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Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. In the fall of 1994, a 52-year-old woman pulled into the driveway of her home in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and then turned her car off.
As she sat there for a minute, chatting with her daughter on the phone, she was suddenly startled by someone running up and knocking on her car window. When she turned to see who it was, she saw this big guy standing in her driveway who she didn't recognize. But when she rolled the window down just a couple of inches, and this guy was able to explain why he was there, the woman relaxed, and then she got out of the car, she shut the door behind her, and she led this guy into her home.
That man would later be dubbed the bathroom man, and he was there to do something horrific to that woman.
But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious Deliberate in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please bring the five-star review button to the movies with you, but instead of giving them popcorn, give them butter-covered styrofoam. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads.
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It was another beautiful day in late October 1994. The afternoon air was cool and the sky above the town of Voorhees was a soft clear blue dotted with fluffy white clouds. As 52-year-old Carol Newlander stepped out the door of Classic Cakes Bakery onto the sidewalk, she stopped for a minute and tilted her face upward to enjoy the feel of the light breeze and sunshine.
With her eyes closed, she could forget for a few seconds that she was standing in a strip mall in northern New Jersey surrounded by parking lots, and that pretty soon she'd be joining the hundreds of other drivers on the crowded highway that led south from Voorhees to Carol's home in neighboring Cherry Hill.
Carol let out her breath and opened her eyes. She and her husband, Rabbi Fred Newlander, did not actually mind the commercial sprawl that had spread out around them since they had arrived in Cherry Hill 20 years ago. That was when Fred had gotten his first job as assistant rabbi at a Jewish synagogue in Cherry Hill named Emmanuel Temple. A rabbi is a spiritual leader and religious teacher of a Jewish community or congregation.
In the two decades since their arrival, as Cherry Hill's population grew, so had the Jewish community that now made up almost a third of Cherry Hill's 70,000 residents. Many in that community were ethnic Jews, people who can trace their ancestry back to the land of Israel, and others were non-ethnic Jews who had converted to Judaism.
And just a few years after taking that job as assistant rabbi at Immanuel Temple, Fred had gone on to found his own synagogue named Makor Shalom, which is Hebrew for "source of peace." Central to Judaism is the belief in one God who revealed himself through ancient prophets. But Fred's new synagogue also focused on adapting the 3800-year-old religion to the social and cultural conditions of the modern world.
and Fred's gamble had paid off big time. By 1994, Mekor Shalom had grown from a few families meeting in members' houses into the largest Jewish temple in Cherry Hill with a congregation of almost 4,000 members. And Fred and Carol had moved from their small apartment to a comfortable four-bedroom colonial house in one of the many subdivisions that had slowly but surely nibbled away at what had once been Cherry Hill's rolling farmland.
But during those years, Fred was not the only one finding success. The last two decades had also been very good to Carol. She and Fred had had one daughter and two sons, and all three children were now either working or going to college or medical school. And ten years ago, as Fred was busy building his congregation, Carol had decided to pursue her own dream. Working right out of her kitchen in their home at 204 Highgate Lane,
Carol had poured her boundless energy into starting a business baking kosher cakes and selling them to local restaurants. With such a large Jewish community in Cherry Hill, Carol had recognized that there was an unmet demand among that group of customers for cakes and sweets that met strict Jewish dietary guidelines. And it would turn out the Gentile residents of Cherry Hill
were just as enthusiastic about Carol's cakes and cookies as the Jewish population was. So before long, what had started out as first Carol, then a handful of close friends making cakes in their ovens at home, had grown into Classic Cakes Company with two large retail stores, one in nearby Audubon, and the other right there where Carol was standing at the Eagle Plaza shopping center in Voorhees.
Now, Classic Cakes employed close to 50 people and combined sales from both bakeries easily topped $10,000 a day. And now, Carol thought to herself as she shouldered her purse and turned toward her own car out there in the parking lot,
it was time to get on to the second half of her workday. It was Tuesday, October 25th, and on every Tuesday in the late afternoon, Carol and the other managers of Classic Cakes got together for their weekly business meeting in Cherry Hill, at the home of the company's Director of Human Resources. It was a meeting that often lasted as long as three hours. But as Carol walked over to her dark Toyota Camry out in the strip mall parking lot, open
opening the car door and slipping into the driver's seat, that sense of peace she had felt when she had looked up at the sky a few minutes earlier had left her. In its place was a sense of uneasiness. It had to do with her husband, Fred, and the six-month sabbatical that he had taken at the beginning of this year. A sabbatical is an extended paid leave period that
that gives an employee a chance to travel and study. And in Fred's case, the other staff at his synagogue had basically encouraged him to take this sabbatical, almost like it was a reward for all the hard work managing such a big congregation. And Fred had been excited about this sabbatical, but instead of using it to travel or study like most people do, Fred just used the time to grow out his thinning gray hair into a long ponytail
and then just kind of hung around the house in Cherry Hill and at his synagogue, Makor Shalom. Over the last 10 months, her husband had also become increasingly critical of his assistant rabbi, and to Carol, even after his sabbatical period had ended, Fred had seemed very distracted and preoccupied. Now, as Carol drove her car out of the Eagle Plaza parking lot and headed towards Route 70,
She tried to reassure herself that Fred's change in behavior couldn't possibly have anything to do with their marriage. After all, they'd been together for almost 30 years, and during that time, Carol had come to know and cherish the qualities that made her and Fred such a strong couple. Where Fred was charismatic and bold,
Carol was practical, warm, and good at listening to people. While Fred inspired people, Carol had a knack for making them feel like she was a trusted member of their family. And even though they had come from such different backgrounds, Carol and Fred had formed a loving and productive partnership. Carol, who had been born to wealthy parents, had grown up on the ocean side of New York in a big house with grounds that rolled down to the shore of Hewlett Bay
Fred, who was one year older than Carol, was the only child of immigrants who had grown up in the blue-collar section of Queens, New York, where his father had run a struggling dry-cleaning business and his mother had stayed home to take care of Fred.
