CAMDEN, N.J. — The New Jersey rabbi on trial for ordering the murder of his wife of 28 years withered under cross-examination Wednesday, contradicting testimony he gave Tuesday about a letter he wrote to the mistress who threatened to leave him if he remained married.

"I don't have a perfect memory and I don't have perfect answers," explained Fred J. Neulander after telling the jury he misspoke Tuesday when he said he loved Elaine Soncini, his paramour of two years.

Neulander, 60, is charged with capital murder for allegedly offering two hitmen, Leonard Jenoff and Paul Michael Daniels, $30,000 to kill his wife. Carol Neulander was found bludgeoned to death on her living room floor on November 1, 1994.

The state contends Neulander, the father of three, wanted to continue a two-year affair with Philadelphia radio personality Soncini, who allegedly threatened to leave the rabbi by 1995 if he remained a married man. Neulander has admitted that a divorce might have caused him to lose his rabbinical post. Camden County First Assistant Prosecutor James Lynch has said he intends to seek the death penalty if the rabbi is convicted.

Neulander's attorneys have argued that Leonard Jenoff, the key witness for the state who testified that the rabbi befriended him in 1993 before recruiting him to kill his wife, is a habitual liar who killed Carol Neulander in a botched robbery attempt and implicated Neulander to save himself jail time and to gain financially by selling the rights to his story.

Neulander, who built the successful M'Kor Shalom synagogue from a fledgling congregation in 1974 to a bustling, 900-family operation, was to be his own salvation during his time on the stand but the religious leader did not fare well against the prosecutor Lynch's harsh cross-examination.

After forcing Neulander to waffle on whether the January 4, 1995, letter to Soncini was penned as a love letter or as a way to keep their sexual relationship intact, the prosecutor zeroed in on the foundering witness.

Paging through the three-page letter written in Neulander's usual green ink, Lynch pointed out a number of romantic lines the rabbi penned. "Elaine, what you and I discovered and have comes once in a lifetime," read one of the lines. In another, Neulander called their relationship "a gift from God."

Lynch asked Neulander whether he was telling the truth Tuesday when he told the jury that these statements were sincere. "Were they truthful so help you God," yelled the prosecutor, stabbing out the last four words with his index finger pointed toward the ground.

"I don't think they were accurate," Neulander squeezed out.

"And when did you come to that realization, sir?" Lynch pursued. "I don't understand the question, sir," said Neulander, flabbergasted.

"Tell me what you don't understand about it."

"I think I gave a wrong impression yesterday," Neulander attempted to explain.

"So you're changing your testimony from yesterday."

"Yes."

Lynch pressed on. "What other mistakes did you make yesterday, sir?" he asked.

"I don't know.

"You don't know? So it's your sworn testimony that there may be other mistakes in your testimony that you gave to this jury yesterday."

"Yes."

As Lynch's damaging cross-examination crescendoed, Neulander wasn't the only one in the court that seemed to be worn down. During a side bar, one juror turned to two others and smiled, feigning exasperation. Another massaged his forehead while a third peered skeptically over the top of her glasses at Neulander.

Lynch relentlessly continued his examination of Neulander's change in testimony. "Now you're telling the jury today that this letter represents a pack of lies," he asked.

"I wanted to continue the relationship," Neulander said.

"Now you're telling the jury today that this letter represents a pack of lies," Lynch repeated, his voice more stern this time.

Again, Neulander echoed, "I wanted to continue the relationship."

"Now you're telling the jury today that this letter represents a pack of lies," Lynch barked once more.

"It's not a pack of lies," Neulander wheezed.

The prosecutor's harsh questioning ended when Lynch alleged, once more, that Neulander paid off Jenoff to kill his wife. "No, you're wrong about that," Neulander replied, sitting still with his head held high. "I'm innocent."

"You're an innocent man with a bad memory, sir?" Lynch asked.

"I don't have a perfect memory and I don't have perfect answers," Neulander finished.

Lynch continued his cross-examination of the defendant by questioning him why he continued to employ and pay Jenoff to investigate his wife's murder until December 1996 if he had doubts about the private investigator's credibility.

"It became more and more clear to me that there were reasons not to believe him," Neulander admitted, but said "I took him at his word with his private investigator's license. I did not employ him, he just kept doing the work and submitting a bill. I was desperate."

