True Crime Campfire - Bad Shepherd: The Murder of Carol Neulander

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

How far would you go to get what you want? For most of us, there’s a hard limit on the answer to that question, and that limit is hurting someone. Especially someone close to you. But in this week��s story, we meet a man who didn’t believe in limits like that, who would let nothing and no one stand in the way of his ambition and desires. It’s a mindset you might expect from a Wall Street bigshot, but our guy wasn’t that—he was a suburban rabbi, who kept all his demons hidden under a cloak of godliness.Join Katie and Whitney, plus the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, Sinisterhood, and Scared to Death, on the very first CRIMEWAVE true crime cruise! Get your fan code now--tickets on sale now: CrimeWaveatSea.com/CAMPFIRESources:https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/hit-man-in-slaying-of-new-jersey-rabbis-wife-to-be-freed/ https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/neulander-conspirator-paul-daniels-released-from-prison-after-14-years/https://www.inquirer.com/news/rabbi-fred-neulander-convicted-murderer-dead-nj-prison-20240419.html https://www.inquirer.com/crime/tale-murder-took-years-unfold-20000507.html https://www.nydailynews.com/2002/11/22/killer-rabbis-flame-miss-vicky-falls-for-wife-slayer/ https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/fiveminute-memoir-author-pam-jenoff-recalls-her-uncle-s-murder-confession-8533234.htmlhttps://law.justia.com/cases/new-jersey/appellate-division-unpublished/2006/a3616-02-opn.htmlFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. How far would you go to get what you want? For most of us, there's a hard limit on the answer to that question, and that limit is hurting someone, especially someone close to you. But in this week's story, we meet a man who didn't believe in limits like that,

who would let nothing and no one stand in the way of his ambition and desires. It's a mindset you might expect from a Wall Street big shot, but our guy wasn't that. He was a suburban rabbi who kept all his demons hidden under a cloak of godliness. This is Bad Shepard, the murder of Carol Newlander. So, campers, for this one, we're in the Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill on the evening of November 1, 1994. It was already dark by the time Carol Newlander drove home, the shadows deep on the tree-lined street of Highgate Lane. Carol had had a long day. From a starting point of making kosher baked goods in her kitchen at home, for friends and family to have at parties, she'd found a a successful local bakery and caterer, the classic cake company. The bakery had had its weekly

after-hours management meeting, and Carol didn't reach home until 8 p.m. As she pulled up, she noticed the porch light had gone out, leaving the front of the house in shadow. She'd have to get Fred to change it. There was no one home. Carol and her husband Fred had three kids, all grown. One of them, Matthews, still lived at home while he studied pre-med at Rutgers, but he was also a part-time EMT and he was working that night. Husband Fred, a rabbi, was still at his synagogue, watching a choir practice in a confirmation class. As she normally did, just after eight, Carol called their daughter Rebecca in Philadelphia. They were still talking around 8.15 when the doorbell rang. If you're anything other than deeply suspicious when somebody rings your doorbell at 815, you're a very different

person than I am, but in this case, Carol wasn't surprised. Daddy told me to expect a package, she said to Rebecca. And when she opened the door, she recognized the man holding out an envelope for her to take. She didn't know his name, but he'd dropped off another envelope a week earlier, and he'd nervously, stumblingly asked to use the bathroom. He'd struck her as kind of a funny buffoon, like one of the three stooges or something, and he'd stuck in Carol's head as the bathroom man. Although the whole situation sounded hinky to Rebecca's big city, spidey senses, Carol brushed off her daughter's concerns. The bathroom man was just a little bit of the bathroom man was a harmless schmuck. She invited him in and hung up with Rebecca.

A little after nine, Rabbi Fred Newlander arrived home. It was an eerie situation right away. The porch light was out, and when he tried to unlock the front door, he discovered it was already open. Inside was an awful, bloody scene. The Newlanders had decorated their living room in all white, white carpet, white furniture, white walls. Blood was splashed and sprayed across almost every surface. Carol lay on the floor, blood spreading through the white carpet from awful injuries to her head,

her skin almost as paper white as the rest of the room. Fred grabbed the phone and called 911. He gasped, I just came home and my wife is on the floor and there's blood all over. As 911 callers often are, Fred was frantic and confused,

sobbing and crying as the dispatcher tried to nail down exactly what had happened. Police and an ambulance, were already on the way, and Fred desperately tried to make sure that his EMT son, Matthew, wouldn't be the one to respond and have to see his mom like this.