Carol and Fred had met on a blind date when they were both in college. Fred was studying religion at Trinity University in Connecticut, and Carol was studying psychology at an exclusive women's college in Massachusetts. Carol, who was small and elegant with auburn-colored hair, intelligent dark eyes, and great taste in clothes and jewelry, was instantly attracted to Fred, whose physical strength and rugged good looks made him seem much taller than his 5 feet 4 inch tall frame.
The attraction was 100% mutual. The two of them got married in 1965, moved to Queens where Fred was later ordained as a rabbi, and by 1971, Cherry Hill, New Jersey would become the Newlanders' permanent home.
And while Carol knew that the passage of the years and the daily routines of everyday life were bound to take the edge off the passion and romance that had brought her and Fred together three decades earlier, but she still felt that same attraction to Fred, and she knew that he felt the same way about her. Besides, in less than a week, they'd have some much-needed time to spend together when they headed up to New York this Saturday, October 29th, to visit some relatives. With this comforting thought in mind,
Carol dragged her thoughts back to the work ahead of her, and by 4 p.m., after stopping on her way to run a couple of errands, Carol pulled into the driveway of the house where she would meet with her management team.
A few hours later, Carol was once again back in her Toyota Camry, but even now her workday was not quite finished. Because it had become Carol's habit that several days a week, she would take home that day's cash from both of her bakery branches, and then she would count the money right at her dining room table. Then the next morning, she could just deposit the cash at the bank first thing.
And while Carol thought this was an efficient and convenient way of doing things, Fred thought it was totally reckless and he hated that she brought all that money home. Even though Carol kept telling Fred that no one outside of her management circle knew that she sometimes traveled with anywhere from five to $15,000 in cash tucked into her burgundy wallet at the bottom of her handbag, Fred told her that all of her bakery employees must see her walk out of the store with all that cash
and so he thought carol was just asking to get robbed but carol had always waved off his concerns saying that her employees were highly vetted and would never do that to her and where they lived cherry hill was known as a very safe and quiet neighborhood and so carol told fred that you know no one's ever going to break in and try to steal from them
After getting the cash from both of her bakery locations and hopping back into her car to make the ride back home, Carol glanced at her watch and saw that she still had time to call her 24-year-old daughter, Rebecca. Rebecca was married and a hospital administrator in Philadelphia. Carol had always been very close with Rebecca, and so she cherished these daily phone calls with her.
So, as Carol drove along, she picked up her car phone, she dialed Rebecca's number, and a few minutes later, she and her daughter were chatting happily about the day's events. Carol was still on the phone when she pulled into her driveway at 204 Highgate Lane. But before she could wrap up the call with Rebecca, Carol was suddenly startled by a loud knock on her car window right next to her head. After nearly dropping her phone, Carol turned and looked outside and
and saw this huge man standing there right in her driveway. Seeing the look of alarm on Carol's face, the stranger stepped back and put his hands up in the air reassuringly. Carol told Rebecca, who was now asking, "What's going on? What's going on?" to just hang on for a minute that someone was here, and then Carol rolled her window down just a few inches and asked what this guy wanted.
and the man in the driveway apologized for startling Carol and then told her he was just there to see the rabbi and to deliver a package to him.
Instantly, Carol could feel herself relax. She had been a rabbi's wife long enough that she'd come to expect visits from members of his congregation for all kinds of reasons and at all kinds of hours, day and night. Rolling the car window down the rest of the way, Carol smiled at the visitor and gestured toward the darkened house. She told him that the rabbi was not home yet, but the man was welcome to come inside and wait and deliver the package in person.
After hearing bits of this conversation her mother had just had with this unexpected visitor, Rebecca felt concerned and when her mom put the phone back to her ear, Rebecca asked her to please give a call once this guy has left so Rebecca would know that her mom was okay. Carol agreed and then ended the call with Rebecca and then Carol got out of her car, she shut the door behind her and began walking toward her house with the visitor walking right behind her.
