Alleged Kletzky murderer to plead insanity, lawyer says

Attorney claims Levi Aron, accused of killing haredi boy in NY, forced to confess: "You could get him to admit he shot Kennedy."

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Leibby Kletzky 311 (photo credit: NYPD)
Leibby Kletzky 311
(photo credit: NYPD)
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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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.