A grueling jury selection process that could last two months began Monday in the trial of New Jersey rabbi Fred Neulander, accused of hiring two hit men to murder his wife.

The extended period for picking the panel is necessary both because the 60-year-old rabbi faces the death penalty and because the case has received intense media scrutiny since the day in 1994 when Neulander frantically reported that his wife's dead body was splayed across the couple's living room floor.

Potential jurors will first fill out a questionnaire featuring more than 170 questions, addressing subjects from capital punishment to Judaism. But both the prosecution and defense will be mainly interested in how closely jurors have followed the sensational and unpredictable developments in the case since Carol Neulander's murder.

The couple was prominent in the leafy suburb of Cherry Hill, a town of well-manicured lawns fronting stately homes just over the Ben Franklin bridge from Philadelphia. Together they had founded the M'kor Shalom reform synagogue in 1974 and slowly built up one of the largest Jewish congregations — 4,000 at one recent count — in the state.

These contributions to the community made it all the more shocking when Carol Neulander, 52, sitting at home and chatting with her daughter on the phone on the evening of November 1, 1994, was bludgeoned to death.

Carol Neulander

The Mysterious "Bathroom Man"

Rebecca Neulander was on the other end of the phone when the doorbell rang and her mother said she would call back later. It would be the last time anybody would speak with Carol Neulander. Though the conversation was innocuous, certainly not the stuff of last words, one comment allegedly made by her mother stuck out in Rebecca's mind.

"Oh, it's the bathroom man," the victim said to her daughter before answering the door.

The "bathroom man" who authorities say acquired the moniker from Neulander after stopping by her home to use the bathroom two weeks beforehand, entered the house with an accomplice, repeatedly beat the woman over the head with a pipe, and made off with her purse.

Soon, one of the couple's other children would get a call. Neulander came home about an hour after the killing and, upon discovering the body, called his son Matthew, a local EMT who rushed to the scene with an ambulance.

When police arrived, they found a distraught Neulander and some indication that a robbery had occurred — the victim's purse had been taken. But after further investigation, authorities found that little else had been snatched. The expensive jewelry that the victim had been wearing was left untouched, even though it would have been obvious to her killers.

Either investigators were chasing particularly inept thieves, or dealing with a very different type of crime.

Eyes on the Rabbi

In the aftermath of the murder, reports began to circulate that Neulander had not been faithful to his wife. The police, and some of the public, began to eye the rabbi with suspicion. In response, Neulander resigned from his leadership of M'kor Shalom, issuing a terse statement acknowledging some errors of judgment but angrily denying taking part in his wife's murder.

"Quite obviously," he wrote, "I had no involvement in my wife's death."

Authorities didn't believe him, and six months after the murder a prosecutor openly acknowledged that the rabbi was the primary suspect in his wife's death. Though Neulander had an airtight alibi — he was at the synagogue at the time of the murder — police theorized that he had hired a hit man.

Soon after the authorities came clean about who their main suspect was, another bomb was dropped by local radio host Elaine Soncini, who admitted to a two-year affair with Neulander and said she had pressured him repeatedly to divorce his wife. Soncini recalled that the rabbi had promised to take care of the problem before her birthday in December.

"I told you to trust me," she recalled him whispering in her ear after the murder.

Gathering Evidence

Authorities were unable to turn up any hard evidence to support their murder-for-hire theory but remained convinced of Neulander's guilt. But circumstantial evidence continued to trickle in against the rabbi.

Myron "Pep" Levin, a friend of Neulander, said that after a racquetball game in the fall of 1994 the rabbi had said, "I wish I would come home one night and find my wife dead on the floor."

Prosecutors finally decided to convene a grand jury to examine evidence in the case, and in 1998 Neulander was indicted for conspiracy to commit murder. The rabbi was arrested, and subsequently released on $400,000 bail.

A trial date was set and pre-trial motions filed. But none of the participants realized that a local reporter was working on a story that would turn the case upside down and necessitate a whole new indictment on much more serious charges.

Often at Neulander's side in the aftermath of the murder, Len Jenoff referred to himself as the rabbi's private investigator. The middle-aged P.I., who possessed a license but not an office and had a long history of alcohol abuse, seemed like an oddball in the rabbi's coterie to Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Nancy Phillips.

The reporter cultivated Jenoff as a source, taking him out to dinner and slowly convincing him that he could confide in her off the record about Neulander. Finally, he dropped an absolute bombshell, but for Phillips' ears only.

While defense lawyers and prosecutors were battling back and forth, the reporter was wrestling with her conscience — Jenoff told her, off the record, in late 1999 that he had helped plan the murder at the behest of the rabbi and that he knew who had beat Carol Neulander to death.

On April 28, 2000, little more than a month before Neulander's trial was scheduled to begin, Phillips and Jenoff were eating pizza when the investigator told her that his secret was tearing him apart and that he wanted to come forward.

She dialed Camden County Prosecutor Lee Solomon's office and arranged for the three of them to meet together at a local diner. In a tortured confession, and then in an 89-page written testimonial, Jenoff described how Neulander had befriended him and then convinced him to kill his wife.

The rabbi, he said, had offered to pay him $30,000 for the murder. He had enlisted his roommate, Paul Michael Daniels, to help. The two drove to the Neulander house on the assigned day and when the rabbi's wife answered the door, he had hit her over the head with a pipe. At this urging, Daniels had then bludgeoned several more times.

Authorities didn't trust Jenoff completely at first — he was notorious for lying — but outfitted him with a wire and sent him to talk with Daniels. When the two men started chatting about the murder in a natural fashion, police swooped in and arrested both of them.

More importantly, authorities put Neulander's trial on hold and upgraded the charges against him to capital murder. The rabbi's bail was revoked and he was tossed in a New Jersey jail, six years after his wife was killed.

The Prosecution's Case

The prosecution's case will center on the testimony of Jenoff and Daniels — who both pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter — although the latter may not be able to take the stand because of psychological and medical problems.

Daniels has reportedly tried to kill himself several times, and is taking a series of medications.

Prosecutors will almost certainly also call Soncini and Levin to testify about the rabbi's unhappiness with his wife and the chilling statements he made to the two of them.

Others expected to testify include Phillips, who will detail her long and bizarre relationship with Jenoff, and M'kor Shalom rabbi Gary Mazo, who took over the congregation after Neulander resigned and wrote a book afterwards about the tribulations involved with moving on after the murder and its aftermath.

The Defense's Case

The most important part of the defense's case will likely be cross-examinations of prosecution witnesses, especially Jenoff. The defense will attack the private investigator's credibility, painting him as an alcoholic known for lying about serving in Vietnam and working for the CIA.

Attorney Jeffrey Zucker has said that he believes Jenoff made up his story in order to help Phillips, with whom he had become infatuated.

The defense will stress Neulander's status within the community and his reputation for being a wise counselor and spiritual leader, rather than a cold-blooded killer.

Some of the Neulander children may take the stand in defense of their father. Although Rebecca and Benjamin have stood behind their father throughout the case, some reports have said that Matthew has wavered in his support.

The trial is tentatively scheduled to begin on October 15 and will be broadcast live on Court TV.