Matthew's ambulance did respond, but by the time they arrived, there were already a ton of police and another medical team there. Matthew ran for the front door, but a couple of his EMT buddies grabbed him and literally carried him back down the driveway. Thank God for that.

They told him his mom was dead. His dad, Fred, just stood in the driveway watching all this happen. He made no attempt to comfort his son beyond vaguely saying, everything's going to be okay. Fred, in fact, had been standing quietly in the driveway since the first police officers had arrived, calm and apparently not curious about what was going on. When an officer hurried out of the house to make a call from his car, Fred didn't ask him anything about Carol's condition.

It had been immediately obvious to the officers that he hadn't checked on her closely himself. The room around Carol was a bloody mess, but, Fred didn't have a drop of red on him. As we've said, many times, people react differently to stress and grief, but, I mean, acting cool and collected after you've just found your wife brutally murdered is going to make the cops give you the side eye. And this was doubly true for Rabbi Newlander, because he'd been frantic and sobbing on the 911 call, but when the police arrived just minutes later, he was just as cool as a fridge

full of cucumbers. It was odd. But at least initially, it was no more than that. I mean, Fred Newlander was a genuine pillar of the community, a respected man of God who had found at his own thriving synagogue. The idea that he would have anything to do with the death of his wife of 29 years, it was unthinkable, right? Fred Newlander grew up in Albany, New York in the 40s and 50s. It was a blue-collar upbringing with his family living upstairs from the laundromat they owned. Fred's father and grandfather were both rabbis, so there really wasn't much doubt about the career path.

of the precocious young Fred. Carol had a very different childhood. The daughter of a high flyer in the New York garment industry, a button distributor, might not sound like much, but just think about how many buttons are used every year. They've all got to come from somewhere. Carol was raised in a sprawling Long Island home, an easy walk from both the coast and the golf course. Not quite a life of luxury, but definitely a life of privilege. Despite their different backgrounds, though, Fred and Carol hit it off big when friends set them up on a blind date in college, so big that they got married soon after.

In 1968, Fred landed a job at the Temple Emmanuel Synagogue, and the Newlanders relocated to Cherry Hill. On the New Jersey side of the river across from Philly, Cherry Hill was a nice suburb, but it also had a slice of Sin City mixed in, with nightclubs and casinos springing up to take advantage of Jersey's Lucy. Goosey licensing laws. By the end of the 70s, the big casinos opened up in Atlantic City, and Cherry Hill became more notable for its school districts than for catching Tony Bennett at the Latin casino. But when Fred and Carol Newlander moved in, it was still a town with an edge of wildness. Not that Fred and Carol were wild, except for Fred being wildly ambitious. He'd barely got his feet under the desk as assistant rabbi at Temple Emmanuel before he started chafing

at the whole assistant part. He had his own ideas on what a congregation should be like, and the most important of those ideas was that Fred Newlander should be in charge. After just a few years, he founded his own congregation, McCor Shalom, or source of peace. He gathered about a dozen couples at a friend's house and told them about his goals for McCor Shalom, to espouse a kind of liberal Judaism that wasn't too liberal, walking the line between modern and traditional. Like most successful religious leaders, Fred was a very persuasive speaker.

By the end of the night, everybody agreed to put up the money to get things started. But it didn't exactly start with a bang. At first, they just met in people's houses and rented hotel conference rooms for ceremonies that needed more space. The best way for any community to grow

is through word of mouth, and more and more families kept joining McCor Shalom. Within a year or so, Fred and Carol were able to move into a nice big house on leafy highgate lane and McCor Shalom finally had a permanent home too, an empty warehouse in an industrial park. Nothing special. One member described it as adequate, but it would do for now. But despite the adequativity of the new synagogue, the congregation continued to grow, and Fred wasn't the only one who was thriving. The Cherry Hill area has

as a big Jewish population, and Carol noticed a need that wasn't being met. When people wanted kosher cakes or pastries for parties or whatever, they generally had to make them themselves or travel all the way to Philly to get them. Carol, who was a rock star cook, started a little catering business out of their kitchen, and it didn't stay little for long, just like Martha Stewart. By the early 90s, classic cake had three local locations and employed around 50 people. The McCor-Shalom congregation had grown to around 4,000 people by then, and they'd moved into a huge purpose-built synagogue on Evesham Road.

