CAMDEN, N.J. (Court TV) — The daughter of a prominent New Jersey rabbi accused of ordering his wife's execution testified Wednesday that moments before her mother was bludgeoned to death, she heard her invite a man inside the family's house who, two weeks earlier, had come to deliver a package for her father.

"At one point I did hear her say 'Please come in, he'll be home soon,'" said Rebecca Neulander-Rockoff, who spoke with her mother, Carol Neulander, almost nightly. It was a cold night, Neulander-Rockoff testified, and she then heard her mother—ever the consummate hostess—invite the guest inside and engage him in conversation.

Minutes later, after hanging up the phone, Carol Neulander, 52, was killed by multiple blows to the head and left bloodied on the white carpet of her living room.

Neulander-Rockoff's father, former Rabbi Fred J. Neulander, 60, is charged with capital murder for allegedly paying two men $30,000 to kill his wife of 28 years on November 1, 1994. Neulander, who was a pillar of the Jewish community and who built a strong congregation on the strength of his abilities, could face death if convicted.

The state's lawyer in the Camden County, N.J., trial, First Assistant Prosecutor James Lynch, claims Neulander paid the two men, Leonard Jenoff and Paul Daniels, to kill his wife and disguise it as a robbery gone wrong. Lynch has said he intends to seek the death penalty if Neulander is convicted of capital murder.

Neulander and his attorneys claim that though the rabbi was unfaithful to his wife, he would never have ordered her execution and could have easily divorced her.

Two weeks before her mother was killed, Neulander-Rockoff testified, she was speaking with her mother on the phone from her Philadelphia apartment when "the bathroom man" made his first appearance. That time, Neulander-Rockoff told the jury, her mother didn't seem startled or frightened, saying that the rabbi had told her to expect a letter.

"There's somebody here, I shouldn't be surprised, Daddy told me to expect him. But the very strange thing is he needs to use the bathroom," Neulander-Rockoff testified her mother told her. The man earned his moniker when, during that first visit, he asked to use the bathroom.

But this time, with her mother chatting with "the bathroom man" at about 8:45 p.m. on November 1, 1994, Neulander-Rockoff hung up the phone in what would be their final conversation.

During his daughter's testimony, the defendant clasped his hands and rested his head on his chin while staring at her. A large number of relatives were in attendance, including his son, Matthew Neulander. During one side bar, Rebecca Neulander-Rockoff closed her eyes, sniffled, and then looked across the courtroom to her brother for support.

Neulander-Rockoff's initial ebullience seemed to wane when prosecutor Lynch moved onto the night of the murder, and the final phone conversation with her mother right before the murder.

"All of a sudden she was acting like there was somebody else there," Neulander-Rockoff testified. "She said that it was the bathroom guy. To me it meant that it was the person who had been at our house the week before."