December 12, 2024 • 33 mins
Introducing American Homicide. American Homicide explores mysterious and iconic murder cases from across America. Whether it’s the spacious skies and vast deserts of New Mexico or the backwaters of the Louisiana Bayou, these murders are connected to their settings. Journalist Sloane Glass leads you through each crime with interviews from the victim's family and investigators.
Please take a moment to listen and subscribe to American Homicide by clicking here. You will find American Homicide on the iHeartApp, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad-free, you can sign up for iHeartTrueCrime+, exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Thank you for listening!
American Homicide
S1: E9 – Who Killed Carol? Part 1
A young EMT responded to a call at his home. Inside, he found his mother, Carol Neulander, brutally murdered. Carol was the wife of Rabbi Fred Neulander. The investigation reveals startling details about Rabbi Fred and Carol’s marriage and a mysterious suspect known as “the bathroom man”.
Reach out to the American Homicide team by emailing us at AmericanHomicidePod@gmail.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, creating ACN listeners, This is Ben Fetterman. I'm a
producer and writer for creating a con the story of
bitcont Today, I wanted to share another project the Team
Aglass podcast has been working on. It's called American Homicide.
This new true crime series explores some of the most
mysterious and iconic murder cases from across America, whether it's
(00:21):
the spacious skies and vast desert of New Mexico where
the backwaters of the Louisiana Bayou. American Homicide examines how
these murders are shaped by their unique landscapes, and in turn,
how these tragedies have shaped the fabric of these American
communities forever. The show is hosted by Acclaim journalists and
(00:42):
investigative reporter Sloane Glass, who speaks with the victims, family members,
law enforcement, and eyewitnesses to really understand what caused these
senseless crimes. Today, I'm sharing a three part story from
the Garden State, New Jersey. The crime took place just
two hours south from where Ray Trepanny and Johnny Begod
(01:03):
grew up in Cherry Hill. In part one of Who
Killed Carol, a young emt responds to a call to
his childhood home. Inside, he found his mother brutally murdered.
As the investigation ensues, this EMT would learn more about
his mother and his family than he ever expected. If
(01:25):
you enjoyed this episode of American Homicide, please search for
it wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can find
all the episodes released so far, and be sure to
subscribe to the show and leave a review. A five
star rating goes a long way. If you like part
one of Who Killed Carol, don't worry. You can keep
listening now. Part two is also available right here on
(01:48):
the Creating a con feed, and if you want to
listen to part three, it's available now add free, just
sign up for iHeart True Crime Plus exclusively on Apple podcasts.
New episodes of American Homicide will be dropping every Thursday
in twenty twenty five on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts,
(02:08):
or wherever you get your podcasts. So here is part
one of Who Killed Carol? Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
A young EMT answered a call to his home that
had fatal consequences.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
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 for 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
(02:45):
would ever kill Carol Newlander? They all loved Carol Newlander?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
The answer would leave Matthew questioning everything and everyone he knew.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
This is such a convoluted, perplexing, disturbing, troubling, and I
wish to God that this had never happened.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
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 it from the beginning until the very end,
when a panel of twelve jurors had to make the
(03:27):
most difficult decision of their lives. I'm Slow Glass and
this is part one of Who Killed Carol? On American Homicide.
Just to note that some of this content is graphic.
Please take care while listening. Consider the town of Cherry Hill,
New Jersey, It's the perfect spot for people who want
(03:48):
to live close enough yet far enough away from two
major cities.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Philadelphia to the south, New York City to the north.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Arthur mcgea a third 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.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
He was young, he was up to date. Lots and
lots of people were happy that Fred and Carol had arrived.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Only about two percent of Americans practiced Judaism, though 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.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
In nineteen seventy four, Fred and seventeen eighteen members of
the earlier Congregation for Macorshalom. Fred shows that term Macorshalom
because it means source of.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
They were admitted 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
macurscher Loom and about Fred and Carol.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
While Rabbi Newlander worked day and night tending to his congregation,
his wife Carol raised their three children.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
And Carol wasn't your typical rabbi's wife. She also ran
a popular bakery called Classic Cakes.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
This was amazingly successful. It was perhaps the finest bakery
in South Jersey. Members of the congregation came there, of.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Course, everyone came for their red velvet cupcakes, breakfast pastries
and assortment of elaborate cakes.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
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 thousand,
and fifteen thousand dollars in cash.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
All that cash played into Carol's demise.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
On November first, nineteen ninety four, Fred put in his
usual work day at Mccorschallan.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
And on that afternoon, Carol had volunteered with pediatric AIDS
patients and returned home while her husband was still at
the synagogue.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
About nine o'clock he went back home. He opened the door,
glanced into the living room. On his right sare Carol
Nolander lying on the floor of the living room in
a pool of blood.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
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.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
I want one sat the emergency. I just came home.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
My wife has on the floor and they're blown all over.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
I don't know what to do it. Does she appear
to be breathing?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
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?
