Missing 9-year-old Brooklyn boy found dead
The dismembered body of a missing 9-year-old Hasidic boy was found at two locations in Brooklyn and police this morning arrested a suspect in the slaying.

by Staff, NY Post
July 13, 2011

The scene at 20th street and 4th Avenue where the suitcase
contaioning part of the boy's body was found.
 

The dismembered body of a missing 9-year-old Hasidic boy was found at two locations in Brooklyn and police this morning arrested a suspect in the slaying -- who had the child's severed feet in his freezer, sources told The Post.

Police made the gruesome discovery after raiding a Kensington home and arresting the 35-year-old suspect, who led them to parts of missing boy Leibby Kletsky's body, stuffed in a suitcase and hidden in a Dumpster outside an auto repair shop about two miles away, sources said.

Police said they found three knives in a butcher block inside the suspect's apartment.

It was a tragic end to the "angelic" 9-year-old, who disappeared Monday afternoon after getting lost while walking alone for the first time from his Borough Park day camp and following a man down a busy street, sparking a massive search.

"There are no words, just no words, to describe the sense of what happened here," said State Assemblyman Dov Hikind in an interview this morning.

Police did not release the name of the suspect, but sources said they tracked him down by tracing credit card transactions and video surveillance that showed the boy walking behind a bearded man on 45th Street and Dahill Road and possibly getting into a gold-colored car.

Witnesses who saw police raid the suspect's home at E. 2nd St. and Avenue C recognized the handcuffed, bearded man from surveillance videos. A gold-colored car was also found at the residence, and investigators were seen going over the vehicle inch by inch.

Levi Aron is the man NYPD believe is responsible for the death of Leibby Kletzky, the missing 9-year-old Brooklyn Boro Park Jewish boy who has been missing since Monday.

Neighbors of the suspect said he regularly attended the local shul.

"You could tell he was mentally unstable," one unidentified neighbor said. "He would be calm but then would flare up. The whole family is strange."

"I'm shocked," said Rosso Safia, 23, of the Park Slope Auto Center. "There's a little kid in the dumpster we use. I have a little girl of my own. This is the worst thing that has ever happened to us."

Safia said the store put it's garbage out aruond 6:30 last night and that the dumpster is emptied some time between midnight and 3 a.m. Safia said the dumpster was empty when police found the boy's body.

"When they pick up the garbage they leave the plastic top open so anyone could have tossed it in."

Kletsky was last seen on surveillance video around 45th Street and Dahill Road walking behind a bearded man in a white shirt and dark pants.

Police investigate the trash bin where part of the boy's body was found.
 

"The boy is standing alone at some point. The male crosses the street in his direction, and the boy follows him on Dahill Road," said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne, adding that it's unclear whether the pair exchanged words.

The man -- who Browne described as "a person of interest" -- is seen driving off in a gold, possibly Japanese-make car, although "we don't know for certain whether the boy had gotten into the vehicle or not," he said.

Leibby's distraught dad, Nachman, a passenger-van driver with five daughters, reviewed the earlier footage, "He had tears in his eyes," said Moishe Lefkovitz, the manager of the locksmith shop at 44th Street and 15th Avenue where the surveillance footage was taken.

"He kept shaking his head, saying, 'Where are you going? Where are you going? What are you doing?' "

Authorities say the boy was videoed walking alone from the Boyan Day Camp at a school on 44th Street near 12th Avenue at 4:50 p.m. Monday after returning from a class trip to Manhattan Beach Park.

Leibby -- who usually takes the bus -- was allowed to leave camp on foot so he could meet his mom and dad just seven blocks away, where they had a doctor's appointment.

The couple even took special pains to repeatedly go over the boy's walking route with him, a pal said.

The child had instructions to walk up 44th Street to 13th Avenue and then turn right on 13th Avenue and walk straight across to 50th Street, said a family friend, Rabbi Bernard Freilich.

"It sounded like he wasn't an expert on the streets," Freilich said.

Surveillance shows the boy walking out the front door on 44th Street toward 13th Avenue, as instructed, but instead of turning right toward the meeting spot, he kept going.

Video footage from the locksmith shop shows him on that corner at around 5:20 p.m. The last known footage of him with the man was recorded between 5:30 and 5:45 p.m.

His parents waited until 7 p.m. before contacting the Shomrim, the local civil-patrol group. Shomrim contacted the NYPD at 8 p.m.

Officers and search dogs, aided by the scent of Leibby's personal belongings -- including of his black leather shoes -- flooded the school looking for clues. An estimated 3,000 volunteers -- including busloads from Hasidic communities in Lakewood, NJ, and Monsey, NY -- joined the search.

Related Articles: