More details have emerged about 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky’s final moments with a schizophrenic madman who snatched the boy off the streets of Brooklyn as he tried to find his way home.
On Wednesday night, 8,000 grieving mourners gathered to pay their last respects in a funeral service held just hours after Leiby’s dismembered body was found.
Police say the innocent Hasidic child fought for his life before being suffocated and chopped up in the tiny attic apartment of “loner” Levi Aron. Leiby’s dismembered body was found inside black garbage bags stuffed in a suitcase and left in a dumpster 2 miles from Aron’s Kensington apartment.
The autopsy report described defensive wounds on the child’s arms and wrists. His severed feet, which were found inside Ziplock bags stored in Aron’s freezer, bore ligature marks indicating his feet were tied as he struggled.
Leiby had begged his parents to allow him to walk the 7 blocks home alone for the first time from the Boyan Day Camp on 44th Street near 12th Avenue. “This is a no-crime area,” said state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose district is the safest in Brooklyn.
What were the odds that little Leiby would cross paths with the one Orthodox Jew in the neighborhood who had a penchant for little boys and a foot fetish?
After losing his way, Leiby innocently stopped Aron, a stranger, and asked him for directions home. Aron was on his way to a dentist’s office to pay a bill. The receipt for that bill would lead the FBI and police to his front door a day and a half later.
Surveillance video shows Leiby standing across the street from the dentist’s office for 7 minutes, patiently waiting, as he was told to do by the man who promised to show him the way home.
“Leiby appeared to be lost. He encountered Aron and asked him for directions. It was just happenstance, and a terrible fate for this young boy,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
The case was solved within 36 hours by good investigative police work. But it wasn’t soon enough to save Leiby from a deranged killer.
In his 450-word written statement to police, Aron said he left Leiby, alive, but tied up inside his apartment while he went to work on Tuesday. His co-workers at the plumbing supply store where he worked around the corner from his home, said he seemed a little troubled that day.
When Aron arrived home he said he “panicked” after seeing fliers distributed in his neighborhood with the boy’s picture on them. He fed Leiby a tuna fish sandwich then he suffocated the frightened boy with a bath towel. Aron denied sexually assaulting Leiby.
When police raided Aron’s apartment at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, and asked him where Leiby was, he nodded to the refrigerator. Officers saw blood on the refrigerator door handle. 3 bloody knives and a cutting board were found inside the freezer, along with Leiby’s feet.
In a comment left on NBC blog, a longtime resident wrote: “Parents let their kids walk alone in this area all the time because there is an inherant communal trust. We trust out neighbors,” she added: “We feel safe here. Not anymore.”
Source: DM