So in 1994, the year Carol was murdered, the Newlanders were thriving, with both successes and responsibilities piling up. They seemed like a happy couple to everybody who knew them, but Fred did admit to some worries, in particular the fact that in some ways Carol still ran classic cake like it was the business she'd started in her kitchen. After those regular weekly management meetings, she'd bring home the day's take to do her accounting.

Shopping in the early 90s was still mostly cash-based, so Carol would be sitting up at night in her kitchen table, counting out anywhere between $5,000 and $25,000. That is potentially a big green pile of motive, and it was where Fred Newlander thought the investigation should start. At Carol Shiva, Fred told a congregant that he was sure the Colombian immigrants' classic cake employed were responsible. They'll kill you for a nickel, he told them, about these bakers of cupcakes and muffins. Charming, Fred. Charming. Investigators did look into employees of classic cake, but they found nothing suspicious, and there was more than one potential motive grabbing their attention.

From the 60s through the 80s, Ken Garland was a popular morning DJ on Philadelphia's WIP radio station, spending adult contemporary hits for people who like to rock, but, you know, like in an orderly fashion. Alongside him was his wife an on-air sidekick, Elaine Sonsini. By 1992, Ken was really sick with leukemia, and it wasn't going well. He had to stop working in the fall, and by December, it was clear he didn't have much time left, poor dude. When Ken was fading fast, a mutual friend called Rabbi Newlander to his bedside to offer some spiritual comfort. Ken's wife and other family were already there. He died later that day.

Fred Newlander barely knew Ken Garland, but his wife Elaine had evidently made a big impression. A couple days later, after officiating at her husband's funeral, Fred stopped Elaine on her way out of the cemetery and asked if he could call her sometime. She said yes. He called for the first time just a few hours later, which is just super classy. Holy moly, this guy. Soon they were spending a lot of time together, and on the surface, that's not surprising. Comforting the recently bereaved is an important job for a religious leader, but just like our last. sinister minister from a couple weeks ago, Rabbi Newlander preferred to do his comforting and counseling

with his pants off. At first, it was just what court papers later described as romantic kisses on the mouth, which just sounds so gross. What an awful way to word it. Ewe. It's so gross. Who wrote that? Good God. You need a slap. But by Christmas Eve, they were banging like a fireworks factory. All through 1993, Fred and Elaine were hot and heavy, having sex most days, either at Elaine's house with Fred hiding his car in the garage or at Fred's office at the synagogue, which had a deadbolt on the door. Good Lord, man. In March of 1994, Elaine converted to Judaism and joined the McCor Shalom congregation. Who knows how sincere this was, but it definitely made all the deadbolt nookie a lot easier. But before long, things started getting complicated, as affairs tend to do. Elaine dated other guys in addition to Fred, and this stirred up the married, cheating rabbi's jealous streak. Because Fred was not acquainted with the concept of irony, I guess.

Elaine, meanwhile, was getting sick of a relationship that had to stay secret, that meant they could never go out in public together. She told Fred that, on January 1, 1995, she was going to move on to a new life, and he wasn't going to be a part of it. It was a tough blow, but Fred accepted her decision with the dignity befitting his position. I'm kidding. He blubbed and cried and fell on his knees and begged Delane to stay with him. And she did for now, but she didn't budge on that January 1st deadline. If she was still nothing more to Fred than his mistress by then, she was out. I just can't believe the begging on his hands and knees didn't give her the ick.

I know. Good Lord. that's a total deal breaker it's so gross so gross i think there are some people who like that though like they want somebody to be that like obsessed with them i think it's gross too it's just it's just like you see there's there's videos online of men that get caught cheating oh god i know i know exactly which one you're talking about yeah there's multiple there's multiple Whitney oh man well i'm thinking of the guy who was like in the shower in his clothes with the water on sobbing. It's like you're the one who cheated.

