Rabbi on Trial

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Judaism, continued Neulander, instructed him to choose life; that's why he offered his house for Jenoff's wedding. Judaism "knows we are all going to experience death and grief and sorrow and pain," but if we grieve too much "death wins ... and there's another death--not physical, but psychological or spiritual."

It was a good sermon and it proved why he had been such an effective rabbi; he was precise, pedantic, posed. In the afternoon, within minutes after Lynch started cross-examining him, he was a different person--barely audible, rarely capable of completing a sentence, constantly faltering when trying to keep pace with Lynch, who was famous for shredding witnesses under intense questioning. Why had he lied to police about his affairs the night Carol was killed? "I was humiliated," Neulander answered. "Humiliated and embarrassed."

"Your personal interests were more important to you than solving the murder of your wife?" Lynch asked.

Neulander was silent for almost a minute. "Yes," he finally answered.

The rabbi kept stammering and contradicting himself. He called Peppy Levin a "semi-friend," then admitted he'd invited him to his daughter's wedding. He denied he'd told [his mistress Elaine] Soncini that she was "the most wonderful thing that ever came into my life," then was made to listen to a tape from Soncini's answering machine on which he'd used those very words. Still, he insisted that he never loved her, then squirmed while Lynch read a romantic poem Neulander wrote to Elaine two months after Carol's murder. "I guess I loved her at the time," Neulander admitted.

"Did you love her?" Lynch continued to press the point the next day.

"I can't say," said Neulander this time, hedging. Then he paused. "Yes, you can say I didn't love her."

The denial caught Lynch as he was pacing away from Neulander. Wheeling toward the rabbi, Lynch shouted, "You weren't lying to this jury yesterday, were you, sir?"

"I gave the wrong impression," Neulander admitted. "I used the wrong words."

"Well, you said something a hundred and eighty degrees different than what you're saying right now, didn't you? It's totally and completely different, isn't it, sir?"

"I had feelings for her," persisted Neulander.

"Sir, excuse me," Lynch said sarcastically. "Do you recall my question?"

"Yes. And I don't' know what a hundred and eighty degrees means."

"Well, a hundred and eighty degrees--I'll explain it to you, sir. If I'm going in one direction and I turn around and go in the opposite direction, some people refer to that as a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. Do you understand now?"

"I did not love her," he said.

Lynch, realizing the opportunity Neulander's admissions gave him, asked several times if the phrase Neuladner had used in letters to Soncini--"I will pay any price, wait any time, to keep my promise," "I need you to know that I will not, because I cannot, love another"--were "lies and misrepresentations." Each time, Neulander said, "I simply wanted to continue the relationship." Lynch finally asked the judge to direct Neulander to answer his questions.

"I don't know how to answer other than how I did," Neulander argued with Judge Baxter. "I wasn't--"

"The answer that the question calls for," explained Baxter, "Is 'Yes, Mr. Lynch, you're correct' or 'No, Mr. Lynch, you're not.'"

With that admonishment, Neulander quietly admitted, "Yes, they were lies."

The Fred Neulander who left the witness stand was chastened and tired, a shell of the man who'd walked into the stand the day before. Spectators and family who'd watched Neulander were astounded. Everyone had expected Jenoff to psychologically collapse on the stand; instead, it was Neulander, the brilliant man full of charm and charisma. One quality now united both the rabbi and the hit man: they were now admitted liars.