Carol had left her handbag filled with all the money in her car trunk. She would come out later when her visitor had left to bring it inside. But for now, Carol led the way to the front door, and when she got there, she unlocked it and gestured for her visitor to step into the small, warm entrance. But once the visitor was inside, the man began acting strange, glancing quickly left and right at the living room and dining rooms on either side of him and Carol. Then he began shifting his weight from one foot to another, and
And then suddenly, kind of awkwardly, he blurted out to Carol, "Uh, can I just use your bathroom for a minute?" Sensing what she took to be his embarrassment at having to make this request, Carol just smiled and said, "Of course," and directed him through the kitchen to the first floor bathroom at the back of the house.
and then Carol walked back to the front of the house. When the man returned a few minutes later, Carol was standing near the front door looking through the mail that had been delivered that day, and she told the visitor that he was welcome to take a seat in the living room. But the big man just thanked her, said he was sorry for bothering her,
and just handed Carol a plain white envelope and asked if she could give it to the rabbi. And then the visitor reached his hand out to open the front door. Meanwhile, almost without thinking, Carol who had been going through the mail, when she was handed this envelope, she just opened it right away. And when she saw its contents, which was nothing, it was an empty envelope,
She put her hand out and stopped this guy and said, "Hey, wait a minute, it's empty. Did you give me the right one?" The man looked startled and then told Carol he must have made a mistake and he picked up the wrong envelope earlier to bring by and so he'd just have to come by another time. And then without waiting to hear what Carol had to say,
This man very quickly left the house and disappeared into the darkness. Back inside the house, Carol just tore up the empty envelope and dropped it into the wastebasket. Then she picked up the cordless landline phone and dialed Rebecca to tell her daughter that she didn't need to worry that the man was gone. And as Carol told her daughter about this guy,
She laughed and smiled to herself as she described how he came in and just used the bathroom, gave her an empty envelope, and then ran away. It was just another day in the life of a rabbi's wife, an odd but funny story that Carol would tell friends a couple of times in the following couple of days before forgetting all about it. But exactly one week later, both Carol and her daughter Rebecca would find themselves remembering that strange encounter all too well.
Not long after 8 p.m. on the evening of Tuesday, November 1st, 1994, Carol was once again arriving at her home on Highgate Lane after having left the weekly Classic Cakes business meeting. The weekend trip she and Fred had just taken to New York had not gone at all the way Carol had hoped. And now, as she pulled her car into the driveway and looked at her darkened house...
She told herself that the dissatisfaction that her husband had told her he felt in their marriage was just the result of a late midlife crisis.
It had all come out during a big argument they had had on their way home from New York that past Sunday, and Carol was still feeling really hurt and angry. By Monday night, both Carol and Fred had calmed down and agreed that they would go to both separate and joint marriage counseling sessions. They had also talked to each other about cutting back on some of the activities that over the years had drawn them into almost separate lives: Fred's religious duties and Carol's business.
But Carol was still upset and shaken, and as she parked her car, turned off the engine, grabbed her purse, and then walked through a swirl of fallen leaves to the house, all she wanted was to get inside and call her daughter Rebecca. Carol knew that hearing her daughter's voice, maybe planning a shopping trip together next weekend, would put Carol in a happier frame of mind. And sure enough, a few minutes later, when Carol heard her daughter pick up the phone and say hello, Carol's spirits lifted.
With a sigh of relief, Carol kicked off her shoes in the front hall and then settled in for a nice long chat. But only partway through their call, at around 8:30 p.m., Carol was interrupted by a knock on the front door. Carrying the cordless phone with her,
Carol walked to the entryway and peered out the big oval stained glass window in the center of the door. Even through the colored glass, Carol recognized her visitor right away. It was the same huge guy who had stopped by last Tuesday with the empty envelope.
Carol swung the door open, and even before the man had time to say, "Hey, it's me again," Carol had invited him inside. She assumed that he was there to see the rabbi again, or maybe this time deliver an envelope that actually had something inside of it. As the man stepped inside, Carol very quietly whispered into the phone to her daughter that her visitor was "the bathroom man" again. Then Carol turned to her visitor and said she'd be off the phone in a minute, and for now he should just make himself comfortable in the living room.
A minute later, Carol wrapped up her call with her daughter and she put the cordless phone down on a wooden bench in the entryway. And then when she turned around, she was surprised to see her visitor, the bathroom man, had still not moved to the living room. He was still just standing right in front of the front door. Carol let out a quiet sigh, thinking to herself this man was still just as awkward now as he had been the last time they had met. But Carol's years of practice as a hostess kicked in
and she made herself smile. And stepping in front of her visitor, Carol invited the man to follow her deeper into the house. But Carol had only taken one or two steps away from him when she suddenly felt a big hand grab her left shoulder. And then before Carol could turn around or even understand what was happening, she felt an explosion of pain as something smashed into the back of her head.
