S1: E9 – Who Killed Carol? Part 1

A young emt answered a call to his home that had fatal consequences.

Matthew Newlander he heard on his radio that a woman was injured a two oh four high gate. There's only one woman a two oh four highgate. That's his mother. She was unconscious and not breathing. Matthew instantly knew that his mother was dead. How did my mom get beaten to death in the living room of her house? Who would ever kill Carol Newlander? They all loved Carol Newlander.

The answer would leave Matthew questioning everything and everyone he knew.

This is such a convoluted, perplexing, disturbing, troubling case, and I wish to God that this had never happened.

Today, we're jumping across the country to the Garden State, New Jersey. Specifically, we're in the suburb of Cherry Hill for the tragic story of a mother of three who was found beaten to death in her home. This is a case of who done it that's shocked a community. We'll explore from the beginning until the very end, when a panel of twelve jurors had to meet the most difficult decision of their lives. I'm slung glass and this is part one of Who Killed Carol on American Homicide.

Philadelphia to the south, New York City to the north.

Arthur mcgeita authored a book about one of Cherry Hill's most revered and respected couples, Fred and Carol Newlander. The two moved there in the nineteen sixties when Fred took a job as a junior rabbi.

He was young, he was up to date. Lots of lots of people were happy that Fred and Carol had arrived.

Only about two percent of Americans practiced Judaism, but with a community of over twenty five thousand, Cherry Hill has one of the largest Jewish populations in the country, making it the perfect place for Rabbi Newlander to start his own synagogue.

In nineteen seventy four, Fred and seventeen eighteen members of the earlier Congregation for Micorshalom. Fred shows that term micorshalom because it means source of peace.

And that peaceful Synegague grew to nearly one thousand congregants in Cherry Hill, and Rabbi Fred and Carroll Newlander were looked at like royalty.

They were committed to this congregation. They were committed to developing something new that had not existed in Cherry Hill before. And that's what so many people have found attractive about Micorschloam and about Fred and Carol.

While Rabbi Newlander worked day and night to his congregation, his wife Carol raised their three children.

They were almost like a unit, separate and apart from their father because they knew that many evenings their father might, if they were lucky, be home for dinner.

And Carol wasn't your typical rabbi's wife. She also ran a popular bakery called Classic Cakes.

This was amazingly successful. It was perhaps the finest bakery in South Jersey. Members of the congregation came there, of.

Course, everyone came for their red velvet cupcakes, breakfast pastries, and assortment of elaborate cakes.

It was also very very profitable, but she was very, very careless with some of the money that was coming into the bakery. She would just stuff it into her purse and come home at night with five thousand, ten thoy fifteen thousand dollars in cash.

All that cash played into Carrol's demy.

On November first, nineteen ninety four, Fred put in his usual work day at Macoorsechalon.

And on that afternoon, Carol had volunteered with pediatric AIDS patients and returned home while her husband was still at the synagogue.

About nine o'clock he went back home. He opened the door, glanced into the living room on his right, Sure Carol Nolander lying on the floor of the living room in a pool of blood.

Just imagine the scene. Fred found Carol face down and badly beaten. It was horrific. This was his wife. Her blood was everywhere. So he ran to the kitchen, grabbed his cordless landline phone and called nine on one.

I want one STAFY emergency.

I just came home.

My wife had on the floor and they'd fulln all over.

I don't know what to do it.

How does she appear to be breathing? They asked if she was alive. He said he didn't know. I don't wanted to say to her.

Should I not touch her?

Just leave everything away it is here and stay on the phone with me until the first police officer getshured.

That's when the rabbi remembered his son, Matthew was working as an emt that evening.

Cool, so I had to send somebody down, Sir, calm down, hold on a second.

Tragically, Matthew Newlander did hear that call and quickly drove his ambulance to his house, nearly colliding with another emergency vehicle when he arrived. But before he got inside to see his mother, a friend grabbed him and carried him away from the house.

