NEW YORK — Accused Brooklyn child-killer Levi Aron apparently went to a relative's wedding at a New Square catering hall the same day he smothered 8-year-old Leiby Kletsky with a towel, police said.
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said that police believe Aron did go to the wedding Monday night but he did not take the boy, whose dismembered body was found two days later. Other guests at the wedding confirmed Aron was there, but didn't see the boy, the commissioner added.
Detectives seized video surveillance from a New Square catering hall, where the wedding took place, The Journal News learned today. New York City detectives stopped by Ateres Charna wedding hall in New Square Wednesday and downloaded footage from Monday night’s wedding, said the hall’s manager, Izzy Goldstein.
“The police were here yesterday,” Goldstein told The Journal News today. “They said he (Aron) said he was here. But I did not see him and I did not want to see him. It’s very gruesome.”
He said 400 to 600 people, including many children, attended the Jewish wedding. The bride was from Far Rockaway, Queens, and the groom from Rockland. He has no idea whether Aron and the boy attended.
“I wouldn’t know who he is,” Goldstein said. “I hope he was not here. An evil person like him, it’s unbelievable what he did. I didn’t sleep all night.”
He said he wouldn’t contact the newlyweds.
“This would ruin their simcha — happy time — if they knew someone like him
might have been there,” he said.
Aron is related to the bride, said Nathan Meisner, of L'Chaim Catering in Monsey, which handled the wedding.
“I know the groom personally,” he said. “The piece of venom (Aron) was related to
the other side, not the groom side.”
In what WNBC says is his statement to police, Aron says of Leiby: "I asked if he wanted to go for the ride — wedding in Monsey — since I didn’t think I was going to stay for the whole thing since my back was hurting. He said ok. Due to traffic, I got back around 11:30 p.m. … so I brought him to my house thinking I’d bring him to his house the next day."
Aron told police he panicked when he saw the fliers for the missing boy and smothered him with a towel.
Investigators believe Leiby may have been tied up and tried to fight off his alleged captor before he was killed, police officials said today.
At a news conference, Kelly said Aron had scratches on his arms and wrists — a sign "there was some kind of struggle." There also were marks on the victim's remains that could have been caused by restraints, the commissioner added.
A preliminary medical examination indicates Leiby Kletzky was "smothered or suffocated," Kelly said.
Aron appeared in court today and was ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation after his lawyer told a judge that his client might be mentally ill.
"He has indicated to me that he hears voices and has had some hallucinations," attorney Pierre Bazile said.
Walking home alone from day camp for the first time on Monday afternoon, the 8-year-old disappeared. A day-and-a-half search led police to the Brooklyn home of a man seen on a surveillance video with the young Orthodox Jewish child. They asked Levi Aron: Where is the boy?
The man nodded toward the kitchen, authorities said, where blood stained the freezer door. Inside was the stuff of horror films — severed feet, wrapped in plastic. In the refrigerator, a cutting board and three bloody carving knives. A plastic garbage bag with bloody towels was nearby.
"It is every parent's worst nightmare," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Wednesday, following the arrest of 35-year-old Levi Aron on a charge of second-degree murder.
Leiby disappeared Monday afternoon while on his way to meet his mother on a street corner seven blocks from his day camp, the first time the young Hasidic child was allowed to walk the route alone. Authorities said he had evidently gotten lost after missing a turn, and had reached out to Aron, a stranger, for help.
The gruesome killing shocked the tight-knit Hasidic community in Borough Park, in part because it is one of the safest sections of the city and because Aron is himself an Orthodox Jew, although not Hasidic. The Hasidim are ultra-Orthodox Jews.
"This is a no-crime area," said state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose district includes the area. "Everybody is absolutely horrified," he said. "Everyone is in total shock, beyond belief, beyond comprehension ... to suddenly disappear and then the details ... and the fact someone in the extended community ... it's awful."
While the medical examiner's office said it was still investigating how the boy was killed, the body was released so that the boy could be buried Wednesday evening according to Jewish custom.
Thousands gathered around a Borough Park synagogue for the funeral service. Speakers broadcast over a loudspeaker, chanting and speaking in Yiddish and Hebrew. They stressed the community's resilience and unity after what one called an unnatural death.
"This is not human," said Moses Klein, 73, a retired caterer who lives near the corner where the boy was last seen.
The break in the case came when investigators watched a grainy video that showed the boy, wearing his backpack, getting into a car with a man outside a dentist's office. Detectives tracked the dentist down at his home in New Jersey, and he remembered someone coming to pay a bill. Police identified Aron using records from the office, and 40 minutes later he was arrested, shortly before 3 a.m. Wednesday.
Aron told police where to find the rest of the body; it was in pieces, wrapped in plastic bags, inside a red suitcase that had been tossed into a trash bin in another Brooklyn neighborhood, Kelly said.
Police said there was no evidence the boy was sexually assaulted, but they would not otherwise shed any light on a motive except to say Aron told them he "panicked" when he saw photos of the missing boy on fliers that were distributed in the neighborhood. Police were looking into whether Aron had a history of mental illness.
Police said Aron, who is divorced, lives alone in an attic in a building shared with his father and uncle.
Kelly said it was "totally random" that Aron grabbed the boy, and aside from a summons for urinating in public, he had no criminal record. A neighbor told authorities her son had said Aron had once tried to lure him into his car, but nothing happened and she didn't think much of it until the news of the killing, police said.
He lived most of his life in New York and worked as a clerk at a hardware supply store around the corner from his home, authorities said. Co-workers said Aron was at work on Tuesday.
"He seemed a little troubled," said employee Chamin Kramer, who added Aron usually came and went quietly.
Aron lived briefly in Memphis, Tenn., and his ex-wife, Deborah Aron, still lives in the area. She said he never showed signs of violence toward her two children from a previous relationship.
"It's utter disbelief," she said from the toy-littered backyard of her home in the Memphis suburb of Germantown. "This ain't the Levi I know."
Deborah Aron said the couple divorced about four years ago after a year of marriage. She described Levi Aron as a person who was shy until he got to know you and said he enjoyed music, karaoke and "American Idol." She said he attended Orthodox Jewish services in Memphis.
He was "more of a mother's boy than a father's boy," who lived at home until he met her, she said.
She said Levi injured his head when he was hit by a car while riding his bike at the age of 9 and suffered problems stemming from that accident.
problems stemming from that accident.
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