Hitman Len Jenoff Days From Prison Release

After more than a decade in prison, one of the men involved in Cherry Hill's most notorious crime is just days away from being a free man.

Len Jenoff, one of two hitmen who beat Carol Neulander to death, will walk out of Mid-State Correctional Facility in Wrightstown by the end of next week, New Jersey Department of Corrections representatives confirmed Tuesday, ending a combined 14-year term behind bars, just slightly longer than the mandatory minimum term for his 2003 sentence on a charge of aggravated manslaughter.

It's been nearly two decades since the series of events began that would eventually lead to Jenoff and Paul Daniels walking into the Neulanders' home on a Tuesday night in November 1994, bludgeoning Carol Neulander with a pipe and leaving her for dead.

Jenoff, a recovering alcoholic and Collingswood resident who attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings at Congregation M'kor Sholom, where Fred Neulander was then rabbi, was drawn into the contract killing with promises of a job with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency—Jenoff had previously claimed, falsely, to have worked for the CIA and Baltimore Police—and the notion that he was killing “an enemy of Israel,” according to court records.

Fred Neulander, who was having an affair with a Philadelphia radio personality at the time, also agreed to pay Jenoff $30,000 to kill Carol, money Jenoff would partially split with Daniels, who joined in the beating after Jenoff started the attack, according to court testimony.

While Fred Neulander was charged in 1998 with his wife's death, Jenoff, who worked ostensibly as a private investigator in order to collect the remainder of of the promised $30,000, wasn't connected to the case until 2000, when he confessed first to Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Nancy Phillips, then to authorities.

Jenoff then got Daniels to confess on tape, and later implicated Fred Neulander in the murder, according to court records, before pleading guilty to charges a little more than a month after his initial confession.

He was jailed for three years before being sentenced to 10 to 23 years in state prison.

Though Jenoff's confession and testimony were part of what helped convict Fred Neulander, who was sentenced to 30 years to life for the murder, Jenoff first recanted his statements in 2009, before later reversing that and saying his trial testimony was accurate.

That's fueled Fred Neulander's fight to get a new trial and try to get the conviction overturned.

“I know he lied the first time,” Fred Neulander told NBC10 in a 2012 interview from prison. “I'm innocent of the murder charge, period.”

It's not known what Jenoff's plans are when he walks off the prison grounds at Joint Base Dix-McGuire-Lakehurst, and his former attorney told the Courier-Post Jenoff had paid a great personal price, but done the right thing in testifying against the rabbi.

“I can only wish him well, both in getting a better spiritual grasp and living life well in the years that remain to him,” Hartman told the Courier-Post.

Representatives for M'khor Sholom and the Neulander family couldn't be reached for comment on Jenoff's release, but authorities said the stain of the killing will never wash away.

"Len Jenoff may be released from prison, but he should never be released from his guilt for what he did," Camden County Prosecutor Warren Faulk said in a statement.