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‘Butcher of Brooklyn’ to Plead Guilty to Murder

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Murderer Levi Aron, seen here during his trial, has reportedly struck a plea bargain with the prosecutors, as a result of which he will serve a 40-year sentence for first-degree murder.When Levi Aron, 36, appears in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Thursday, August 9th, his fate will be sealed. The man, known in the media as the “Butcher of Brooklyn,” shocked the city last Summer, devastating the Orthodox Jewish community in particular, when on July 11, 2011, he kidnapped, gruesomely murdered and dismembered 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky as the boy left his Boro Park day camp to meet his mother seven blocks away.

A video surveillance camera captured the image of young Leiby asking Aron for directions after getting lost and later, the boy was seen getting into Aron’s gold-colored sedan.

According to his confession, Aron said he took the boy to a cousin’s wedding in Monsey, New York and then returned with him to his Kensington apartment where Leiby spent the night and the next day while Aron was at work at a local hardware store. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Aron panicked after seeing flyers notifying the community of the boy’s disappearance and returned home where he gave Leiby a lethal cocktail of psychotropic drugs, suffocated him and used carving knives to sever his limbs. When police arrived at Aron’s apartment they found blood on the refrigerator and the boy’s feet in his freezer. Aron then led detectives to a dumpster in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn where they discovered the other half of Leiby’s remains wrapped in a black garbage bag inside a red suitcase.

A law enforcement official involved in the investigation of the case confirmed that as part of a plea agreement deal, Aron will plead guilty to first-degree murder and will be sentenced to a prison term of 40 years to life for the heinous crime.  He had previously been found mentally competent to stand trial by a team of psychiatrists. Howard Greenberg and Pierre Bazile, attorneys representing Levi Aron declined to comment on the pending deal as did the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. Aron’s lawyers have insisted that their client, who has grown morbidly obese in jail, is schizophrenic and have vowed to pursue an insanity defense.

Recently, Aron’s defense team turned over the results of a psychiatric exam by their expert to prosecutors.

New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents the Boro Park neighborhood where Leiby lived and has been the public voice for the boy’s family said the deal could still be scuttled, thus prolonging the agony of the Kletzky family. “At any moment, Levi Aron can change his mind,” Hikind said. “Until this is officially announced, things can change.” Sources close to the case say that Nacham Kletzky, the boy’s father had been discussing the plea with leaders in the Jewish community. “They don’t want to have any more open wounds,” a family friend said.

Leiby’s family wants “to bring this to a conclusion,” Hikind added. “The family has to live with this for the rest of their lives. The idea of having a trial was not something that they wanted to go through. They want to make sure that there is justice.”  Hikind also announced that he intends to read a statement from the Kletzky family at Aron’s court appearance. “The statement talks about faith and G-d and moving on,” said Hikind. “It is a statement of amazing faith in G-d. And faith in humanity.”

Last month, Nachman Kletzky filed a $100 million law suit in a New York court against Levi Aron and his father Jack in whose house the suspected killer had an attic apartment. The suit outlines in painful detail the torture and suffering Leiby underwent at the hands of his murderer and charges Jack Aron with maintaining “dangerous and deadly conditions” in the attic, and failing to prevent Leiby’s kidnapping and negligence in discovering him after he was taken.

A year later, emotions are still running high in the Boro Park community in response to the barbaric murder. Residents have said that Aron “should never be allowed to walk free again.” Charles Gazal, 50, said of Aron, “He’s an animal. It’s not enough. The way he cut the kid’s body up, he should be gone for the rest of his life. He’s just an animal. Everyone here was shaken last year.”  In the apartment building on 15th Avenue in Boro Park where the Kletzky family lived at the time of their son’s murder, a 35-year-old mother of three said Aron’s punishment is “the least he deserves. You’re not going to bring Leiby back either way though,” she added. Another resident of the building who is the father of two said Aron, “should be in for life. It’s very hard to take such a piece of news. We wouldn’t expect any punishment except life in prison.”

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