What are you crying about? There's multiple of like them clinging to the woman's legs. It's gross, dude. Oh, come on. God Almighty. If it meant that much to you, keep your dick in your pants. It's that simple. God.

Ugh. Fred told Elaine that he wanted to divorce Carol, but that it would be too hard on the kids and on his congregation. his fully grown adult kids. Obviously, Fred's concerns about the congregation were more about his image as the great spiritual leader, the man who built a synagogue from nothing. His whole identity was based on that, so the idea of that image being tarnished by a messy divorce was horrifying. He started fantasizing to Elaine about Carol having deadly accidents. Maybe her car would go into the river and she'd just be gone and everything would be great.

He assured Elaine that by her birthday, December 17th, he'd be free to be with her openly. It's probably worth pointing out that Elaine Sanchini made bank at her radio job and had inherited over a million dollars from her husband Ken when he died. And she was a smoke show. Fred had a lot to gain by being with her. So with that hindsight, considering that Carol was murdered on November 1st, This all looks like a very familiar pattern of a man planning to kill his wife. But Fred Newlander's alibi for the time of Carol's death was rock solid.

He'd been at the synagogue, watching a confirmation class and choir practice. He didn't usually do either of those things, so it stood out in people's memories. He'd even made a point of changing out of his casual clothes and putting on a suit and tie. Something else he rarely did. There is no way at all that Fred Newlander could have killed his wife himself, but someone had. Let's talk about a guy named Len Genoff. Len was a schmuck, a loser, and a fantasist. Or maybe, just maybe, that was all a cover for a life of relentless action.

The life of a Vietnam War hero who took his deadly skills to work for the CIA. and the FBI. I mean, he had a picture in his wallet of Ronald Reagan on a horse with the inscription that read to Len Genoff, a loyal friend and comrade in arms. It was signed Ronald Reagan. Okay. Okay, the handwriting looked nothing like Regans and an awful lot like Len Genovs, but let's not get bogged down in the details here.

How do these people keep coming up? It's a whole genre of person at this point. It just cracks me up. If Len was in the CIA, he was under deep, deep cover, as a 47-year-old man whose life was disintegrating around him. He was separated from his second wife. His house was in foreclosure, and he'd struggled for years with drugs and alcohol. Struggled so much that at one point he'd passed out face first in his mashed potatoes at a family dinner. Wow.

When he first sought counseling from Rabbi Newlander in June of 1993, he'd just had an application for financial support rejected by Jewish family services. He was, to say the least, at a low point. But, hey, at least he'd had an amazing, exciting life. He'd spilled it all to Fred Newlander at their first meeting. His Vietnam valor, his time in college, his time as a cop in the Baltimore PD, his years with the FBI, and of course, the work he did for the, the CIA, which included work on the Iran-Contra affair.

Campers, we've said it before. No one works for the CIA. Or at least no one who tells you they do. James Bond is always telling people he's James Bond because he's made up. He'd actually be a terrible spy. In the real world, being discreet as page one of the handbook. And Len Genov was spilling all this stuff the first time he met with the rabbi. He probably told his mailman he worked for the CIA. He probably told people at the bus stop. Everything he said about his life of adventure and accomplishment was a big, sparkling live. Yeah, you know, nobody works for the CIA.

And if anybody did, it would not be Len Jackoff, okay? Like he'd be like last on the list, dead last. He told the rabbi he was currently working as a private investigator and gave him a business card. In fact, Len's PI business consisted entirely of those business cards and a desk he'd set up in his bedroom, which he now described as his office. If this story had a different ending, you could say that Fred Newlander did good work with Len Genoff. He listened to him and counseled him. He gave him attention and encouragement. He had Len start attending Friday night services and helped set up regular AA meetings at the synagogue.