The blow was so hard it knocked Carol's glasses off of her face and sent her staggering into the middle of the living room. Then, all at once, she felt a powerful shove to the middle of her back and then she fell to her knees. A moment later, blood streaming down the sides of her face and into her ears, Carol collapsed onto the white carpet.
Later, when the bathroom man looked inside of Carol's burgundy-colored wallet he had taken from her home, he couldn't believe his eyes. He'd been expecting to see thousands of dollars. Instead, he pulled out a grand total of $150. That day had been one of the rare days that Carol had decided not to bring home the cash from that day's sales at the two Classic Cakes locations. Meanwhile, at Temple McCore Shalom, located just a few minutes away from Highgate Lane,
Rabbi Fred Newlander was finding it almost impossible to end the workday and get home. He'd had to check in on the weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that was going on in one of the conference rooms, and he'd also sat in on choir rehearsal and one of the Jewish study classes taught by his assistant rabbi. He had checked in with Carol earlier that afternoon by phone before her business meeting. Since their argument on Sunday, their conversations had felt strained.
Trying to ignore the frosty tone in his wife's voice, Fred had told her that he was probably going to be late that night, but at around 6 p.m., he did plan to go back to their house and have dinner with their son Matthew, but then he'd be leaving again, and he wouldn't see her again until late. 20-year-old Matthew was a first-year medical student now at nearby Rutgers University, but he was still working part-time as an emergency medical technician with the Cherry Hill Fire Department. He lived at home with his parents, Carol and Fred,
But between his classes and his 12-hour EMT shifts, his parents did not actually see much of him. Finally, just after 9:00 PM that night, Fred stepped out the door of McCore Shalom into the cool, cloudy November night. Like his wife Carol, Fred had also been thinking a lot about all the two of them had built and made together over the past nearly three decades. He knew his son Matt had overheard him and Carol arguing after they got home from their weekend trip to New York,
and he also knew that Matt had wanted to talk to him over their dinner earlier that evening about what was going on with his parents. But his marriage was just not something Fred wanted to discuss with his children, and so he had pointedly turned the conversation in another direction every time Matt tried to talk about it. Now, 15 minutes after leaving the temple, Fred pulled his car into the driveway of 204 Highgate Lane. The lights were on in the house, and Carol's car was in its usual place.
A minute later, at 9:20 PM, Fred was at the front door of his house, and when he tried the handle, expecting it to be locked, he found it was unlocked. Fred shook his head at the lack of security, thinking about all that money Carol might be counting right now at the dining room table. Once the door was open, Fred expected to hear his wife immediately call out to see if that was him, but instead, the house seemed unusually still and quiet.
And then, as Fred stepped inside the house, he saw Carol's feet just visible in the entrance to their living room. No shoes, just socks. A few more steps forward, and what Fred saw on the floor and walls and ceiling of the living room was so shocking that for a moment he was sure he was going to pass out. Struggling to make sense of the scene in front of him, Fred slowly started backing up and reaching out blindly behind him for the cordless phone that Carol had left in the entryway just an hour earlier.
Two minutes later, at 9:22 p.m., the dispatcher at the Cherry Hill Police Department picked up an incoming 911 call. The man's voice at the other end of the line sounded like it was being dragged out of him. "My wife is on the floor and there's blood all over."
but a minute later that same man's voice had sharpened into something closer to a scream standing in his front hallway talking to 9-1-1 fred realized that his son matthew was probably hearing this 911 call right now and that matt being an emt might be among the medical personnel that were now being rushed to the newlander family home the last of his composure crumbled and
And Fred began begging the 911 operator not to let his son anywhere near his house. He could not let his son see his mother the way she was.
Seven minutes later, Highgate Lane was crowded with police cars and emergency vehicles. Matt had not been allowed inside of the house, and he and Fred were standing together at the end of the driveway when an EMT came over and told them that, unfortunately, Carol was deceased. And no, it did not look like suicide. It looked like murder. Mr. Ballin' Collection is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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By 10:00 p.m., crime scene techs and homicide detectives had also started arriving at the scene. Officers put up yellow crime tape to hold back the gathering crowd of friends and neighbors that had begun to gather in the street outside of the Newlanders' house. Friends also drove to Rebecca's apartment in Philadelphia to bring her back to Cherry Hill to join her father and her brother Matt. Later that same night, Fred's assistant rabbi would call another rabbi near the University of Michigan
where Carol and Fred's other son Benjamin was a freshman, so Benjamin would not be alone when the call came through that his mother was dead. Meanwhile, the investigation into Carol's death was already moving quickly. By 11:00 PM that night, Camden County detectives John Long and Arthur Foggs had already zeroed in on their first potential suspect, Fred.
After all, he was both the husband of the victim and the person who found Carol's body. And, detectives' initial impression of the crime scene had weighed against the idea that the murder had been committed by a stranger in the course of a robbery. There had been no forced entry, no sign that the house had been ransacked, and Carol was still wearing valuable gold and diamond jewelry when her body had been discovered.