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Just leave everything the way it is here and stay
on the phone with me until the first police officer getshured.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
That's when the Rabbi remembered his son, Matthew, was working
as an emt that evening.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Cool, so I have to send somebody down, Sir, calm down,
hold on a second.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
That's when his dad, Rabbi Fred Newlander, walked up to him.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
He was still holding his cord, was stelephone, wasn't using
it wasn't talking to anybody, but his manner was completely composed.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
The Rabbi was still dressed in his tailored suit. He
wore a temple. He was in shock. He stood on
the driveway if their two story home, listening as Matthew
frantically asked him question after question about his mother. Each
time the Rabbi offered the same answer.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
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.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
My name is Richard Bumber. November one, nineteen ninety four,
I was working as a patrolman for the Terry Hill
Police Apartment.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Officer Bumbar was one of the first responders that night.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
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 residents,
I noticed a man dressed in his suit, probably in
his fifties or so.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
That man was, of course, Rabbi Fred Newlan.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
He had affordable 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, okay, So I entered the house
and immediately noticed Carol laying on the floor in the
(10:22):
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
that room. When I examined the body, I noticed that
there were several indentations to her skull, her fingers were
(10:44):
all broken back and opened from defensive wounds. There was
a tremendous amount of pulled blood. She was cold. It
was obvious to me that somebody had bludgeoned to death,
like repead strikes to her head.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
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.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
Carol Newlander. She was business partners and a 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.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
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.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
It wasn't like the police sold many homicides in Cherry Hill.
This was the first homicide in two years and it
involved the below dwife of Rabbi Fred Newlander.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
So the question on everyone's mind that night was.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Why there weren't any suspects. There weren't any leads, so
the community just thought it was a random act of violence.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
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.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Matthew was a young emt who just wanted to be
with his mother to say goodbye, but heartbreakingly, protocol didn't
allow it.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
And that's that 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.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
His mother was dead and the lives of the Newlander
family would never be the same again.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
They were an all American family in a sense. It
had everything and now they have nothing.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
You know.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
It's it's a shame.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
People are sympathizing with Fred and whispering words of consolation
in his ear.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Arthur mc wrote a book about Carol Newlander's murder.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Carol's funeral was one of the largest in South Jersey,
dignitaries came, politicians came.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
As part of the Jewish tradition, people offer their condolences
to the rabbi by saying, may her memory be a
blessing to you.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
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 Newlander is showing virtual in
no emotion.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
There is a Jewish tradition called Shibba. It's the week
long period of mourning after a death. During Shippa, 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.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
How he comported himself that evening and in some of
the days that followed, very much flowed from his experience
as a rabbi. Fred Newlander dealt with death and birth
over and over again in the course of his profession.
