MISSING BROOKLYN BOY FOUND DISMEMBERED IN A DUMPSTER!

The body parts of a missing 8-year-old Brooklyn boy were found Wednesday in a Dumpster and the refrigerator of a man suspected in his disappearance, police said.
The ghoulish discovery of Leiby Kletzky early Wednesday morning capped a frantic two-day search for the child.

"This is a horrendous crime," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said of the random attack.

The Orthodox Jewish boy's apparent body parts - including his severed feet - were in the refrigerator of a man who lives in a third-floor attic apartment on E. Second St. in Kensington, one of the sources said.

Other pieces of the boy were found in a red suitcase wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag in a Dumpster on 20th St. in Greenwood Heights, between Fourth and Fifth Aves., said the NYPD's top spokesman Paul Browne.

Levi Aron was taken into custody at 2:40 a.m. on his 35th birthday at the apartment he shared with his parents. He made statements implicating himself in Leiby's death, Kelly said. Charges against him are pending.

Aron works as a delivery driver for a Brooklyn maintenance supply business and lived in Tennessee before moving to New York.

"He has no excuse," a source said of a possible motive. "He doesn't know why he did it."

Leiby was last spotted alive around 5:30 p.m. Monday, when a surveillance camera captured him standing about a block from a dentist's office on 18th Ave. near Dahill Road in Brooklyn, the sources said.

Footage showed the Borough Park boy asking directions from Aron, who was going to the dentist's office.

Kelly said video shows Leiby waiting seven minutes for Aron to come out of the office and then following him to his 1990 brown Honda Accord.

Detectives tracked down the dentist at his New Jersey home Tuesday night and learned the boy's disappearance coincided with the suspect's visit there to pay a bill with a credit card, Kelly said.

Another dentist and a receptionist at the office helped cops find the suspect's name and address in their files, Kelly said. Volunteers of the local Shomrim patrol canvassed the neighborhood, spotted the car and gave police the license plate to a Honda Accord. The car was registered to Aron's car.

The suspect was collared 40 minutes later.

There is no indication Leiby knew the suspect previously. Kelly said it was pure "happenstance" that the boy asked Aron for direction.

He said when officers arrived at Aron's apartment they found his front door ajar and him standing shirtless inside. Kelly said cops asked Aron where the boy was and he nodded toward his kitchen.

In the kitchen, officers found a cutting board with three bloodied carving knives next to it, Kelly said. They also noticed blood on the handle of the refrigerator. Police found body parts inside, Kelly said.

Police officials said Aron's only previous run-in with the law was a summons for urinating in public last year.

More than a dozen NYPD detectives swarmed the scene outside the Park Slope Auto Center at 651 Fourth Ave. where the suitcase containing some of Leiby's remains was found. Sources said the body parts were found after police checked the large gray trash container, which had its lid open.

Three people were initially taken into custody, but detectives were focusing on Aron, police sources said.

"Everyone is just beside themselves," Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Borough Park) told the Daily News. "This is a community that is one of the safest in New York. The way he was brutally murdered, it's just an absolute horror. If you have kids it's got to make you wonder. It's just horrific."

Hikind said the suspected killer is Jewish.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose district encompasses Borough Park, said the heinous slaughter of the innocent boy left him "speechless and shocked."

"As a father and a human being, I am deeply saddened that so innocent a soul could be so cruelly taken," Nadler said.

Jacob Daskel, coordinator of the Borough Park Shomrim patrol, said he is familiar with the suspect.

"He's a loner," Daskel said. "He lives with his parents."

The owner of the Empire Supply hardware warehouse at 639 McDonald Ave. in Kensington confirmed Aron worked there. The suspect came to work on Tuesday and appeared normal, coworkers said.

"I would never believe it. We worked here for years," said Aron's employer, who asked not to be identified.

Asked whether Aron had a mental disability, the owner replied, "Let's just say I'm an equal opportunity employer."

Aron also went to the bodega across the street from his job on Tuesday to buy his daily Gatorade.

One colleague, who also requested anonymity, described the suspect as temperamental, but a hard worker.

"I tell you one thing, if I known this yesterday I would have killed him myself - without a care," said the colleague, who participated in the around-the-clock search for Leiby.

The colleague said the Aron came to Brooklyn from Memphis after getting divorced. Another coworker said the suspect's father works at B&H photo store in midtown and prays daily at the Ahavath Achim Congregation temple in Kensington.

"He's a funny guy," the colleague said. "We knew something was wrong with him but he worked very well. He would flip out sometimes. If you really got him good he would flip out and you'd be asking 'What happened? We were just joking around.'"

Another coworker said the suspect's father works at B&H photo store in midtown and prays daily at the Ahavath Achim Congregation temple in Kensington.

A massive search by cops and hundreds of volunteers from the Orthodox Jewish community had been underway for Leiby, who had begged his parents to let him walk home alone from camp for the first time Monday afternoon. His parents agreed to meet him halfway between his Borough Park school and the family's home.

But he never showed up.

A neighbor saw police take several people into custody at the home on E. Second St. near Avenue C about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday.

"They went through backyards with their guns out. They knocked on the door, and I heard a noise as they busted down the door," the neighbor said. "They went in and then three guys and a woman a few minutes later were on the porch. Then downstairs they brought out some guy in cuffs. He was quiet standing on the porch. They took the three guys and took them into an Impala."

Leiby was filmed by a store surveillance camera standing alone about 5:30 p.m. Monday at the corner where 45th St., 18th Ave. and Dahill Road intersect, police said. At that point, he was already far off course from a seven-block walk to meet his parents.

The video shows a bearded man now believed to be Aron turn the corner and walk down Dahill Road with the boy walking behind him. They both got into the Honda Accord drive off, Kelly said.

"He [Aron] brought the boy to his apartment, dismembered the boy and disposed of his body," Kelly said.

On an earlier surveillance video, Leiby was filmed leaving the camp at Yeshiva Boyan at 5:05 p.m.

About 30 minutes later, yet another video shows him walking alone on 15th Ave. near 44th St., police said. The 4-foot-tall boy was carrying a backpack and wearing blue pants and a blue shirt with green and white stripes. The encounter with the bearded man in the gold car, shown on a third surveillance video, came seven minutes later.

Cops searched the neighborhood by helicopter and door to door. Agents from the FBI's New York office also joined in the hunt.

The Shomrim neighborhood patrol provided dozens of members and arranged for more than a hundred volunteers to join the hunt.

Leiby's parents, who began sitting shiva Wednesday, were wracked by dread the day before -- their pain etched into their faces.

"They're distraught," said Simcha Bernath, head of the Borough Park Shomrim. Leiby's father, Nachman Kletzky, huddled in his home Tuesday afternoon with four rabbis while his wife rested for the first time since her son went missing.

Assemblyman Peter Abbate, Hikind, the Shomrim and others had put up a reward of $100,000 for information in the case.


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