The detectives were also suspicious of how calm Fred was when they first saw him. And the fact that there was not a single drop or smear of blood on his clothing told them that after finding his wife laying there, Fred had not made any attempt to check for a pulse or try to offer his wife any kind of aid. Because if he had, he would have had blood all over him. And although the detectives would have to wait until the forensics reports came back from the crime lab,
The techs working the crime scene were not finding any fingerprints, no footprints or even impressions, and no sign of a murder weapon, which made investigators think that this attack had to have been carefully planned. And so detectives instantly became very interested in learning more about the Newlanders' marriage. But before even having their first informal interview with Fred, the detectives assigned police officers
to start interviewing neighbors to see if anyone had information about when Carol arrived home that evening and whether neighbors had seen any recent unusual or suspicious activity. Detectives also wanted to know if there were any security cameras on nearby homes that might have captured footage of someone entering or leaving the Newlander house.
With all that done, the two detectives left the house just after 11pm and joined Fred and his two older children inside the heated interior of one of the ambulances still parked outside the house. And right away after speaking with them, the detectives learned about a new number one suspect.
because Rebecca had wasted no time telling the detectives about the two visits her mother had had from the so-called bathroom man, the stranger who had gone into the Newlander home with Carol exactly one week ago with the empty envelope, and the second visit had been that night. And now it seemed clear that tonight's visit from the bathroom man must have happened just before Carol was killed.
And when Fred told police that Carol often brought home large amounts of cash from the bakeries, detectives realized that if all that turned out to be true, Carol may have been the target of a robbery after all. This possibility was strengthened when Fred and his children were able to confirm that there was something missing from the Newlander house, the burgundy-colored wallet where Carol hid her envelope full of cash.
By 1:30 a.m. in the early hours of Wednesday, November 2nd, so just hours after Carol has been found, detectives had relocated to the Cherry Hill police station and were ready to conduct individual formal interviews, starting with Fred and his children. Rebecca repeated her information about the bathroom man, as well as telling police every detail she could remember from her recent phone calls with her mother.
As for her parents' marriage, she said she was not aware of any serious problems or issues, but then again, she said she had not been living with them for some time. But in the interview with Rebecca's brother, Matt, which began at 2:30 a.m., he reluctantly admitted that his parents might have been going through some issues in their marriage.
He told them about how his parents had gotten into that big fight during their car ride home from New York three days earlier, and that after they had returned, his mother had told him that his dad wanted out of the marriage. But by Monday, Matt said that things seemed to have calmed down, and yesterday afternoon, so Tuesday, the day Carol was killed, she'd even called Matt and told him not to worry, that his parents had done a lot of talking together, and everything was going to be fine.
It was 3:30 a.m. when Fred finally was asked to come into the interrogation room.
When he answered the detective's questions, his voice sounded tired. By the end of the interview, it was obvious that he was finding it difficult to focus. He told investigators that the day before, he and Matthew had left the house together after their dinner around 6:00 p.m., and that Fred had gone straight to the temple, where he stayed until just a few minutes after 9:00 p.m. And then he drove back home and he discovered his wife.
When asked, Fred told detectives that he didn't think Carol was having any issues with any of her co-workers at Classic Cakes. He also told detectives that he couldn't think of really anyone in her life that would want to hurt her. And as for this bathroom man and the letter or package he wanted to give to Rabbi Fred, Fred just shook his head.
Unexpected and sometimes bizarre visits came with the territory of ministering to the religious and spiritual needs of 920 different families. But Fred said he was not aware of or expecting any deliveries back on October 25th, so the bathroom man's first visit to Carroll, or last night when the bathroom man had made his second appearance.
He told detectives that Carol had mentioned the first encounter with the bathroom man to him, but she had seemed more amused by the whole thing than alarmed by it. And she had apparently not given anyone, including Fred or Rebecca or Matt, a real description of what the bathroom man had looked like, aside from saying he was big and dressed in a windbreaker.
As for Fred's relationship with Carol, he said it was good, very good. That they both had been very faithful to each other and that they loved each other and never had to go get counseling or anything like that. And at no point had their relationship ever come close to being physically abusive. As Fred said all this, the detectives were acutely aware of the fact that Fred did not mention the fight he had apparently gotten into with Carol a few days earlier, according to his son Matt.
When Fred was asked about the lack of blood on his clothes and why he hadn't at least reached down and checked for a pulse when he saw his wife on the floor, Fred bowed his head and then told them that it was immediately obvious to him that she was dead. A few hours after Fred's interview, on that same morning, Wednesday, November 2nd, police were back at the Newlander house to do a thorough inspection of the outside of the property. Crime techs had finished their work earlier in the morning
and sent all the evidence they had collected from inside the house to the crime lab for analysis, and Carol's body had been transported to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy. Neighbors woke up that Wednesday morning to the sight of investigators using a ladder truck they'd borrowed from the local fire department to check the roof of the Newlanders' house for any clues.