The rabbi gave Len what Len craved most of all, what caused him to spend ridiculous stories about his life. He made him feel seen and important. The one vice of the rabbis as far as his congregation knew was smoking. He had others, of course, like Sheping recently widowed DJs on the side, but those were all very much on the QT. Before Lynn's AA meetings, the two of them would walk and smoke in the woods behind the synagogue and talk about weighty matters. It was all very flattering to Lynn to have this. this influential, charismatic man treat him as a friend and an equal. The rabbi's attention was like a life preserver as the wreckage of Lynn's life sank around him,

and in short order, Fred Newlander became the central point around which Lynn revolved. If he asked me to jump off a bridge, I would have said, which one, Lynn said later. If I was a woman, I would have been sleeping with him, which I kind of say is just a weird thing to say about your rabbi, but okay, man, I get it. Given what would happen later, and you know, and the same,

you know, given what would happen later, it seems clear that from their first meeting, Fred Newlander recognized Lynn as a grade A sad sack. someone he could manipulate as easily as he would a child, and someone whose absolute loyalty could be one with nothing more than attention and flattery. And Fred was right. I assume he'd seen the godfather several times,

because when Lynn thanked the rabbi for everything he'd done for him, Fred said, maybe someday you could do a favor for me. And if Genoff had had the good sense God gave a tapeworm, he'd have shut it down right then and there, but he didn't. Obviously. On their walks through the woods, Lynn told Fred, that his dream was to work for Massad, the Israeli National Intelligence Service, which had about as much chance of coming true as him being the first man on Mars.

Fred, though, dropped hints that he had connections with the Israeli government who could make this fantasy come true. By March of 1994, their conversations in this vein started to take on a sinister turn. One afternoon, according to court documents, Fred asked Len, quote, would you kill for the state of Israel? he said that he absolutely would. Fred told him, well, it just so happened that they had an enemy right here in Cherry Hill. On their walks, he kept on at Lynn about this, quote, Enemy of Israel, eventually grabbing his elbow and asking whether Lynn was man enough to kill

the enemy. Am I talking to the right person? he'd say, yes, Rabbi, Lynn said, although he'd later admit to being terrified. Finally, Fred drove Len to his house on Highgate Lane and told him that the person he wanted dead, this great enemy of Israel, was his wife, Carol. It's just what? Like, what? This is just like that other case, by the way. You guys remember that one? I think we called it Toy Soldiers or something.

Exactly like that other one with the guy that claimed he was in the IRA, like crazy. Anyway. Just how much Lynn actually bought this stuff, we will never know. It was obviously ridiculous. But the one thing about Len Genoff that you always have to keep in mind is that he's an idiot. So who knows? But he had more to gain than just doing a favor for Israel. Fred Newlander said he'd pay Lynn $30,000 and see that he got his dream job with Mossad. Fred already knew the scenario he wanted. Lynn said later, he wanted to come home one night and find his wife

dead on the floor. Our pious man of God, folks, ain't he a peach? Fred would come back to that original idea, but on their regular walks before the AA meetings, he had fun discussing various ways that his wife could be murdered. Outside in New York theater, Lynn could shoot Carol dead and just kind of gray as Fred to make it look extra real. Len could stab her to death in a mall parking lot. He could shoot her dead in Camden, where Carol visited twice a month for community service meetings, and which in the early 90s had a reputation for violent crime. But eventually Fred came back to the idea of killing Carol at home, specifically on a Tuesday. night. He could arrange to be at the synagogue for an alibi. Their son Matthew would be out of the

house at his EMT job. And Carol would be bringing home money from classic cake in her purse, providing a possible motive for the murder, that old favorite of crime scene stagers everywhere, a robbery gone wrong. Fred had thought this through. He didn't want Lynn to use a knife, because that would look too professional. The stark dichotomy between having this conversation and then sending Len off to an AA meeting to fix his life is just like earth-shattering to me. It's so creepy. I can't even fathom the depths of evil at play here. He wanted Len to beat Carol to death with a blunt instrument, and he wanted it done right away. Lynn, whose feet were getting a little chilly, argued that they should wait until fall when it would get dark earlier, and Fred agreed.

