning, and acts of compassion and kindness.”

At Neulander’s trial, Len Jenoff, a former Collingswood resident, testified that he and an accomplice, a troubled man named Paul Michael Daniels, were hired to kill Carol Neulander. The Neulanders’ marriage had interfered with an affair the rabbi was having with Elaine Soncini, who had been on the air at WPEN-FM.

Soncini, who met Neulander when he officiated at the 1992 funeral of her husband, Ken Garland, testified for the prosecution at both of the rabbi’s trials, in 2001 and 2002.

Jenoff was a private detective who battled with alcoholism and at times claimed falsely to have worked for the CIA, and for the Mossad, the Israeli secret service agency. He also told people he had connections to Oliver North, a central figure in the politically charged Iran-Contra scandal.

He had confessed his role in the killing to Inquirer reporter Nancy Phillips, now an editor at the newspaper.

Neulander’s serial marital infidelities were detailed in court. During testimony, a friend of Neulander’s with a criminal record and underworld ties said the rabbi had asked him if he knew someone who could arrange for the murder.

The defense sought to discredit Jenoff and tried to convince the jury that Jenoff and Daniels acted on their own.

In his testimony, Jenoff said the rabbi in May 1994 asked him to kill Carol Neulander in their residence, allegedly saying that “he wanted to come home one night and find his wife dead on the floor.”

As she was being struck, Jenoff said in court, Carol Neulander asked, “Why? Why?”

When Neulander was convicted, the jury could not agree on the death penalty and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Jenoff and Daniels have completed their prison sentences. Both were released from custody in 2014.

Daniels admitted to being an accomplice in the killing so he could get $7,500 to buy drugs. After his release, he remained guilt-ridden, according to his attorney, Craig Mitnick.

“He wants to live his life never forgetting what he did to another human being and a family,” Mitnick said at the time.

In 2016, a state appeals court rejected a request to overturn Neulander’s murder conviction.

Robert English, a spokesperson for the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office, said at the time: “The opinion only reaffirms the jury’s sound belief in a guilty verdict in this case.”