Police officers had also fanned out to interview Carroll's business partners and staff at Classic Cakes and Fred's assistant rabbi from Temple Mekor Shalom. Other officers were tracking down any leads or information about deliveries to the Newlander property that may have been scheduled for around the time Carroll was killed. But despite the promising lead about the bathroom man
and the momentum of the first 48 hours, the investigation into Carol's murder almost immediately slowed to a discouraging crawl. No one had come up with any information that would help police find this mysterious bathroom man. Investigators couldn't find any deliveries scheduled for the Newlander house on either October 25th or November 1st, the two days the bathroom man was there. And Fred's assistant rabbi just shook his head no when
when detectives asked him if he knew of any marital problems between Fred and Carol.
On Thursday, two days after the murder, and the day Carol's body was released by the medical examiner's office back to her family, 2,000 people attended a funeral service for Carol that was held in the sanctuary of Temple Mekor Shalom. And after the funeral service, Fred announced that Carol's shiva, the Jewish equivalent of a wake, would be held at the Newlanders' house, in the same room where Carol was killed. Despite contractors having come in and thoroughly cleaned that room,
Carol's friends and family still noticed faint bloodstains under the new coat of paint on the walls and ceiling. It wasn't until the Newlanders' phone records came back a few weeks after Carol's death
that police finally got a break in the case. While looking for calls that had been made to or by Carol, police noticed one number that showed up over and over again. But it had nothing to do with Carol, and everything to do with her husband and a very high-profile member of his congregation. And by early December, police uncovered a scandal that would rock Cherry Hill and focus national media attention on one of the state's most charismatic religious leaders.
Police would also find another possible suspect in the murder of Carol Newlander.
It would turn out Fred had lied to police when he described his marriage as being really solid, and he'd told an even bigger lie when he described himself as being a faithful husband. Instead, starting on December 24th, 1992, so two years before Carol was killed, Fred had begun having an affair with a 48-year-old local celebrity and member of his congregation, Elaine Sonsini. And so that phone number that had shown up in the Newlanders' call records was Elaine Sonsini's number.
Elaine was a well-known on-air radio personality who hosted a popular morning news program out of a big station in Philadelphia. She had met Fred when he had officiated her late husband's funeral. Before, and especially during, the rabbi's six-month sabbatical, he and Elaine had been meeting up almost every day to have sex, even deadbolting the door of Fred's private office and using Temple Mekor for their illicit get-togethers.
As police started to press Elaine for details about her involvement with Fred and whether she had any direct or indirect involvement with the murder of his wife, Elaine, who had a solid alibi, decided it was time to lawyer up and go public with her side of the story and the details of the affair. And suddenly Fred was back at the top of the suspect list, both in terms of the police investigation
and the news accounts that were now appearing in major regional and local media. For Fred, when this affair went public, it was devastating. There are lots of married couples who have experienced infidelity, but in Fred's case, his affair and infatuation with Elaine had automatically stamped him not only as one of America's many unfaithful husbands, but also as a murderer.
Even his alibi was now being treated by investigators and definitely by the media as too good, too convenient. That maybe the rabbi had just arranged for his wife's death so he could ride off into the sunset with the beautiful Elaine Sonsini. But despite Fred continuing to shout from the rooftops that he hadn't done anything and that the police still had not found a single shred of evidence connecting him to his wife's murder, Fred knew it didn't really matter.
because the media, and to some degree the police, had already decided he was guilty. And so, desperate to clear his name, Fred went on the offensive. Not only did he hire a defense attorney to represent him, he also revealed to the public that within days of Carol's death, he had already hired his own private investigator to try to find out who killed his wife and why.
49-year-old Len Jenoff had been both a member of Temple McCore and an acquaintance of Fred's since 1992. But it was Len's background in security and covert operations with the U.S. and Israeli Secret Services, along with his private investigator's license, that had caught Fred's attention. Len also had close ties with the local police. And even though Len had not really made any more progress in finding Carol's killer than Camden County law enforcement,
Once Fred went public with Len's involvement in the case in early 1995, Len became a sort of unofficial spokesperson for the embattled rabbi. But for Fred, despite his best efforts, his life seemed to just continue to go from bad to worse.
On February 26th, 1995, the damage to his reputation had become so bad that he resigned his post as head rabbi of the synagogue he had founded 20 years earlier. Several months later, on June 9th, 1995, Fred's lover, Elaine Sonsini, left Fred and married one of the police officers who had been assigned to help with the investigation into Carol Newlander's death. A year after that, in April of 1996, the
The Central Conference of American Rabbis suspended Fred from practicing as a rabbi for a minimum of two years as punishment for his extramarital affair.
But despite Fred's life crumbling all around him, his private investigator continued to have his back, telling everyone that while Fred certainly was guilty of adultery, that didn't mean he was also guilty of murder. Fred deeply appreciated Len's support, but what he really needed from his private eye, or from anyone at this point, was evidence about who actually killed his wife. But it wasn't until late April 2000
almost six and a half years after Carol Newlander was brutally murdered, that police finally would find that evidence. That month, investigators answered a phone call from someone who said they had important information that would help authorities identify Carol's killer. The conversation that came next would turn everything the police thought they knew about this case upside down.
