Rockland County, NY – Butcher Levi Was Stranger To Most At New Square Wedding

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    Wedding hall where Aron attendedRockland County, NY – Guests at Monday’s wedding of Yakov Morsel and Dina Munk in New Square already knew that an 8-year-old Hasidic boy had vanished earlier in the day in Brooklyn.

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    What they didn’t know was that the man who would be accused of the boy’s gruesome killing was in their midst — and that he may have locked the child in his car in the catering hall’s parking lot off Route 45.

    It wasn’t until two days later that police charged Levi Aron, a cousin of the bride, with suffocating Leiby Kletsky and cutting up his body, putting his feet in his freezer and dumping a suitcase of body parts on the street.

    “Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of people were aware that a little boy was missing and were praying for him,” Eva Gross of Far Rockaway, a neighbor and close friend of the bride and her family, told The Journal News. “Everybody who went to the wedding went with a heavy heart. None of us in the wider Jewish community could have any peace of mind while this was going on.”

    Aron, 35, a twice-divorced hardware store clerk, was not known to most guests at the Ateres Charna wedding hall. He would later tell New York City police that he took Leiby to the wedding before returning home to Brooklyn and killing him the next day.

    Police were confident that Aron attended, saying several guests confirmed he was there. NYPD detectives have copied the catering hall’s 14 surveillance tapes from the wedding to try to learn if the boy went inside.

    Celebrants said they doubt Leiby — who was wearing a casual striped shirt when he was abducted on a walk home from camp — entered because he would have stood out; the other boys were all sharing a table and wearing white shirts and dark jackets, traditional Orthodox Jewish garb.

    There were about two dozen children among the 450 guests, which included large contingents of family, friends and neighbors of the groom in Monsey and the bride’s hometown of Far Rockaway, Queens. The couple, who got engaged in 2009, met through Munk’s grandfather, who lives in Morsel’s neighborhood.

    Men and women, who assembled separately according to Orthodox tradition, danced to a live band that played into the night. The ceremony began at 6:30 p.m and continued until 1 a.m., though Aron told police he left early and got home to Brooklyn about 11:30 p.m.

    Several attendees said they had no idea Aron was there or even who he was until his arrest Wednesday on felony murder and kidnapping charges. They didn’t learn until Thursday that he may have come with the boy.

    “It was extremely upsetting,” said Gross, who doesn’t know Aron. “Does anybody know the extended relatives of neighbors?”

    Neighbors in Monsey, including the Morsel family, didn’t want the wedding associated with the brutal murder and were reluctant to discuss the unsettling connection to the case.

    Read more at The Journal News


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    19 Comments
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    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    12 years ago

    If poor Leiby was sitting in a car in the parking lot while the Morsel family was dancing until 1:00 AM and coming and going through the parking lot and no one noticed or heard anything, they have good reason to be upset. There may be more to this aspect of the story we haven’t heard yet.

    Babishka
    Member
    Babishka
    12 years ago

    I think the poor child was already dead and the murderer drove up to Monsey to establish an alibi.

    googleface
    googleface
    12 years ago

    its insane to really think what really happened to him nebech!!!! i hope the real truth comes out somtime!!! it ssooooooo sssaaadddd!!!1

    12 years ago

    I don’t think you can blame anybody before you know for a fact that he was in the car and that he was alive and on and on. So why smear a Wedding in to this gruesome rushas act?

    Aron1
    Active Member
    Aron1
    12 years ago

    “Everybody who went to the wedding went with a heavy heart. None of us in the wider Jewish community could have any peace of mind while this was going on.”
    Baloney! I can’t believe that people at the wedding had absolutely any idea about the abduction. It didn’t even start to become widespread until at least 9:00 – 10:00 that night.

    Eagle
    Eagle
    12 years ago

    Is it possible that he just locked our holy brother Leiby in the trunk and drove to the wedding with Leiby in the trunk, he might have died from carbon monoxide inhalation, then after the wedding he found him dead and he panicked, so he dismembered the body and tried to get rid of it. Just wondering. On a side note, I can’t stop thinking of our brother Leiby, I never knew him and I don’t know the Kletzky family, I can’t stop thinking and sobbing for Leiby and the entire Kletzky family, i can’t stop thinking about his siblings and how terribly painful it is for them. I pray to God that someone establishes a fund to help them financially and mentally, we can’t expect them to go out and be employed at this time, they sooo need our help. May God comfort them and may he send moshiach to redeem us from this golus, this is really the time for moshiach to come, we can’t take it anymore.

    ishbibele
    ishbibele
    12 years ago

    Was he really a guy who went to shul ?I thought that I read his EX wife wasn’t jewish ?