(15:16):
He was in to some degree acculturated to death, not
to murder, but to death.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
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.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
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 gone this marriage any longer, that Fred wanted to
divorce Carol. And Matthew told the police that Carol had
(16:05):
been dashed down to the basement, grabbed some suitcases and
threw them at Fred. Newlander told them to.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Get out, but Rabbi Newlander gave detectives a different take.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
He said it was just Honkey 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.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
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.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Carol pulled up to her driveway after working late at
Clastic 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
(17:08):
an ovelope and then he asked if he could use
the bathroom. Carol said, of course, and she led him
into the house. He used 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
(17:28):
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 Carroll nor Rebecca knew what
to make of that.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
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.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Carol opens the door and Rebecca won 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
(18:14):
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 essential strangers into the house. Carol says,
there's nothing to worry about. The door is closed, and
that was the last that anyone in Carol's family heard
(18:38):
from her.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Detectives asked Rabbi Newlander if he knew who this mysterious
visitor was.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Detectives came to believe the bathroom man and his accomplice
knew the rabbi schedule and had been kasing the house
in order to rob and murder Carol.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
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 wads of cash. That
never panned out. There were rumors that the Russian Jewish
mafia was behind this, so there was theory after theory.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
After theory, Rabbi Newlander told detectives he was at Macorsa
Lome when Carol was murdered. They interviewed a dozen or
so people at the synagogue and his alibi checked out.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
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 Newlanders were nowhere
to be found. One reporter asked the prosecutor if Rabbi
Newlander was considered a suspect. He paused for a moment
(20:19):
and said, we don't rule in, we don't rule out.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
They didn't know what to make of that.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Jenoff seemed like the right person. To turn to.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Rabbi Newlander knew len Jenoff, he met him a couple
of years earlier, and helped him turn his life around.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Leonard Jenoff was a difficult person to define.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
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 get back
on his feet.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
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 apple on the
(22:00):
night of his wife Carol's murder, So why didn't the
police rule him out as a suspect.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
For years, there were rumors that Fred was a little
bit too much of a lady's man.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Arthur Mgida wrote a book about the Newlanders.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
He made a habit of going from woman to woman
to woman and touching her and giving them compliment. And
they always just happened to be the prettiest woman in
the congregation that evening.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
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.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Don't let the broadcasters see that I have all this
makeup over here.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
It's filming it for convention.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
When is the convention? September?
Speaker 5 (22:45):
Oh, thanks a lot.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Here, let me hide my mirror.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
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.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
A day or two after that, Fred Newlander called Elaine Sancini.
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
(23:23):
in what the police would soon called intimacy.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
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.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
They would meet at Elaine's house two, three, four times
a week. Fred often towed her that she satisfied him
sexually in a way that never did. He alluded to
the possibility that he might get divorced from Carol fur Olin,
(24:10):
but sometimes he would hedge on that because he wasn't
certain how that would affect his career.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
One of the first people Fred called was Awayne Suncini.
Why would he possibly do that?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Detectives questioned Elaine and they shared some information she did
not know about Fred Newlanter.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
She's not the only girlfriend that Fred hadn't and they
named the others one, two, three, and perhaps four.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Elaine was shocked and pissed, and that's when the gloves
came off.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Own noun news of Rabbi Newlanders affairs, Rock Cherry Hill
and mccorchelone. These were women he had been counseling.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
How could Fred Newlander, the stalwart of the community, the
founder of macorsch 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 did.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Fred admitted to behaviors he was not proud of, and
stepped away from mccorchelon. In his letter to his congregants,
he 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.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Fred invited Lane into his office at the temple and
said he loves her, said he wanted to marry her
when the time would be appropriate.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
The police didn't confirm or denial ing as a suspect
in Carol Newlander's murder. It was much like the situation
with the rabbi.
Speaker 6 (26:22):
After one's spouse he's murdered, the surviving spouse always becomes
the first suspect.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Attorney Jeff Zucker represented Rabbi Newlander. His client had a
lot of explaining to do.
Speaker 6 (26:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
And as you can imagine, the local press was having
a field day with stories of the adulterous man of God.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
We thought the media attention was so horribly profuse and
horribly against him.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
As reporters hounded the rabbi and Elaine Sensini for comment,
Elaine asked the Cherry Hill Police Department for protection. Two
officers were then dispatched to keep an eye on her.
Speaker 6 (27:15):
The interesting thing about Elaine Suncini is that she also
had an involvement with one of the police officers in
this case, Larry Leaf.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Okay, so get this. Larry Leaf was one of the
officers assigned to watch her, and in another twist to
this story, Elaine and 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.
Speaker 6 (27:48):
We believe that Larry Leaf gave her access to certain
of the investigative files in the Cherry Hill Police Department.
Elaine Sonceni she incidentally ended up marying Larry.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Leaf, so internal affairs investigated Officer Leaf and later cleared
him of any wrongdoing.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
With reporters constantly hounding her. Elaine Sansini used her radio
show to come clean about her affair with Rabbi Newlantern
in the summer of nineteen ninety five. She tearfully apologized
on the air for what she called some errors in judgment.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
Sonny now in seventy eight degrees, I apologize to you
for these guys.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
But lost in the juicy stories of love, lust and
adultery were the Newlander children.