Matthew instantly knew that his mother was dead, because if she was not, somebody would have said something comforting to him. Don't worry, she's barely injured. Don't worry, she's being treated right now. Nobody said anything like that.

That's when his dad, Rabbi Fred Newlander, walked up to him.

He was still holding his cord, was still aphone, wasn't using it, wasn't talking to anybody, but his manner was completely composed.

The Rabbi was still dressed in his tailored suit. He wore a temple. He was in shock. He stood on the driveway with their two story home, listening as Matthew frantically asked him question after question about his mother. Each time the Rabbi offered the same answer.

Don't worry, everything will be fine. He was always buttoned up, and he was buttoned up November one, nineteen ninety four, when he saw Carol lying in the living room, when he called nine one one, when he did his version of trying to comfort his son Matthew.

By then all of Highgate Lane and Cherry Hill was a dizzy sea of red and white from the lights of the emergency vehicles parked in front of the Newlanders.

My name is Richard Bumber. November one, nineteen ninety four. I was working as a patrolman for the Cherry Hill Police Department.

Officer Bumbar was one of the first responders that night.

It's a middle upper middle class community, beautiful homes. It's the type of community where everyone had their law and nice, everyone knew each other. Neighbors were very close and very friendly. So when I walked up the driveway of the residence, I noticed a man dressed in his suit, probably in his fifties or so.

That man was, of course, Rabbi Fred Newlander.

He had a portable phone in his hand, and immediately I asked him what was going on. He raised his left hand and pointed with the phone, said she's in there, and I was like, oh, okay. So I entered the house and immediately noticed Carol laying on the floor in the room right to my right. It was a white room, didn't look like it was a room that was used or used commonly. White carpets, white furniture, white walls, and there was just this bright red blood spattered everywhere in

So now the complicated work of trying to figure out what happened began. There was no sign of force entry and no other victims in the house. Just Carol.

Carol Newlander. She was business partners and very prominent bakery and she got into the habit of taking the till home where there was a significant amount of money ten fifteen thousand dollars.

The police wondered if someone was after Carol's money, why did they leave other valuables behind, and how did they get into the house.

They had a lot of expensive items in the house. None of it was gone through. Dressers weren't gone through looking for money or jewelry. Everything was neat and tidy. So the idea of that it was a robbery or a home invasion that went bad didn't seem to line up for what I saw.

It wasn't like the police saw many homicides in Cherry Hill. This was the first homicide in two years, and it involved the beloved wife of Rabbi Fred Newlantern.

The mayor's pulling off, and there's a lot of people showing up at that house. That just seemed like, Wow, this person certainly wasn't just an average citizen.

So the question on everyone's mind that night was why.

There weren't any suspects. There weren't any leads, so the community just thought it was a random act of violence.

So no one could believe Carol Newlander, successful small business owner, mother of three, who just spent her day volunteering with pediatric AIDS patients, had been robbed and beaten to death.

Not only are we dealing with a homicide of a prominent family in Cherry Hill, but Carol's son, Matthew, was working as an EMT that night and he was responding to the house.

Matthew was a young EMT who just wanted to be with his mother to say goodbye, but heartbreakingly, protocol.

Did allow it.

And that was that was difficult. It was unfortunate. I would have wanted to say goodbye to my mom, you know. And that's a situation and it's difficult. It's a part of the job, unfortunately, and you know, you have to deal with it.

His mother was dead and the lives of the Newlander family would never be the same again.

They were an all American family in a sense. It had everything and now they have nothing. Now it's a shame.

On a cold night in November nineteen ninety four, Carol Newlander was murdered in her Cherry Hill, New Jersey home. She was a mother of three who ran a successful bakery business and was the wife of South Jersey's most prominent Rabbi, Fred Newlander.

People are sympathizing with Fred and whispering words of consolation in his ear.

Arthur Macgida wrote a book about Carol Newlander's murder.

Carol's funeral was one of the largest in South Jersey. Dignitaries came, politicians came.