Based on what this caller was able to tell law enforcement, here is a reconstruction of what really happened to Carol on the evening of November 1st, 1994.
The bathroom man was sure he had planned Carol's murder down to the last detail. But when Carol had let him into her house on the night of Tuesday, October 25th, he knew right away that he had made a mistake. As soon as he stepped inside, he had seen immediately that Carol's purse and more importantly, the burgundy colored wallet were nowhere in sight. And so the bathroom man, he struggled for a moment trying to keep his composure before
before changing his plan. He had to be sure the purse and the wallet were here. So, thinking quickly, he asked Carol if he could use her bathroom. But instead of actually going to the bathroom, the man just walked around Carol's first floor, checking all of the rooms for this purse and wallet. But when he couldn't find them, he knew he'd just have to come back another time. And so he walked back to the front door where Carol was, and he handed her that envelope telling her it was the package he had come to give to the rabbi, and then
and then he was about to leave when carol had opened it up now the bathroom man knew the envelope was empty delivering it to the rabbi was just his excuse he was using to get inside of the house and so when carol immediately opened the envelope right in front of him and told him hey look it's empty the bathroom man suddenly panicked wondering if carol was on to him but he could see in her face right away that she wasn't she was just concerned he had not delivered the right letter
and so he should come by another time when he had the right letter. One week later, on November 1st, the bathroom man took steps not to repeat his earlier mistake. This time he waited until Carol had walked inside of her house carrying her purse over her shoulder before he also walked up to the door and began knocking.
Bathroom Man felt a stab of alarm when the door opened and he saw that Carol was talking to someone on the telephone, but that was followed by relief when she invited him inside before he even had to say who he was or why he was there. Once inside, he glanced quickly into both front rooms and this time he saw the purse sitting on the dining room table. Even as Carol finished her call and
and placed the cordless phone down on the bench near them in the entryway, Bathroom Man was already adjusting his windbreaker to make sure he could easily access the one-foot-long metal pipe he had stuck in his back pants pocket. Satisfied that the purse and wallet were definitely here, he focused again on Carol and heard her tell him to follow her through the living room into the sun parlor.
But, as soon as Carol had turned away from him and had begun taking a few steps across the hardwood floor onto the white carpet, Bathroom Man reached behind his back and pulled out the metal pipe and clutched it in his right hand. And then, with his left hand, he reached out and he grabbed Carol's left shoulder forcing her to come to an abrupt stop and then before she could turn around, Bathroom Man had lifted the pipe into the air and brought it crashing down into the back of Carol's head.
A moment later, he used his left hand to shove Carol hard in the center of her back, sending her flying into the living room where her knees began to buckle out from under her. As she collapsed forward onto the ground, Carol uttered a single word: "Why?" Bathroom Man didn't answer her. Instead, he turned back to the door and quickly motioned to his much younger accomplice who was waiting outside in the bushes to come inside and finish the job.
Seconds later, Bathroom Man had handed off the length of pipe to his much younger companion, and as Bathroom Man headed for the dining room to get the burgundy wallet out of Carol's purse, his companion got to work on Carol.
From the dining room, Bathroom Man could hear the sickening thuds of what would be at least 12 savage blows to Carol's head that would break her skull and inflict catastrophic injuries to her brain. An autopsy would later show that Carol had tried to protect herself by putting her hands up over the back of her head, but this younger accomplice of Bathroom Man had hit her hands so hard with the pipe that he'd practically amputated one of her fingers.
When Bathroom Man stepped back into the living room to make sure Carol was dead, he had to stop and catch his breath. The beating the younger companion had administered on Carol had taken less than a minute, but in those 45 seconds, the upswings of the metal pipe had sprayed the walls and ceiling with so much blood that it looked like a scene out of a horror movie. And Carol lay on her side at the center of it all, her neat blue pantsuit and print top
slowly darkening in the pool of blood, spreading out around her and soaking into the thick pile of the white carpet.
Bathroom Man walked over and checked Carol for a pulse, and when he didn't find one, he and his younger companion left the house. Once outside, the two men got into a single car and drove to a nearby brightly lit parking lot outside of a department store. After his younger accomplice changed into clean clothes, Bathroom Man gathered up any bloodstained belongings and the bloodstained pipe, and he stuffed it all into a small duffel bag. Then he pulled out Carol's burgundy wallet.
He thought of the thousands of dollars that he was sure to find inside of it as a bonus payment on top of what he had already been paid to commit this murder. But inside the wallet, all he found was $150. The two killers split the money and then with a sudden gesture of disgust, Bathroom Man threw the burgundy wallet onto the floor of his car. A minute later, Bathroom Man's accomplice had climbed out of the passenger seat and settled in behind the wheel of his own car that he
that he'd parked there earlier in the evening. He gave Bathroom Man a wave before pulling out of the parking lot and heading back to the apartment the two men shared. A few minutes later, Bathroom Man was also on the road, but he was not going back to the apartment. Instead, he headed east towards the nearest police station. He stopped only once along the way, to buy four cups of coffee.