Speaker 6 (28:49):
I felt bad for the family I did. I felt
bad for the kids.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Their mother's murder was still unsolved, and the only thing
they're hearing is story after story of their father's infidelity.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
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.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I categorically deny that I murdered my wife or arranged
in any way to have her killed.
Speaker 6 (29:31):
It was brief, but we thought it would be good
for the public to hear him speak and to have
him deny the charges.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
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.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
And it didn't help that the police remained mum about
potential suspects and shared very little about their investigation.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
They were looking into Leeds for years, and they came
up with a bunch of dead ends.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
At the same time, the rabbi's private investigator, len Jenoff,
used his FBI and CIA background to do his own research.
Speaker 6 (30:28):
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.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
He's a wild card.
Speaker 6 (30:47):
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.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
You can't do it.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
That's because around that time some bizarre news about len
Jenoff's surfaced.
Speaker 6 (31:04):
Len got married and asked the Rabbi to perform the
ceremony at the rabbi's home, and.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
Their wedding pictures of them arm in arm holding each other.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
That seems nice. But when the police looked closely at
these pictures of the Rabbi with Len on his wedding day,
they noticed something shocking.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Like, oh my god. They took the pictures right where
Carol was laying, and she was murdered.
Speaker 6 (31:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
In this whole case.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
If a picture is worth a thousand words, well that
scene doesn't work here. Because this one left the police speechless.
Speaker 6 (31:56):
It was hard for me to believe that this really
could have happened.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
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 Sloan Glass.
That's next time on American Homicide. You can contact the
(32:24):
American Homicide team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod
at gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail
dot com. American Homicide is hosted and written by me
Sloane Glass and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a
division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
(32:46):
The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans.
The series is also written and produced by Todd Gans,
with additional writing by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunny. Our
associate producer is Kristin melt Curie. Our iHeart typ is
Ali Perry and Jessica Crimechack. Audio editing and mixing by
(33:06):
Matt Delvecchio, Additional editing support from Nico Ruga, Tanner Robbins,
Britt Robashow, and Patrick Walsh. American Homicide theme song was
composed by Oliver Baines of Neiser Music Library, provided by
my Music. Follow American Homicide on Apple Podcasts and please
(33:27):
rate and review American Homicide. Your five star review goes
a long way towards helping others find this show. For
more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts,
Hey, creating ACN listeners, This is Ben Fetterman. I'm a
producer and writer for creating a con the story of
bitcont Today, I wanted to share another project the Team
Aglass podcast has been working on. It's called American Homicide.
This new true crime series explores some of the most
mysterious and iconic murder cases from across America, whether it's
(00:21):
the spacious skies and vast desert of New Mexico where
the backwaters of the Louisiana Bayou. American Homicide examines how
these murders are shaped by their unique landscapes, and in turn,
how these tragedies have shaped the fabric of these American
communities forever. The show is hosted by Acclaim journalists and
(00:42):
investigative reporter Sloane Glass, who speaks with the victims, family members,
law enforcement, and eyewitnesses to really understand what caused these
senseless crimes. Today, I'm sharing a three part story from
the Garden State, New Jersey. The crime took place just
two hours south from where Ray Trepanny and Johnny Begod
(01:03):
grew up in Cherry Hill. In part one of Who
Killed Carol, a young emt responds to a call to
his childhood home. Inside, he found his mother brutally murdered.
As the investigation ensues, this EMT would learn more about
his mother and his family than he ever expected. If
(01:25):
you enjoyed this episode of American Homicide, please search for
it wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can find
all the episodes released so far, and be sure to
subscribe to the show and leave a review. A five
star rating goes a long way. If you like part
one of Who Killed Carol, don't worry. You can keep
listening now. Part two is also available right here on
(01:48):
the Creating a con feed, and if you want to
listen to part three, it's available now add free, just
sign up for iHeart True Crime Plus exclusively on Apple podcasts.