As part of the Jewish tradition, people offer their condolences to the rabbi by saying, may her memory be a blessing to you.

And then they whispered among each other, who would ever kill Carol Newlander? They all loved Carol Neulander, and everybody is sad, and still Fred Neulander is showing virtually no emotion.

There is a Jewish tradition called Shibba. It's the week long period of mourning after a death. During Shiva, your friends, family, and neighbors come by and take care of you. They bring you food, provide you comfort, and run your errands so you can mourn.

How he comported himself that evening and in some of the days that followed, very much flowed from his experience as a rabbi. Fred Neulander dealt with death and birth over and over again. In the course of his professor. He was in to some degree acculturated to death, not to murder, but to.

Death by the time they were sitting Shiva for Carol Newlander, Cherry Hill police officers had already questioned Fred Newlander and two of his children, Rebecca and Matthew. If you remember, Matthew was one of the EMTs who came to the house on the night of his mother's murder.

Matthew told the police about a very, very severe argument that he witnessed between his parents two days before Carol was killed, Carol telling Matthew that Fred didn't want to work on this marriage any longer, that Fred wanted to divorce Carol. And Matthew told the police that Carol had then dashed down to the basement, grabbed some suitcases and threw them at Fred Newlander told him to get out.

But Rabbi Newlander gave to detectives a different take.

He said it was just honky dorry. Everything was fine. Yeah, they had their little bickerings occasionally, whose turn is it to clean out the dishwasher? But theirs was a rock solid marriage.

So there was something else. The police began to focus on. The Newlander's daughter, Rebecca lived out of town and talked with her mom every day. She told the police about two strange conversations she had with her mother. The first happened two weeks before Carol's murder.

Carol pulled up to her driveway after working late at Classic Cakes when a total stranger tapped on her window, rolled the window down, said that the Rabbi had sent him over to deliver some mail, and he handed Carol an ovelope and then he asked if he could use the bathroom. Carol said, of course, and she led him into the house use the bathroom. He left, and shortly after that, Carol's daughter Rebecca called. She said, Mom, what are you doing tonight?

Oh?

I just got home. Somebody came to see Daddy. He isn't there, but he gave me something male that Daddy had been waiting for. And Carol told Rebecca, What's the strange thing is that I opened this envelope but wasn't sealed and there wasn't anything in it. Well, neither Caroll nor Rebecca knew what to make of that.

It was pretty weird, and two weeks later, on the day of Carol's murder, they were on the phone again when the mysterious man returned.

Carol opens the door and Rebecca wants to know who it is, and she says, oh, that's the bathroom man from last week. Rebecca says, well, what does he want? Says oh, Dad told him to come over, and Carol looks out. She sees that the bathroom man is with somebody else. It's cold. She encourages both of them to come in be warm. Rebecca's very concerned that her mother is inviting these two essentials strangers into the house. Carol says,

Detectives asked Rabbi Newlander if he knew who this mysterious visitor was.

He claimed to have no idea what the police were talking about. He had never sent anybody over to the house with a message for him. He had never told Carol that somebody would be coming either of those evenings.

Detectives came to believe the bathroom man and his accomplice knew the rabbi schedule and had been casing the house in order to rob and murder Carol.

Fred very soon was telling people the Colombians did this to Carol. The Colombians who worked at Classic Cakes and knew that Carol came home with loads of cash that never panned out. There were rumors that the Russian Jewish mafia was behind this, so there was theory after theory after theory.

Rabbi Newlander told detectives he was at Micorsia Lome when Carol was murdered. They interviewed a dozen or so people at the synagogue and his alibi checked out.

Yes, he was at the temple in fact, the moment that Carol was killed, and that's why when he came back home the blood in the living room was still very, very fresh.

This put detectives back at square one. So the weeks dragged on without any updates about the investigation, until finally, just a couple of days before the Christmas holiday, the police called a press conference, but the new Landers were nowhere to be found. One reporter asked the prosecutor if Rabbi Newlander was considered a suspect. He paused for a moment and said, we don't rule in, we don't rule out.

