The lawyer for Levi Aron, accused of murdering eight-year-old hassidic boy Leiby
Kletzky in Brooklyn in July, will field an insanity defense, claiming his
client’s confession was coerced, the New York Post reported on
Monday.
“My opinion is you’ll get him to admit he shot Kennedy if you
spent enough time with him,” Howard Greenberg said of his client Levi
Aron.
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millionLeiby Kletzky's accused killer: 'I just
panicked'Aron, 35, appeared via video conference at a hearing in Brooklyn
Supreme Court on Monday.
Kletzky, a Boyaner hassid, went missing on July
11 while walking home from a day camp held at his school, Yeshiva Boyan Tiferes
Mordechai Shlomo, in the Borough Park neighborhood.
Police and around
5,000 volunteers, coordinated by the Brooklyn South Shomrim volunteer civilian
patrol organization, joined in a block-byblock search for him, including Jews
from the local community and from as far away as Queens, the Catskills, Monsey
and Boston.
Kletzky had begged his parents to let him walk home from the
camp. His mother had waited for him at a predetermined point a few blocks away
at 50th Street and 13th Avenue.
The boy missed a turn upon leaving camp
and headed in the wrong direction.
Parts of his dismembered body were
found in the refrigerator of the suspect’s home on July 13.
According to
the indictment, Aron abducted the boy who he happened to meet outside a
dentist’s office. He is believed to have killed and dismembered the boy in order
to hide the evidence.
Aron, imprisoned at Riker’s Island Prison in New
York, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. A New York court in August deemed
him fit to stand trial, but his lawyer said that the evaluation merely permitted
procedures to continue and that the defense team could still claim
insanity.
Gil Shefler contributed to this report.