New episodes of American Homicide will be dropping every Thursday
in twenty twenty five on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts,
(02:08):
or wherever you get your podcasts. So here is part
one of Who Killed Carol? Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
A young EMT answered a call to his home that
had fatal consequences.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
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 for 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
(02:45):
would ever kill Carol Newlander? They all loved Carol Newlander?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
The answer would leave Matthew questioning everything and everyone he knew.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
This is such a convoluted, perplexing, disturbing, troubling, and I
wish to God that this had never happened.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
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 it from the beginning until the very end,
when a panel of twelve jurors had to make the
(03:27):
most difficult decision of their lives. I'm Slow Glass and
this is part one of Who Killed Carol? On American Homicide.
Just to note that some of this content is graphic.
Please take care while listening. Consider the town of Cherry Hill,
New Jersey, It's the perfect spot for people who want
(03:48):
to live close enough yet far enough away from two
major cities.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Philadelphia to the south, New York City to the north.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Arthur mcgea a third 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.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
He was young, he was up to date. Lots and
lots of people were happy that Fred and Carol had arrived.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Only about two percent of Americans practiced Judaism, though 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.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
In nineteen seventy four, Fred and seventeen eighteen members of
the earlier Congregation for Macorshalom. Fred shows that term Macorshalom
because it means source of.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
They were admitted 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
macurscher Loom and about Fred and Carol.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
While Rabbi Newlander worked day and night tending to his congregation,
his wife Carol raised their three children.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
And Carol wasn't your typical rabbi's wife. She also ran
a popular bakery called Classic Cakes.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
This was amazingly successful. It was perhaps the finest bakery
in South Jersey. Members of the congregation came there, of.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Course, everyone came for their red velvet cupcakes, breakfast pastries
and assortment of elaborate cakes.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
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 thousand,
and fifteen thousand dollars in cash.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
All that cash played into Carol's demise.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
On November first, nineteen ninety four, Fred put in his
usual work day at Mccorschallan.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
And on that afternoon, Carol had volunteered with pediatric AIDS
patients and returned home while her husband was still at
the synagogue.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
About nine o'clock he went back home. He opened the door,
glanced into the living room. On his right sare Carol
Nolander lying on the floor of the living room in
a pool of blood.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
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.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
I want one sat the emergency. I just came home.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
My wife has on the floor and they're blown all over.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
I don't know what to do it. Does she appear
to be breathing?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
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?
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Just leave everything the way it is here and stay
on the phone with me until the first police officer getshured.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
That's when the Rabbi remembered his son, Matthew, was working
as an emt that evening.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Cool, so I have to send somebody down, Sir, calm down,
hold on a second.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
That's when his dad, Rabbi Fred Newlander, walked up to him.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
He was still holding his cord, was stelephone, wasn't using
it wasn't talking to anybody, but his manner was completely composed.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
The Rabbi was still dressed in his tailored suit. He
wore a temple. He was in shock. He stood on
the driveway if their two story home, listening as Matthew
frantically asked him question after question about his mother. Each
time the Rabbi offered the same answer.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
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.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
My name is Richard Bumber. November one, nineteen ninety four,
I was working as a patrolman for the Terry Hill
Police Apartment.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Officer Bumbar was one of the first responders that night.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
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 residents,
I noticed a man dressed in his suit, probably in
his fifties or so.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
That man was, of course, Rabbi Fred Newlan.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
He had affordable 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, okay, So I entered the house
and immediately noticed Carol laying on the floor in the
(10:22):
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
that room. When I examined the body, I noticed that
there were several indentations to her skull, her fingers were
(10:44):
all broken back and opened from defensive wounds. There was
a tremendous amount of pulled blood. She was cold. It
was obvious to me that somebody had bludgeoned to death,
like repead strikes to her head.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
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.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
Carol Newlander. She was business partners and a 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.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
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.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
It wasn't like the police sold many homicides in Cherry Hill.