By August, Len's feet were still cold. He wanted to go. wanted to bring in someone else to help him with a job, but Fred wasn't willing to change their deal. If Len wanted a helping hand, he'd have to pay for it himself out of his own $30,000 fee. After his wife left him, and having barely clawed his way out of foreclosure, Len had to take on roommates to make ends meet. One of these was a kid he'd met at a substance abuse program, 21-year-old Paul Daniels. Daniels was a vulnerable mess. A paranoid schizophrenic. who's been addicted to cocaine and heroin since his adolescence. When Len offered him $7,500 to help him kill a woman,

Daniel said yes with no further questions. Jesus. In September, Fred and Len met in a parking lot of the Cherry Hills Sheridan, and Fred handed over $7,500 for a down payment on Carol's murder. Len put half the money in a brown lunch bag, and when he got home, he gave it to Daniels. Daniels jumped out of his chair and started whooping and hollering. The bitch is dead. He yelled.

Chelly shit, but that just gave me chills a little bit. Like, why is he so excited about this? Ugh. Mm-hmm. Fred drew a map of the inside of his house and gave it to Len. After Carol was dead, Len was to take her purse, but not her diamond ring, which was kind of a weird request if he wanted it to look like a convincing robbery. My guess is that he wanted to save some cash in the future and slip that same ring onto Elaine's finger.

Oh, my God. You know that. was what he was going to do. You know, he was going to give her his wife. Oh my God. What an absolute dick flute from hell this man is. On October 25th, one week before Carol's murder, Len Genoff and Paul Daniels made their first attempt. They dressed in dark clothes and drove to Highgate Lane, armed with a lead pipe and carrying an empty envelope as a prop. Carol was in her car in the driveway, talking on her cell phone. Len knocked on the wind. Len knocked on the window, and when Carol asked him what he wanted, Len said he had a package for the rabbi and held

up the empty envelope. Carol invited him to wait for Fred. Once inside, Len couldn't see the burgundy purse Fred had told him to steal, so he asked to use the bathroom to give him an excuse to look around for it. He couldn't find it and started panicking. Without the purse, there was no robbery cover story. He handed Carol the envelope and quickly left. An empty envelope. Like, that must have been so weird. Yeah. The next day in the Sheridan parking lot, Fred grabbed Len's collar and got right up in his face. What the fuck happened? He yelled.

When Len explained that he chickened out after not finding the purse, the rabbi screamed at him. You better fucking kill her next week or I'll kill you. And if you don't believe me, test me. Once again, folks, our pious man of God. The next Tuesday, November 1st, was when we started our story. Carol let Jenoff, who she remembered as the bathroom man, come in while she was on the first. phone with her daughter Rebecca. Paul Daniels waited on the dark porch outside. Rabbi Newlander had deliberately put a dead bulb in the socket out there. Oh, that's creepy. As soon as Carol hung up

with Rebecca, Genoff came up behind her, put a hand on her shoulder to stop her turning around, and smacked her on the side of the head with the lead pipe. She fell to her knees calling out, why? Lynn continued beating her till she lay still, blood gushing from her head, ears, and nose. Paul Daniels hurried in at the commotion and took the lead pipe, hitting Carol a couple more times. Lynn looked around and found the purse. He heard what he described as a hissing and gurgling sound coming from Carol. God, that's awful. The two of them left.

Before driving off, they changed clothes, putting the bloody clothes and pipe in a duffel bag. They tossed this into a dumpster at the Cherry Hill Mall, then drove into Philadelphia and tossed the purse in another dumpster. Early the next day, Elaine Sonsini arrived at the radio station for work and heard about Carol Newlander's murder. Fred called her at 8.30 a.m. and told her to trust him. He had nothing to do with Carol's death. Oh, good. Good to know. Thanks for calling and clearing that up. Holy crap on a cracker. After a respectful pause for Fred to mourn his dead wife, you know, like a couple of days, the two of them were hitting the sack together again. A week after Carol's death, Fred asked Elaine to marry him. but she didn't give him an answer right away.

He also said the investigation into Carol's death was getting crazy and that the police would probably want to interview her. If they did, Elaine was to deny their affair and tell them Fred was just her rabbi, who'd helped her when her husband died and then helped her convert to Judaism. Now, most secret affairs are not going to stand up to the kind of scrutiny a murder investigation brings.