They didn't know what to make of that.

Well, Rabbi Newlander did. He was furious he had an alibi and questioned why the police hadn't cleared him, so he hired a PI named len Jenoff with an impressive resume that included a stint with the FBI, and Cia.

Jenof seemed like the right person to turn to.

Rabbi Newlander knew len Jenoff, he met him a couple of years earlier and helped him turn his life around.

Leonard Jenoff was a difficult person to define.

Back in the nineteen eighties, len Jenoff accidentally struck and killed someone who was pushing their stalled vehicle on the highway. Although Jenoff was never charged, he fell into a deep depression and turned to booze. Years later, he was introduced to Rabbi Newlander, who offered to help him and get back on his feet.

Len Jenoff left Fred Newlander's office that day, fully committed to doing almost anything that Fred wanted him to do, because he saw the Rabbi as his savior, as the next best thing to his Messiah.

So now you had the police and a very motivated len Jenoff working to find Carol Newlander's killer. Those investigations would uncover secrets that would shake Cherry Hill to its soul. Rabbi Fred Newlander had a rock solid alibi on the night of his wife Carol's murder, So why didn't the police rule him out as a suspect.

For years there were rumors that Fred was a little bit too much of a lady's man.

Arthur mcgeita wrote a book about the Newlanders.

He made a habit of going from woman to woman to woman and touching her and giving them compliments. And they always just happened to be the prettiest woman in the congregation that evening.

So it turned out the leader of the community was not so pious. And back in nineteen ninety two, one particular woman called Rabbi Fred Newlander's eye. Don't let the broadcasters see that I have all this makeup over here.

It's filming it for convention.

When is the convention?

September? Oh, thanks a lot, here, let me hide my mirror.

Elaine Sensini was a prominent radio personality in Philadelphia, and so was her husband, Ken Garland. Elaine met Rabbi Newlander when her husband Ken was dying of leukemia, and.

A day or two after that, Fred Newlander called Ewaine Suncini asked how she was. She said, I'm fine, I'm coping. Fred asked if he could come over to her house. She agreed. They had lunch together. He asked if he could return soon, She said he couldn't, and they engaged in what the police would soon called intimacy.

He moves in on a widow a couple days after her husband's death, and then despite Rabbi Newlander's eighteen hour work day and Elaine's early morning radio schedule, the two managed to carry on an affair for nearly two years.

They would meet at Olaine's house two, three, four times a week. Fred often towed her that she satisfied him sexually in a way that Carol never did. He alluded to the possibility that he might get divorced from Carol furrowing, but sometimes he would hedge on that because he wasn't certain how that would affect his career.

So with all this secrecy, how did detectives learn about Elaine. Well, they obtained a copy of Rabbi Newlander's phone records, and something in those phone records from the morning after Carol's murder stood out.

One of the first people Fred called was Awayne Sonciney. Why would he possibly do that?

Detectives questioned Elaine, and they shared some information. She did not know about Fred Newland.

She's not the only girlfriend that Fred hadn't and they named the others one, two, three, and perhaps four.

Elaine was shocked and pissed, and that's when the gloves came off.

She tells the police they've had a long standing romance. When she returns home that night, she calls Fred. It says Fred I told the police everything. You're on your.

Own noun news of Rabbi Newlander's affairs Rock Cherry Hill and mccorchelone. These were women he had been counseling.

How could Fred Newlander, the stalwart of the community, the founder of Macorse alone, this charismatic, well educated, enlightened individual who had this wonderful family and terrific wife, be playing around on the side. Who could possibly have time to do that anyway? Seems that Fred Newlander didn't.

Fred admitted to behaviors he was not proud of and stepped away from m course alone. In his letter to his congregants, Ye added that he had nothing to do with his wife's death. It was the same message he gave Elaine Sensini in the days after Carol's murder. Being an adulter didn't make him a murderer.

Fred invited Elaine into his office at the temple and said he loves her, said he wanted to marry her when the time would be appropriate.