This was the first homicide in two years and it
involved the below dwife of Rabbi Fred Newlander.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
So the question on everyone's mind that night was.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Why there weren't any suspects. There weren't any leads, so
the community just thought it was a random act of violence.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
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.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Matthew was a young emt who just wanted to be
with his mother to say goodbye, but heartbreakingly, protocol didn't
allow it.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
And that's that 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.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
His mother was dead and the lives of the Newlander
family would never be the same again.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
They were an all American family in a sense. It
had everything and now they have nothing.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
You know.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
It's it's a shame.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
People are sympathizing with Fred and whispering words of consolation
in his ear.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Arthur mc wrote a book about Carol Newlander's murder.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Carol's funeral was one of the largest in South Jersey,
dignitaries came, politicians came.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
As part of the Jewish tradition, people offer their condolences
to the rabbi by saying, may her memory be a
blessing to you.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
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 Newlander is showing virtual in
no emotion.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
There is a Jewish tradition called Shibba. It's the week
long period of mourning after a death. During Shippa, 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.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
How he comported himself that evening and in some of
the days that followed, very much flowed from his experience
as a rabbi. Fred Newlander dealt with death and birth
over and over again in the course of his profession.
(15:16):
He was in to some degree acculturated to death, not
to murder, but to death.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
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.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
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 gone this marriage any longer, that Fred wanted to
divorce Carol. And Matthew told the police that Carol had
(16:05):
been dashed down to the basement, grabbed some suitcases and
threw them at Fred. Newlander told them to.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Get out, but Rabbi Newlander gave detectives a different take.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
He said it was just Honkey 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.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
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.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Carol pulled up to her driveway after working late at
Clastic 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
(17:08):
an ovelope and then he asked if he could use
the bathroom. Carol said, of course, and she led him
into the house. He used 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
(17:28):
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 Carroll nor Rebecca knew what
to make of that.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
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.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Carol opens the door and Rebecca won 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
(18:14):
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 essential strangers into the house. Carol says,
there's nothing to worry about. The door is closed, and
that was the last that anyone in Carol's family heard
(18:38):
from her.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Detectives asked Rabbi Newlander if he knew who this mysterious
visitor was.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Detectives came to believe the bathroom man and his accomplice
knew the rabbi schedule and had been kasing the house
in order to rob and murder Carol.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
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 wads of cash. That
never panned out. There were rumors that the Russian Jewish
mafia was behind this, so there was theory after theory.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
After theory, Rabbi Newlander told detectives he was at Macorsa
Lome when Carol was murdered. They interviewed a dozen or
so people at the synagogue and his alibi checked out.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
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 Newlanders were nowhere
to be found. One reporter asked the prosecutor if Rabbi
Newlander was considered a suspect. He paused for a moment
(20:19):
and said, we don't rule in, we don't rule out.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
They didn't know what to make of that.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Jenoff seemed like the right person. To turn to.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Rabbi Newlander knew len Jenoff, he met him a couple
of years earlier, and helped him turn his life around.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Leonard Jenoff was a difficult person to define.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
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 get back
on his feet.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
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 apple on the
(22:00):
night of his wife Carol's murder, So why didn't the
police rule him out as a suspect.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
For years, there were rumors that Fred was a little
bit too much of a lady's man.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Arthur Mgida wrote a book about the Newlanders.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
He made a habit of going from woman to woman
to woman and touching her and giving them compliment. And
they always just happened to be the prettiest woman in
the congregation that evening.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
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.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Don't let the broadcasters see that I have all this
makeup over here.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
It's filming it for convention.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
When is the convention? September?
Speaker 5 (22:45):
Oh, thanks a lot.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Here, let me hide my mirror.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
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.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
A day or two after that, Fred Newlander called Elaine Sancini.
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
(23:23):
in what the police would soon called intimacy.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
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.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
They would meet at Elaine's house two, three, four times
a week. Fred often towed her that she satisfied him
sexually in a way that never did. He alluded to
the possibility that he might get divorced from Carol fur Olin,
(24:10):
but sometimes he would hedge on that because he wasn't
certain how that would affect his career.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
One of the first people Fred called was Awayne Suncini.
Why would he possibly do that?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Detectives questioned Elaine and they shared some information she did
not know about Fred Newlanter.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
She's not the only girlfriend that Fred hadn't and they
named the others one, two, three, and perhaps four.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Elaine was shocked and pissed, and that's when the gloves
came off.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Own noun news of Rabbi Newlanders affairs, Rock Cherry Hill
and mccorchelone. These were women he had been counseling.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
How could Fred Newlander, the stalwart of the community, the
founder of macorsch 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 did.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Fred admitted to behaviors he was not proud of, and
stepped away from mccorchelon. In his letter to his congregants,
he 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.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Fred invited Lane into his office at the temple and
said he loves her, said he wanted to marry her
when the time would be appropriate.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
The police didn't confirm or denial ing as a suspect
in Carol Newlander's murder. It was much like the situation
with the rabbi.