When the police brought Elaine in for an interview, they already knew she'd been getting it on at McCorish alone. She flat out denied the affair. well she denied it right up until the investigators told her that the rabbi like a diner at Texas Roadhouse liked to have more than one thing on the side he was having multiple affairs on top of his marriage his busy career and sleeping with elaine most days of the week we've said this before about horny freaks like this who the hell has time for all this and energy like what did this man's day planner look

like i just don't get it man i do my work and do like one load of laundry and i'm wiped i'm done. These people must be on meth. I just do not understand. And he's like around my age or older. How, man. How? It's the narcissism. It's like cocaine. Elaine didn't come clean immediately. She called Fred the next day and told him she wasn't going to lie to the police anymore. He pleaded with her to wait until he could find an attorney for her. But Elaine wasn't born yesterday. She got her own attorney instead of one hired by Fred and told everything she knew to the police the next day. Good choice. Not long after she left the station, Fred called to tell her he'd found an attorney for her. Elaine said she'd just finished coming clean to the cops, and Fred went dead silent on the other end of the line.

She dumped him, and worried for her own safety. Those fears had a silver lining, though. The police department assigned an officer, Lenny Leif, to protect her, and within a month, he and Elaine were dating. And within six months, they were married. I swear to God, this lady, like, just, God, dang, did she have something? kind of like sex magic going on. Magic with the K. It's just like got sorceress powers or something.

Fred Newlander's affairs came to light to both his congregation and his family, which must have been awful for them. He claimed that he and Carol had an arrangement, an open marriage due to their sexual incompatibility, but nobody who knew Carol bought that for a second. There are open marriage people, and there are others who are definitely not open marriage people, and Carol was in the latter group.

Fred resigned as rabbi in February of 1995, one of those jump-before-your-pushed kind of resignations. It was a bad time to be out of work. Fred still owed Len Genoff more than $20,000. He couldn't pay right away, so in a gold-metal-worthy pizs of chutzpah, he hired the man who had beaten Carol to death to investigate her murder,

paying Lynn piecemeal over the next three years with money from himself and his defense team. Now that is a unique. way to launder money. I've never seen that one before. You hire your hit man as a private eye to investigate the murder. Wow. Like the balls of this man are just

the size of Saturn. It's unreal. In 1997, despite no longer having a congregation, Fred officiated at Len Genoff's third wedding, with the ceremony taking place in Fred's living room, where Lynn and Daniels had bludgeoned Carol to death.

Holy shit. Fred was irrevocably tied to Len Genoff, but even a couple weeks before the murder, he was having second thoughts about his hitman and started shopping around for alternatives. He often played racquetball with Myron Pep Levin, an elderly gentleman who had done prison time in the 80s and had a rap sheet that included smelting down old coins with high silver content, illegally selling food stamps, and one arson for profit that was so incompetent it killed one of the arsonists. So he wasn't exactly Tony Soprano, but he was a guy you could reasonably assume

had some underworld connections. During one of their racquetball games, Fred clearly had his mind on other things. When Pep asked him what was up, Fred threw his racket onto the ground and said, I wish I could come home to find my wife dead, just spread out on the floor. Jeez, Louise, dude. Pep told him he was fucking crazy, but Fred pressed him. Did Pepp know anyone who could do it? Ain't no way. Leave me alone, he said.

Pep told both his driver and his girlfriend about the conversation, but didn't come forward to the pleas until 1997. When Fred had still been a rabbi, Pepp had donated $20,000 so the synagogue could purchase an antique Torah. But in 1997, he learned that the Torah was worth $3,000. And Fred had pocketed the difference. Oh, my God. Yeah.

So PEP testified not out of conscience, but out of spite. Hey, it still counts. I do plenty of stuff out of spite. It absolutely still counts. Oh, 100%. Investigators had been convinced that Fred Newlander had been behind his wife's murder almost from the get-go, actually connecting him to the crime was proving tough. Pep Levin's testimony was enough for an arrest, but the case against him was a long way from

solid. Fred was soon out on bail, and he had a new lady love, Victoria Buddinger. Campers of a certain vintage might know her better as Miss Vicky, who weird 60s crooner, Tiny Tim, married live on the Tonight Show when he was 37 and she was just 17. Ew. Shockingly, that marriage did not last, but now 46-year-old Miss Vicky was hooking up with Fred Newlander

shortly after he was charged with his wife's murder. Oh, my lord. She'd stick with him throughout his forthcoming trial. And that trial was about to get a lot tougher for Fred Newlander. The big problem with a murder conspiracy is that you're relying on everyone else involved,