The police didn't confirm or denial ing as a suspecting Carol Newlander's murder. It was much like the situation with the rabbi.

After one's spouse he is murdered, the surviving spouse always becomes the first suspect.

Attorney Jeff Zucker represented Rabbi Newlander. His client had a lot of explaining to do. Here's Jeff Zucker.

And once things started to come out about the affairs that he had, and the fact that the affairs involved congregants that he was counseling, then I think the tide started to change.

And as you can imagine, the local press was having a field day with stories of the adulterous man of God.

We thought the media attention was so horribly profuse and horribly against him.

As reporters hounded the Rabbi and Elaine sin Seemi for comment, Elaine asked the Cherry Hill Police Department for protection. Two officers were then dispatched to keep an eye on her.

The interesting thing about Elaine Suncini is that she also had an involvement with one of the police officers in this case, Larry Leaf.

Okay, so get this. Larry Leaf was one of the officers assigned to watch her, and in another twist to this story, Elaynin Officer Leif became romantically involved and that created a serious conflict of interest, especially when he was caught rummaging through police files related to the case.

We believe that Larry Leaf gave her access to certain of the investigative files in the cherryhol Police Department. Elaine Soncceni she incidentally ended up marrying Larry Leaf.

So internal affairs investigated Officer Leaf and later cleared him of any wrongdoing.

That was another strange twist in this whole case. This is one of the most bizarre cases I've been involved in in my forty five years of legal experience.

With reporters constantly hounding her. Elaine Sansini used her radio show to come clean about her affair with Rabbi Newland in the summer of nineteen ninety five. She tearfully apologized on the air for what she called some errors in judgment.

Sonny Now in seventy eight degrees. I apologize to you for these guys.

But lost in the juicy stories of love, lust and adultery were the Newlander children.

I felt bad for the family I did. I felt bad for the kids.

Their mother's murder was still unsolved, and the only thing they're hearing is story after story of their father's infidelity.

Every day something else would come out in the local papers. Because of the horrible negative publicity he was getting, we thought it was time for him to speak out to say I had nothing to do with this. So we called in the local television stations let him read a prepared statement.

I categorically deny that I murdered my wife or arranged in any way to have her killed.

It was brief, but we thought it would be good for the public to hear him speak and to have him deny the charges.

The town of Cherry Hill struggled with their beloved rabbis meteoric fall from grace. First they had to process news of his affairs, and now there are rumbles about him also being a murderer.

A person who is having an affair maybe morally at fault, but it's a huge jump from someone having an affair to become a murderer.

And it didn't help that the police remained mum about potential suspects and shared very little about their investigation.

They were looking into Leeds for years and he came up with a bunch of dead ends.

At the same time, the rabbi's private investigator, len Jenoff, used his FBI and CIA background to do his own research.

He one time came into our office with a sketch of what he said was a composite drawing of who the person who killed Carol Newlander would be. And we told the Rabbi, please, have nothing more to do with len Jenoff. He's a wild card. He's running up all kinds of blind alleys and making no sense. If you're going to continue working with this guy, we can't represent you anymore.

You can't do it.

That's because around that time some bizarre news about len Jenoff surfaced.

Len got married and asked the Rabbi to perform the ceremony at the Rabbi's home, and.

Their wedding pictures of them arm in arm holding each other.

That seems nice, But when the police looked closely at these pictures of the Rabbi with lenn On his wedding day, they noticed something shocking, like.

Oh my god. They took the pictures right where Carol was laying and.

She was murdered.

The ceremony was performed at the exact spot where they found Carol Newlander's body. It's bizarre, but that's that's where it was. Which was also another very strange twist.

In this whole case.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, well that scene doesn't work here, because this one left the police speechless.

It was hard for me to believe that this really could have happened.

That was the first twist of many to come. In part two of Who Killed Carol, the police get an unexpected confession from someone no one suspected. I'm Smoan Glass. That's next time. On American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail