FREEHOLD, N.J. — The confessed killer of Carol Neulander took the witness stand Friday to describe how he met Fred Neulander, a popular New Jersey rabbi he claims later hired him to kill his wife.

Leonard Jenoff, 55, wore an orange Camden County Correctional Center uniform as he testified about the downward spiral his life took prior to meeting the rabbi in June 1993. He is expected to testify Friday afternoon that he received $30,000 from Neulander for killing — with a confessed accomplice — Carol Neulander with a lead pipe.

After swearing on a Bible to testify truthfully, Jenoff admitted that he lied numerous times throughout his life about having worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. Jenoff attributed that lie, and others, to his feeling of inferiority and low self-esteem.

Jenoff traced his problems to his youth growing up in Atlantic City. Although his older brother enjoyed the Jewish rite of bar mitzvah, Jenoff told jurors that it troubled him that he never received a Jewish education and did not learn Hebrew.

"I felt like an inferior Jew," said Jenoff, who is awaiting sentencing for his role in Carol Neulander's slaying on Nov. 1, 1994, eight years ago today.

Jenoff worked for several private investigators during the 1980s but was not licensed until much later. He typically worked for insurance companies, interviewing witnesses and investigating claims.

A marriage in 1970 ended in divorce. A 1973 marriage produced Jenoff's only child, a son who is now 25 years old.

It was during the 1970s that Jenoff began circulating resumes that indicated he had worked in law enforcement.

"Did you ever have any employment with the federal government, specifically the CIA?" prosecutor James Lynch.

"No, I didn't, sir," Jenoff answered. "That was listed on my resume, that I spent approximately 14 years with the Central Intelligence Agency."

Jenoff said he got the idea about how to pad his resume with information that could not easily be refuted by the media.

"Basically, it was from reading books or watching movies, TV shows. I could talk the talk and walk the walk," he said.

Jenoff admitted that he also lied about graduating from Monmouth College, now Monmouth University. Although he claims to have been a Baltimore Police Department informant for two years, Jenoff testified that he lied about being an employee of the agency.

In 1986, Jenoff and his second wife were living in Mapleshade, N.J., when something happened that would change his life forever, according to his testimony. An 18-year-old man was killed during a serious car accident during which Jenoff was driving.

"I started drinking ... I would get drunk every day. I couldn't hold a job. My life was ruined," Jenoff said.

Unable to meet his responsibilites at his job as an investigator, Jenoff was fired in early 1991. His wife and son left him that July.

"I couldn't go a day without getting drunk," Jenoff testified.

Jenoff, Rabbi Meet

By the end of 1991, Len Jenoff had hit bottom. He testified that he took his last drink of alcohol on Dec. 19, 1991, and began an intensive AA program. He began trying to turn his life around.

In April 1992, Jenoff began living at a group home for recovering alcoholics in Cherry Hill, N.J. He continued attending AA meetings and began questioning his religion, he testified. After informing his AA sponsor that he was investigating Christianity as an alternative, Jenoff said he got a call in June 1993 from the founding rabbi of Temple M'Kor Shalom in Cherry Hill.

"Rabbi Neulander was very warm to me, very gracious," Jenoff said, recalling his first meeting with the defendant in his office at the synagogue. "I felt warm. I felt welcome. I felt there was a man who was genuinely listening to me."

Neulander assured Jenoff that he should not feel inferior because he did not receive a bar mitzvah. At the end of third meeting, Jenoff said Neulander invited him to attend Friday services as his guest and wanted to counsel him weekly.

Jenoff is expected to be on the witness stand for several days.

Before jurors were seated Friday, Judge Linda Baxter ruled that the defense will be limited in what it can ask Jenoff on cross-examination about an unrelated murder. During a hearing without the jury Thursday, convicted child molester David Beardsley testified that Jenoff confessed in jail in May 2000 that he was involved in the Dec. 7, 1995, killing of 33-year-old Janice Bell in Voorhees, N.J.

Baxter agreed with the prosecutor that jurors would be confused by a "murder trial within a murder trial" and that it had little to do with the guilt or innocence of Fred Neulander.

Michael Riley, Neulander's lawyer, argued that he should be allowed to ask Jenoff about statements he allegedly made in detail because it is the defense's theory that both Carol Neulander and Janice Bell were killed during robberies.

Unless the judge reverses course, Riley will not be allowed to ask Jenoff about his alleged statement to Beardsley that he left tire tracks at the scene of the Bell murder or about Jenoff's alleged alibi for that day.

The trial is being broadcast by Court TV.