A New Jersey rabbi who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for hiring hitmen to kill his wife has been found dead in a prison infirmary, officials announced late Friday.
Fred Neulander, 82, was discovered unconscious by prison staff at the New Jersey State Prison on Wednesday, as reported by NBC 10. After finding Neulander unresponsive, the staff performed CPR before rushing him to a nearby hospital. Unfortunately, Neulander was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. The exact cause of his death has yet to be disclosed, according to a report.
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In 2002, Neulander received a prison sentence after his first trial resulted in a hung jury. He had paid the two men $30,000 to murder his wife, 52-year-old Carol Neulander, the mother of the couple’s three children, in 1994. Court filings suggest that the killers beat Carol Neulander to death in the family’s Cherry Hill home, bludgeoning her with a metal pipe.
At the time, Fred Neulander was the head rabbi of Cherry Hill synagogue, and Carol was a co-founder of Cherry Hill’s Classic Cake bakery, a local boutique shop.
During Neulander’s murder trial, one of the hitmen claimed that Fred Neulander wanted his wife dead so that he could have an affair with a Philadelphia radio personality.
The murder plan gave the impression that there had been a robbery in the house; however, investigators stated at the time that almost nothing inside the house had been distributed, which they considered strange.
According to the police investigation, Carol Neulander was on the phone with the couple’s daughter, Rebecca Neulander Rockoff, when the hitmen entered the family residence.
A state appeals court denied an attempt to overturn Fred Neulander’s sentence in 2016.
Neulander was the first rabbi at Congregation M’kor Shalom, a Reform Jewish synagogue in Cherry Hill. That synagogue closed in 2022 after combining with another one.
Neulander had completed 22 of his 30-year prison sentence at the time of his death.
The story captivated Philadelphia and developed a large following on cable television, inspiring documentaries, crime series, and even a musical.
The exhibition faced protests from the Neulander family, previous congregants, and synagogue officials, leading to its eventual cancellation.