Later that night, he would make a drive out to Philadelphia and stop at different dumpsters along the way to dispose of the small duffel and bloody clothes, the murder weapon, and the empty burgundy wallet.
But for right now, he had an alibi he needed to build. So at 9:12 p.m., Bathroom Man, aka Rabbi Fred Newlander's own private investigator, Len Jenoff, did what he did on most Tuesday nights. He drove to the Evesham Township Police Station five miles from the Newlander house, and then he walked inside and made his way to the detective bureau where he delivered the coffees he had bought to his good buddies on the night shift,
and where he settled in to wait for the news to break that Rabbi Fred Newlander's wife was dead. It wouldn't be until two days after Carol's murder, on Thursday, November 3rd, at her funeral service in the sanctuary of Temple Mekor Shalom, that Len would again see the person who had promised him $30,000 for killing the rabbi's wife.
When it was Len's turn in line to console the stricken and grieving rabbi, Len stepped forward to shake Fred Newlander's hand. But before he could, Carol's husband pulled Len in for a big hug. And when the two men were cheek to cheek, Fred whispered his thanks in Len's ear for getting the job done.
The murder had gone exactly as Rabbi Fred Newlander had planned it. It would turn out that back in the summer of 1994, not long after the end of Fred's six-month sabbatical, his mistress, Elaine Sonsini, had told Fred he had until the end of that year to end his marriage with Carol or Elaine would break off their affair. As the rabbi started to think about his choices, he
He decided he'd rather see Carol dead than risk the damage that a divorce might do to his reputation. So, in August, Fred approached Len Jenoff, a member of his congregation who claimed to have worked with both the US and Israeli secret services,
Both those claims, and almost everything else Len had told people about his background, insecurity, and covert operations, turned out to be false. But when Len's rabbi and spiritual leader Fred Newlander asked him if he would be willing to put his skills to work and kill,
a so-called "enemy of Israel," Len said yes. Only, the enemy turned out to be the rabbi's wife, and her only sin was that she stood between the rabbi and his mistress. While Len knew who Carol was, Carol did not know who Len was. There were over 4,000 people in the congregation, and so Carol and Len had just never actually met. After Len agreed to do the job,
Fred spent the next few months explaining to Len exactly how he wanted the murder to look, like a robbery gone wrong. Fred also gave Len a hand-drawn map showing the layout of the inside of the Newlander house and where Len should look for Carol's purse and wallet. The murder would have to take place on a Tuesday night when Carol and Fred's son Matthew was at work and when there were enough evening activities at the temple that Fred could construct an airtight alibi for himself.
Then, immediately after the murder, the rabbi would hire Len to act as a private investigator working to clear the rabbi's good name.
Len had done a lot of things in his life that he was not proud of, but cold-blooded murder was not one of them. So for this job, Len had decided to hire an accomplice, his 21-year-old roommate, Paul Daniels. Like his older friend, Paul was a recovering alcoholic, but he was also broke and he suffered from a variety of mental disorders.
When Len offered Paul $7,500, if Paul would actually be the one to kill Carol, Paul could not believe his good fortune. On October 20th, 1994, two weeks prior to Carol's murder, when Len had actually handed the $7,500 to his young accomplice, Paul had grabbed the money and then jumped up out of his chair, where he spent most of his days watching TV, and he began yelling in excitement, "'That bitch is dead!'
But starting immediately after Carol's murder, the guilt over what he had done started eating away at Len Jenoff. And by the beginning of 1996, so roughly a year and a half after Carol's murder, Len had become an off-the-record source—that's someone who was never identified by name— for a reporter who was covering the investigation into the Carol Newlander homicide.
And by May of 2000, almost six years after Carroll's death, that reporter, who had gradually learned the truth from Len, had convinced Len to go to police and tell them the truth about what happened to Carroll. It would take two trials before a jury found Fred Newlander guilty of the murder of his wife, Carroll. As a star witness, Len Jenoff was both a blessing and a curse. He could implicate the rabbi as the mastermind who set up the homicide, but
But Len's own history of telling one huge lie after another about his own life and background threw everything he had to say into question. And compared to the eloquent denials of Rabbi Fred and the fact that there was no hard evidence linking the rabbi to the actual murder, Fred Newlander's first trial in 2001 ended in a hung jury. But by the time the case was retried less than one year later, Rabbi Fred had lost his most important supporters.
his children, Matt and Rebecca, both of whom wound up testifying against him. In November of 2002, Rabbi Fred was found guilty of murder and conspiracy, and on January 15, 2003, he was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.
Both Len Jenoff and his accomplice Paul Daniels were convicted of aggravated manslaughter and sentenced to a maximum of 23 years. They were both released from prison in 2014 after serving their mandatory minimum of 10 years.
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