Jenoff testified that Neulander employed him as a way to continue payment for the murder after the investigation made bulk payments impossible.

"Is it your belief sir that it's mere coincidence that the person you hired to investigate your wife's murder is one of the people who committed it?" Lynch asked.

Lynch, who also became very animated during this line of questions and even jumped out of his chair to thrust his index finger at Neulander on the stand, forced the defendant to admit that he never once looked for other private investigators in the yellow pages, sought out a recommendation from someone who might have hired a private investigator in the past, or tried to compare rates to see if Jenoff was overcharging him.

Another of Lynch's main thrusts Wednesday was that Neulander reacted to seeing his wife dead on the floor as though he expected it.

"The term you used to describe your stricken wife on the floor was repulsive?" Lynch asked, reading from the statement Neulander gave in the early morning hours after finding his wife at their Cherry Hill, N.J., home.

"Anything that violent is terrifying and repels one," Neulander explained. "It almost pushes you away. It's something you try and avoid. I couldn't deal with it."

On redirect, Neulander explained "I was exhausted and I meant absolutely no disrespect."

Lynch also pointed out that in the six or seven minutes that Neulander was alone with his wife's body, he never bothered to say the "Vidouee" prayer that, in the Jewish faith, is a crucial form of last confession, instead leaving the task to Rabbi Gary Mazo.

"You could have prayed that prayer over your wife, couldn't you have sir?" Lynch alleged.

"I could have," Neulander admitted.

"But you didn't," Lynch spat back.

"No."

The lawyer noted, too, that Neulander referred to his slain wife as "the body" numerous times including under direct examination and in his statement the night of the murder. "Did you use that language because of the warm glowing loving feelings that you held in your heard for her?" the lawyer prodded, his voice rising. "You didn't say 'the body of my dear wife, Carol,' did you sir?"

As defense lawyer Dennis Wixted objected, Lynch peeled away from his stance in front of the witness box, pivoted toward the jury and rolled his eyes.

Lynch brought up the fact that a large sum of cash, of $10,000, was stored in a drawer in the Neulander household. Neulander denied knowing about the money until after the murder. "Anybody who happened to know that the money was there would be able to access it, correct?" Lynch asked. "Correct," Neulander said.

In three days of witnesses, Neulander's lawyers have tried to advance the theory that Jenoff sought to gain financially by incorporating the rabbi into the murder conspiracy. In a brief redirect, defense lawyer Dennis Wixted helped his client reiterate his claim, to which he has held fast, that he had nothing to do with the murder.

As their fourteenth and final witness, Neulander's lawyers called a long-time friend of Jenoff's who said he offered to help the confessed killer get a book or movie deal.

James "Mickey" Rooney, of no relation to the cinema star, told jurors that he met Jenoff seven years ago at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and kept in touch with him even after he admitted to the murder on April 28, 2000, and was incarcerated.

Rooney said he suggested to Jenoff that he pursue a movie or book deal, and offered to act on Jenoff's behalf.

In letters that defense lawyer Jeff Zucker read aloud, Jenoff wrote to Rooney asking about the Son of Sam laws, which prevent someone from profiting from a wrongful act, and said "I just want to make sure we cover all the legal bases" for a book and movie deal. Jenoff told Rooney about interview requests by Barbara Walters and a potential two-hour movie deal with ABC films, and also asked Rooney for to loan his wife, June, money until he got out "in 20 to 22 months."

But Rooney, who also said that Jenoff told him the rabbi needed to be convicted in order for him to profit from the rights to his story, wasn't a complete boon for the defense. He also said that Jenoff told him during a phone conversation from prison that "the rabbi paid him, that he was broken down and took advantage of him." On cross-examination, Lynch asked the witness whether Jenoff had ever deviated from that story. "Not since he was incarcerated," said Rooney.

Lynch argued during a hearing outside of the jury's presence earlier Wednesday morning that the jailhouse snitches, who said in court Monday that Jenoff told them the rabbi was not involved, were but passing acquaintances of Jenoff's in the Camden County Correctional Facility and that Rooney, 53, was a long-time associate of the confessed killer's, and would have been more likely to get the real story.

Lynch declined to call any rebuttal witnesses.

The trial, which is being broadcast live by Court TV, is expected to resume tomorrow at 9:00 a.m., ET, with closing arguments.