FREEHOLD, N.J. — They met at a hospital in December a decade ago. Elaine Soncini's husband was dying. Fred Neulander, the local rabbi, was there for comfort and support.

A week after the funeral, Neulander was having lunch at Soncini's home. The rabbi and the widow were hitting it off.

"He kissed me. He kissed me on the mouth," Soncini, testifying at Neulander's capital murder trial, said Tuesday.

And so began the long affair, which prosecutors contend didn't end until the rabbi's wife was dead and police identified Soncini as his mistress.

Three days after their first kiss, Neulander was back at Soncini's house. They had sex for the first time. Soon, they were seeing each other weekly. Then daily. Even if they saw each other, Neulander would call Soncini eight or 10 times a day, she testified.

He told her he needed her. She loved the attention.

"He wrote me poetry. He wrote me beautiful letters and poetry," Soncini, dressed in a Navy blue pants suit, told jurors. "We talked all the time."

Soncini said she knew Neulander was married. She met Carol Neulander, the rabbi's wife who would later be murdered, by accident at a delicatessen in Cherry Hill in late 1993 or early 1994.

"I felt terrible. I was very embarrassed and ashamed," said Soncini, who now lives in Florida with her husband, one of the police officers who worked the murder case. "I was having an affair with her husband. I was ashamed."

Soncini and Neulander continued their affair, according to her testimony, going out in public only infrequently because both were public figures. Soncini was a Philadelphia morning drive-time radio personality. Neulander was senior rabbi of Temple M'Kor Shalom, the Cherry Hill synagogue he founded in 1974.

Typically, Soncini would open her garage door so Neulander could hide his car from the prying eyes of neighbors. It was the only way.

"He was afraid he would lose his job. He said if the board ever found out about me he would be fired," Soncini said.

And when he was not physically with Soncini, he would call her. Often, she said.

In one voicemail recording played for the jury, Neulander conveyed his feelings for Soncini following an argument about a white lie he told her. He told her in the message that she was "stunning" and "enthralling" and confided that he felt selfish for needing her so much.

"I do ramble on and sometimes I can't find the words to tell you how much you mean to me," Neulander can be heard saying on the tape.

With her husband gone, Soncini said she found herself becoming more and more emotionally attached to Neulander, who reminded Soncini of her deceased spouse.

"I cared about him. I cared about his day and I cared about his well-being," Soncini said.

"Did you love him?" prosecutor James Lynch asked.

"Yes, I did," the witness, speaking in the same clear voice she developed during her radio days, answered.

Seated at the defense table Tuesday, Neulander was expressionless as his former lover testified. Sometimes he took notes that he shared with his lawyer.

'I just couldn't go on anymore'

As time went on, Soncini was becoming increasingly disenchanted with sneaking around with her rabbi and told him so sometime during the summer of 1994.

"As much as I loved him, I just couldn't go on anymore ... I wanted a normal life again," said Soncini, testifying in even, unemotional tones. "I told him that come January 1st of 1995, I was starting a new life."

Neulander, however, was not ready to end the affair, according to testimony. Soncini said he begged and cried for her to reconsider, and at times she did. He fantasized out loud about divorcing Carol Neulander and marrying Soncini, but more often than that it was about the reasons it would not work.

"He said it would be too difficult for her, too difficult for the children and family, to difficult for the synagogue and community," Soncini continued.

Neulander, however, eventually made a promise.

"He would just say, 'Hang in there. Trust me. I'm going to be with you by your birthday ... Dec. 17th,'" Soncini testified.

Carol Neulander, 52, was beaten to death with lead pipes six weeks before Soncini's birthday that year. Prosecutors allege that Neulander paid $30,000 to have his wife killed so that he could keep his pledge to Soncini.

Soncini received a telephone call at a work from a fellow M'Kor Shalom congregant about 7:20 a.m.on Nov. 2, 1994. Carol Neulander was murdered the night before, the caller reported.

"I screamed. I said, 'Oh, my God, Jesus, no,' " Soncini recalled.

Like Neulander, Soncini admitted lying to police when she denied the affair the first time investigators knocked on her door. She said Neulander told her to tell police only that she was a congregant, that he helped her through the death of her husband and with her conversion to Judaism.

"I lied. I denied the affair," she testified.

Defense lawyer Michael Riley is expected to explore in detail with Soncini lies she told police, and why, when cross-examination begins Wednesday. Carol Neulander's confessed killers, Len Jenoff and Paul Daniels, may testify later this week.

The defense contends that the main witnesses against the rabbi have motives for the damaging testimony they offered at the first trial. Soncini learned that Neulander had other girlfriends, Riley said during his opening statement Monday. And Jenoff, a habitual liar, has a deal with prosecutors that will keep him off death row.

If convicted of first-degree murder and felony murder, Neulander could face the death penalty. His first trial was declared a mistrial after a Camden County jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict after seven days of trying. The case was transferred to Monmouth County for the retrial, which began Monday, because of intense publicity in the Philadelphia media markets.

The trial is being broadcast by Court TV.