Leiby Kletzky Killer Set To Plead Guilty

Little Leiby: Heartbroken Hasidic Jews mourn the death of Leiby Kletzky in Boro Park, Brooklyn. Image by getty images
A Brooklyn man was expected to plead guilty next week to butchering an 8-year-old boy who got lost while walking home alone from an Orthodox Jewish day camp, a source close to the case said.
The tentative plea deal calls for Levi Aron, 36, to be sentenced to 40 years to life in prison when he appears in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Aug. 9, the source said. Terms of the deal could change before then, the source said.

Leiby Kletzky Image by nypd
Aron was charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping, and had faced life in prison without the possibility of parole if he was convicted at trial.
He was accused of kidnapping, suffocating and dismembering Leiby Kletzky, whose body parts were found in a freezer in Aron’s apartment in July 2011. Other parts of the boy’s body were found in a suitcase in a dumpster several blocks away.
Aron lived in the same Orthodox community as Kletzky, who went missing the first time he was allowed to walk home alone from the religious camp. He met Aron on the street and sought help from him after getting lost.
A massive search by police and community members led to Aron’s apartment, where authorities made the gruesome find.
Aron signed a confession but his lawyers later said it was coerced by police and he would plead insanity. A court-ordered psychiatric evaluation ruled that Aron was fit to stand trial.
Authorities said Aron admitted he killed the boy after panicking when he saw Kletzky’s image on missing child posters plastered throughout the neighborhood.
Aron’s attorney, Jennifer McCann, was not immediately available for comment.
A spokesman for Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes declined to comment on the case.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture This Jewish New Yorker survived the Holocaust and the Hungarian Revolution, and is still helping others today
-
Fast Forward Trump says he and Netanyahu are ‘on the same side of every issue’ following talks on Iran, tariffs
-
Fast Forward California school board members accused of antisemitism during contentious meeting
-
Fast Forward Over 100 Chicago-area rabbis and cantors condemn Trump’s campus crackdown
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.