Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Baltimore Fifth-Grader Esther Lebowitz’s Killer Dies in Prison

The convicted murderer of an 11-year-old Jewish girl in 1969 in Baltimore has died in prison.

Wayne Stephen Young, who had been sentenced to life for the murder of Esther Lebowitz, a fifth-grader at a Jewish school, was awaiting a retrial in the case over a technicality. He was denied parole 12 times.

READ: The Forward’s Past Coverage of The Case

Young, 69, died in prison on Dec. 23, the Northwest Citizens Patrol said in a statement posted Monday on the website of Baltimore Jewish Life, a news website of the Baltimore Orthodox Jewish community, citing the state’s attorney in the case.

Attorneys for Young had requested the new trial based on a 2012 ruling by the Court of Appeals of Maryland, the state’s highest court, which found that many convictions before 1980 are invalid because jurors were given unconstitutional instructions.

Lebowitz, who attended the Bais Yaakov School for Girls, was missing for two days before her body was found about a half-mile from her Baltimore home. She died from 17 blows to the head.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

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..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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 credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link 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.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.