CAMDEN, N.J. — After insisting that only he "knows the truth" and it resides deep inside of him, Rabbi Fred Neulander was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for the 1994 contract killing of his wife.

Neulander, 61, said he was not prepared to speak but then spent 20 minutes talking about how the "private part" of him "could not be reached" by the emotional victim impact statements heard in court by Judge Linda Baxter.

Wearing a waist shackle, handcuffs and bright orange prison overalls, Neulander sat silently as Carol Neulander's three siblings took turns describing him as a cold, narcissistic, selfish killer of a loving and caring person. He also showed no emotion as two of his adult children, in letters read aloud in the packed courtroom, said they wanted nothing to do with the man they described as "evil" and "maniacal."

Victim Carol Neulander

Neulander, who will be in his mid-80s before he can even apply for parole, tried unsuccessfully to waive his appearance at his sentencing. He did not give a reason for wanting to skip the proceeding. Baxter ruled that listening to the impact statements was part of his punishment.

"I see the need to release rage and anger here today," Neulander said, referring to a parade of speakers who looked directly at him as they read prepared statements. "I can't be reached because the internal person, the private person, knows something that no one else knows, and that is my innocence."

Stopping several times to choke back emotion, Neulander said he was betrayed by Len Jenoff — the hit man he hired to kill his wife — twice: when his friend and an accomplice, Jeff Daniels, killed Carol Neulander with a lead pipe on Nov. 1, 1994, and then when Jenoff told police on May 1, 2000, that Neulander paid him to do it.

Neulander, then the head of Temple M'Kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, was having an affair with Philadelphia radio personality Elaine Soncini when the murder occurred. The crime went unsolved until 1998, when prosecutors indicted Neulander for murder based on circumstantial evidence. The evidence included testimony from Myron "Peppy" Levin, a colorful character who claimed that Neulander asked him after racquetball if he knew anyone who would kill his wife.

"I still can't believe this. All this over a goddamn broad," Levin remarked Thursday, as he sat watching the sentencing in the last row of the courtroom.

Hit man Len Jenoff

Neulander was convicted of murder, felony murder and conspiracy at the end of a five-week trial in November. In 2001, a different jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared.

"It was wrong," Neulander told the judge on Thursday, referring to the jury's judgment that he hired Jenoff to kill Carol Neulander.

He spoke cryptically during his 30-minute spiel, telling the judge that he was prepared for any sentence she might dole out and that he would spend the time helping people in prison. Carol Neulander's siblings shook their heads as the defendant dismissed their remarks and his children's letters to the judge.

"I know what is true and what is untrue," Neulander said. "I know the truth as I know it. I alone know that I am innocent."

Prosecutor James Lynch asked for the maximum penalty. He noted that Neulander plotted the murder for a great amount of time and went to great strides to appear the grieving, loyal husband and father when in fact he was the opposite.

Rabbi Neulander had an affair with radio personality Elaine Soncini, above.

Referring to Matthew Neulander's testimony that his father was casually dressed early on the evening of the murder but wearing a suit when police arrived after the murder, Lynch said Fred Neulander was clearly playing a role.

Neulander had not a speck of blood on him or his clothes when police and paramedics arrived at 204 Highgate Lane, Lynch reminded the court.

"The image, judge, is clear and unimaginable. This defendant dressed for a part that night. He was going to perform for authorities and members of his congregation," Lynch said. "It is unimaginable hypocrisy."

After listening to both sides and the victim's relatives for more than an hour, Judge Baxter made her ruling. She said that the fact that Neulander contracted the killing and planned it for six months cried out for the maximum penalty allowed by law. She noted that the crime was eligible for the death penalty in New Jersey, although the jury that convicted Neulander failed to reach a unanimous decision on capital punishment, taking it out of play.

"She had the right to live out each and every day that was allotted to her," Baxter said, as Neulander stood. "She had the right to grow old and you took that right away from her. You decided how long she would live and when she died. You planned and plotted and premeditated the murder over six months."

Baxter said Neulander also had the gall to tell jurors that he loved his wife and told her so every afternoon in a phone call, all the while planning to have Jenoff kill her.

"It is conduct which is cold and calculated, and should send shivers down the spine of any civilized person," the judge said.

Matthew Neulander, now a physician in Charlotte, North Carolina, asked the court in writing to protect him and his children from "Fred" because he fears that he could someday commit another horrible crime.

"Like most criminals, he is a coward in word and deed, and has refused repeatedly to confront me like a man," Matthew Neulander wrote about his father.

"It is with the physical and emotional welfare of my children in mind that I request that the court permanently remove this vicious and evil person from their respective futures," the letter went on to say. "A man capable of this fiendish act visited on the woman he wanted to 'grow old with, slowly' is clearly capable of any future horror."

Rebecca Neulander Rockoff, who now lives in Connecticut, wrote that she hopes her father thinks about all that he is missing and enjoyed about life while he is incarcerated.

"I hope that the longer he sits in prison, the more he will be haunted by the magnitude of his losses — there are many and they are painful," Rockoff wrote. "I humbly ask the court to make sure that he will never forget."

Carol Neulander's brother, Robert Lidz referred to Neulander's "single act of malignant arrogance" in asking Baxter to "sentence him to anonymity so that he could suffer his narcissism in silence." Another sibling, Edward Lidz, had some more invective for the defendant.

"Before you had Carol killed in the most brutal manner imaginable, and during the ensuing eight years, you acted in a manner so repulsive that words cannot begin to describe the type of person that you became," Lidz said. "You are a murderer. You are a liar, a coward and a cheat. You dishonored Carol, yourself, your children, this court, your congregation, the rabbinate and Judaism."

Neulander was transported back to the Camden County Correctional Facility. Eventually, he will be sent to a maximum-security prison, most likely in Trenton.

He has 45 days to appeal the conviction and sentencing.