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Killers hired by rabbi to face the music
By John Springer
CAMDEN, New Jersey (Court TV) -- How much prison time should hired killers serve when the mastermind gets life in prison? How does a judge decide on a sentence for confessed hit men who helped put their employer in jail? A New Jersey judge will grapple with such questions Thursday when she sentences former private detective Leonard Jenoff and his roommate, Paul Daniels, for the brutal beating death of Carol Neulander in 1994. Judge Linda Baxter could easily find reasons to give Jenoff and Daniels harsh sentences. By their own admissions, they killed Neulander with a lead pipe in her Cherry Hill home and split $18,000 given to Jenoff by Neulander's husband, Rabbi Fred Neulander. Baxter sentenced Neulander to life in prison on January 16 after the defendant denied his guilt and said in a long, rambling statement that only he knows the truth about the events of November 1, 1994. But Jenoff and Daniels are expected to get considerably less than life in prison at their back-to-back sentencings Thursday in Baxter's courtroom. Jenoff pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and faces 10 to 30 years in prison. Daniels, who pleaded guilty to the same charge as well as first-degree robbery, faces 10 to 50 years. "I'm making no request. I will discuss the case, but won't discuss the numbers," said Camden prosecutor James Lynch, who won a conviction against Neulander in November after a five-week trial. "I'll leave it to the judge's discretion," Lynch said. "She's got the whole picture."
Neulander told police -- and testified at a 2001 trial, which ended in a hung jury and mistrial --that he returned home from Temple M'Khor Shalom at about 9:20 p.m. on Nov. 1, 1994, and found his wife lying dead in a pool of a blood. Police soon learned that Neulander was having a two-year affair with a Philadelphia radio personality and had promised the woman that they would be a bona fide couple by her birthday six weeks after the murder. But lacking a confession, eyewitnesses or a murder weapon, police could not make a case against Neulander until 1998. They charged him with murder and conspiracy based on circumstantial evidence, including the grand jury testimony of Myron "Peppy" Levin, who asked him to recommend a hit man for his wife's murder. A month before Neulander's first scheduled trial in June 2000, Jenoff went to authorities at the urging of a Philadelphia journalist to confess that he and Daniels killed Neulander's wife. During the trial, both described the killing in graphic detail. The defense tried unsuccessfully to paint Jenoff as the mastermind of a scheme to implicate Neulander falsely, get a light sentence and be on the street in a few years to sell his story. Neulander's lawyer noted that Jenoff lied to many people about being an ex-CIA agent and a player in the Iran-Contra scandal, as well as other outlandish scenarios. Jenoff's lawyer, Francis Hartman, could not be reached for comment, but Daniels' lawyer told Courttv.com that he planned to argue that, although his 28-year-old client was the least culpable in the conspiracy, he could get the longest prison term. Neulander, 61, would be almost 90 before he could apply for parole. "I would anticipate that Daniels is second to Jenoff in culpability, so Jenoff's sentence will be higher than Daniels'. What those sentences will be, I have no idea," said attorney Craig Mitnick. "I believe that Daniels took the responsibility for his actions and his cooperation will absolutely be reflected in the sentence, how much I don't know." Members of Carol Neulander's family plan to attend the hearing but do not want to be quoted until after the sentencing. One said privately, however, that they view Daniels, portrayed during Neulander's trial as a drug-addicted schizophrenic, as a pathetic individual who was used by Jenoff. The relative would not mind seeing Jenoff get at least as long a sentence as Daniels, if not more, but recognized that the plea agreements made that unlikely. In testimony on November 5, Jenoff described in chilling detail how he first attacked Carol Neulander in her home after telling her he was there with a delivery for her husband. "I put my left hand on her shoulder. That way she couldn't turn around and look at me," Jenoff said. "With my right hand I grabbed my lead pipe, sir. I smacked her head in, sir, the back of her head. I struck her once that I remember. Everything was like a haze. I felt like I was going through a time warp. I remember hitting her very hard once." He said Carol Neulander was never told why she was going to die that day.
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