Posted on Thu, Nov. 21, 2002 story:PUB_DESC Apparently Miss Vicki won't let verdict stand in way of love By CATHERINE LUCEY

Victoria Lombardi seems to enjoy media freak-show romances.

A kooky '60s pop star or a tubby convicted murderer - if its true love, why fight it?

She was known as "Miss Vicki," or Victoria Budinger, when she married high-pitched singer Tiny Tim on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" in front of some 45 million viewers in 1969.

Now she's dating the infamous Rabbi Fred Neulander, who was found guilty yesterday of hiring hit men to knock off his wife.

"He is mine and I am his," she said last night.

Apparently, she's going to stand by her man.

Lombardi and Neulander have reportedly been dating for several years.

"He had no one to support him," she said. "I met him through friends and family."

Lombardi and Tiny Tim divorced after eight years and she returned to her native New Jersey. She has been through at least one other marriage and divorce, and has worked as a model, exotic dancer and more recently in retail sales.

She was hanging out in her Haddonfield, N.J., apartment last night with only a little white cat for company.

She'd better get used to it.

Slender and dark-haired, Lombardi was wearing an elegant olive suit and carefully applied makeup.

She is about 50 today (she married Tiny Tim at 17) and very attractive.

Far too good-looking for the graying rabbi whom she may never see in daylight again.

Lombardi was cagey and nervous and would only speak for a few minutes. She wouldn't say when she had last spoken with Neulander.

"I'm not usually rude," she said. "It's just a bad day."

She did voice her support for Neulander, though.

"I truly believe he is innocent," she said.

Love makes you say the darnedest things.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2002