Levi Aron, 35, of Brooklyn, New York, has admitted suffocating eight-year-old Leiby Kletzky with a bath towel in his apartment.
Now his neighbour Zisa Berkowitz alleges that he tried to kidnap her young son but she scared him off by screaming.
The Brooklyn Butcher, Levi Aron, admitted in court Thursday to snatching 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky off the street last summer, holding him captive and chopping up his body.
Aron, who agreed to a guilty plea that will send him to prison for 40 years to life, recounted how he abducted little Leiby last July 11 in a crime that shocked the city.
The 36-year-old man spoke just above a whisper as he answered a judge’s questions about the gruesome crime. Aron, who looked groggy, stared forward and gave monosyllabic answers.
“What did you do after you realized he was dead?” Supreme Court Justice Neil Firetog asked.
“Got rid of the body,” answered Aron during his first in-person appearance in more than a year.
“I put it in the suitcase,” he added later.
His previous seven court appearances have been conducted via video hookup from Rikers Island.
He confessed to picking up the boy who was walking alone from camp for the first time. He kept Leiby in his apartment for more than a day, even driving him to a Rockland County wedding. But he panicked upon realizing a massive search for the boy was underway.
He then tied up Leiby and took a towel from the kitchen.
“What did you do with that towel?” asked the judge.
“Smothered him,” replied Aron, who was dressed in a orange prison jumpsuit and wore a yarmulke.
The hardware store clerk admitted to chopping up the body, putting the remains in a suitcase and dumping it in a Dumpster. Police found the boy’s feet in Aron’s freezer.
“There is no way one can comprehend or understand the unspeakable pain of losing a child,” Leiby’s parents said in a joint statement read by Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents their Borough Park neighborhood.
“But today we close the door on this one aspect of our tragedy.”
The parents, Nachman and Esther Kletzky, also thanked prosecutors for quickly resolving the case without subjecting them to a painful trial.
“He is very remorseful in his own way and unfortunately his mental capacity precludes him from expressing that,” defense lawyer Jennifer McCann said after the hearing.
She added that any mental problems he suffers from do not rise to the level of an insanity defense. NY Daily News Reported