Speaker 6 (26:22):
After one's spouse he's murdered, the surviving spouse always becomes
the first suspect.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Attorney Jeff Zucker represented Rabbi Newlander. His client had a
lot of explaining to do.
Speaker 6 (26:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
And as you can imagine, the local press was having
a field day with stories of the adulterous man of God.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
We thought the media attention was so horribly profuse and
horribly against him.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
As reporters hounded the rabbi and Elaine Sensini for comment,
Elaine asked the Cherry Hill Police Department for protection. Two
officers were then dispatched to keep an eye on her.
Speaker 6 (27:15):
The interesting thing about Elaine Suncini is that she also
had an involvement with one of the police officers in
this case, Larry Leaf.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Okay, so get this. Larry Leaf was one of the
officers assigned to watch her, and in another twist to
this story, Elaine and 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.
Speaker 6 (27:48):
We believe that Larry Leaf gave her access to certain
of the investigative files in the Cherry Hill Police Department.
Elaine Sonceni she incidentally ended up marying Larry.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Leaf, so internal affairs investigated Officer Leaf and later cleared
him of any wrongdoing.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
With reporters constantly hounding her. Elaine Sansini used her radio
show to come clean about her affair with Rabbi Newlantern
in the summer of nineteen ninety five. She tearfully apologized
on the air for what she called some errors in judgment.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
Sonny now in seventy eight degrees, I apologize to you
for these guys.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
But lost in the juicy stories of love, lust and
adultery were the Newlander children.
Speaker 6 (28:49):
I felt bad for the family I did. I felt
bad for the kids.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Their mother's murder was still unsolved, and the only thing
they're hearing is story after story of their father's infidelity.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
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.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I categorically deny that I murdered my wife or arranged
in any way to have her killed.
Speaker 6 (29:31):
It was brief, but we thought it would be good
for the public to hear him speak and to have
him deny the charges.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
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.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
And it didn't help that the police remained mum about
potential suspects and shared very little about their investigation.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
They were looking into Leeds for years, and they came
up with a bunch of dead ends.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
At the same time, the rabbi's private investigator, len Jenoff,
used his FBI and CIA background to do his own research.
Speaker 6 (30:28):
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.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
He's a wild card.
Speaker 6 (30:47):
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.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
You can't do it.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
That's because around that time some bizarre news about len
Jenoff's surfaced.
Speaker 6 (31:04):
Len got married and asked the Rabbi to perform the
ceremony at the rabbi's home, and.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
Their wedding pictures of them arm in arm holding each other.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
That seems nice. But when the police looked closely at
these pictures of the Rabbi with Len on his wedding day,
they noticed something shocking.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Like, oh my god. They took the pictures right where
Carol was laying, and she was murdered.
Speaker 6 (31:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
In this whole case.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
If a picture is worth a thousand words, well that
scene doesn't work here. Because this one left the police speechless.
Speaker 6 (31:56):
It was hard for me to believe that this really
could have happened.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
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 Sloan Glass.
That's next time on American Homicide. You can contact the
(32:24):
American Homicide team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod
at gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail
dot com. American Homicide is hosted and written by me
Sloane Glass and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a
division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
(32:46):
The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans.
The series is also written and produced by Todd Gans,
with additional writing by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunny. Our
associate producer is Kristin melt Curie. Our iHeart typ is
Ali Perry and Jessica Crimechack. Audio editing and mixing by
(33:06):
Matt Delvecchio, Additional editing support from Nico Ruga, Tanner Robbins,
Britt Robashow, and Patrick Walsh. American Homicide theme song was
composed by Oliver Baines of Neiser Music Library, provided by
my Music. Follow American Homicide on Apple Podcasts and please
(33:27):
rate and review American Homicide. Your five star review goes
a long way towards helping others find this show. For
more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts,
Host
Jonny B. Good
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