keeping their mouth shut forever. Fred Newlander had involved an attention-seeking fantasist and a paranoid schizophrenic. Solid choices, Fred. Let's see how they work out. In early 1995, Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Nancy Phillips was assigned to the Carol Newlander case and quickly realized that the weird figure always by the rabbi side, Len Genoff, might know more than he was telling. Genoff, who always enjoyed attention, involved Nancy. in his supposed hunt for Carol's killer, taking her to see a psychic who drew a sketch of the murderer,

leading her down false trail after false trail. Oh, my Lord. It was all transparent nonsense, but Phillips stuck with it, cultivating Len as a source. It took months and then years, but Len Genoff finally admitted to Phillips that he had dark secrets that were eating away at him.

Nancy's such a badass. Oh, my God. I know. I know. Bless her. Nancy wasn't so sure because Len Genoff lied almost constantly, but when they met for lunch and Cherry Hill one day, Len said he wanted to come clean, but only after the weekend. Nancy asked if he wouldn't rather talk to a prosecutor right now, and Len agreed. Soon he was telling everything he knew to the Camden County prosecutor. I love that he wanted to get one last weekend in.

He had to pick up a strike cleaning. Like, he just, I'll do it on Monday. Me. Me, every Friday. I'll do it on Monday. So, not long after, Lynn was wearing a wire and talking to Paul Daniels, but Daniels wouldn't play along and kept saying, shh, don't talk, don't talk. But it turned out, the investigators didn't need the wire.

Lynn was able to talk Daniels into coming forward and confessing on his own. So the prosecution now had the two hitmen on board, but the case was still a long way from a slam. dunk. Len Genoff and Paul Daniels were about as far from solid witnesses as you could possibly get. The defense theorized that during his time at the synagogue, Genoff had learned about Carol bringing home the takings from classic cake on Tuesday nights, and he and Daniels had decided to rob her. Fred Newlander wasn't involved at all. Lynn, talkative and boastful, was exactly the kind of guy who would blab about a case to his new best friend, aka his cellmate. The problem was, he was also a more or less random bullshitter,

and he told one cellmate that the rabbi had definitely been behind the whole thing and another that Fred had nothing to do with it. So Genoff's testimony was shaky. But that couldn't be said about the testimony of Rebecca, Fred and Carol's daughter, who Carol had been on the phone with when Len Genoff rang the doorbell on the night of the murder. Over the phone, Carol had told her that Fred said to expect a package.

And Rebecca wasn't the only Newlander kid on the stand. Matthew, the only one still staying at home, said that two days before the murder, his parents had had a rip-roaring fight, which had ended with Carol asking whether Fred wanted to try and save their marriage. No, Fred had said, it's over. He told police everything had been fine in their marriage, and of course it denied any affairs. It was all enough for the jury who found Fred Newlander guilty of murder, felony murder, and second-degree murder in 2002. These were death penalty charges, but the jury declined that option, most likely because of Fred's status as a rabbi. He was sentenced to 30 years to life. He is man and I am his, Miss Vicki declared while still

insisting Fred was innocent, bless her heart. She married someone called John Benson in 2006. Fred's appeals were rejected, and he died in the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton in April of 2024 at the age of 82. Len Genoff and Paul Daniels were both granted some leniency in exchange for their guilty pleas and testimony against Fred Newlander, and both were released in 2014 after serving 12 years. That does not seem like nearly enough. So, yet again, we have a smart man who could not have been any dumber about his crime if he'd been trying to get caught, a man who cared more about being admired and respected and about what was in his pants than he did about his own kits. This man put his own son in a position to find his murdered mother. As you can imagine, the case

rocked the town, and especially the congregation of McCor Shalom, to its foundations. I can only guess what it does to your faith to watch your rabbi convicted of a murder like this. But supposedly, the congregation was able to bounce back under new leadership, and Cherry Hill moved on with its life. But I suspect that for Fred and Carol's children, there's no moving on. This is a betrayal so big and so deep that it would probably take a lifetime to process. We really hope they've managed to find some peace in their lives. The one good thing we can say about their dad is that he's no longer polluting the planet. So that was a wild one, right campers?

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