A woman who lives three doors down from “the Butcher of Brooklyn” said yesterday that the madman had tried to kidnap her young son right off their block, but that she scared him away with her screams.
“The story is true. We’re going through a lot of trauma here,” Zisa Berkowitz told the NY Post from her East Second Street home, steps from where Levi Aron admittedly suffocated 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky with a bath towel in Aron’s Kensington attic apartment.
NYPD detectives spoke to the mom on Wednesday, just hours after Aron was arrested for Kletzky’s murder and dismemberment.
The alleged kidnap attempt occurred within the past two years, sources said,.
A former neighbor who grew up across the street said the “oddball . . . used to give kids rides in cars.”
Aron later moved to Tennessee, where his creepy stare freaked out customers at the kosher deli where he worked as a butcher. He was married briefly before bolting back to Brooklyn.
A Facebook “friend” told the iPad news publication The Daily that Aron had written on the site that “he likes Brooklyn more than Tennessee because there are more boys here.”
Aron went after another local boy in a failed kidnapping attempt about a week before the Leiby murder, sources told The Daily.
He stalked the 11-year-old in Borough Park with the same Honda he used to abduct Leiby, the sources said.
“[He] was walking home on his block when he noticed a gold car was tailing him,” a source said. “He kept turning around, feeling suspicious, and kept noticing the car was there, so he broke into a run and quickly went home to tell his parents.”
Leiby wasn’t so lucky.
The lost Leiby asked Aron for directions and was instead driven to the madman’s house. Aron fed Leiby and left him home Tuesday while going to work.
That night, Aron panicked over the intense search and media coverage of the boy’s disappearance and suffocated him.
But Leiby put up a fierce struggle against his killer, leaving scratch wounds on Aron’s arms and wrists as he tried to save his own life.
Sources yesterday described the subsequent butchery in greater detail.
They said Aron cut off the boy’s entire legs so the body would better fit in a small suitcase. He then severed the feet and placed them in the freezer as a sick souvenir.
Aron later tossed the suitcase into a dumpster two miles away in Sunset Park.
He was arrested that day and charged with murder.
He spent yesterday in the Bellevue Hospital prison ward undergoing a court-mandated psychiatric evaluation. He wasn’t allowed any visitors, and no member of his Orthodox Jewish family even tried to see him.
At Leiby’s house, the boy’s parents continued observing the traditional Jewish seven-day mourning period known as shiva.
The Kletzky family posted a statement for reporters saying, “We are forever grateful and thankful to HaShem (G-d).”
“We would also like to express to each and every individual — to our friends and neighbors and our fellow New Yorkers and to all the volunteers and all the agencies from the local, city, state and federal who assisted us above and beyond physically, emotionally and spiritually — and to all from around the world, who had us in their thoughts and prayers,” the statement read.
“From the depths of our mourning hearts, THANK YOU!” it concluded.
{NY Post/Matzav.com Newscenter}
How unfortunate,to say the least, that this woman didn’t come forward earlier when it might have done some good.
And yes, time to stop protecting the molesters, leaving them free to continue destroying lives. everyone should all be aware that failure on their part to report molesters could leave them vulnerable to legal action.They could also lose their homes in civil lawsuits filed by victims. Maybe that will get people to finally act appropriately.
What good is it now for the neighbor who lives 3 doors down to come forward now and say he tried to kidnap her child. Where was she before? Maybe had she come forward earlier something could have been done. Now it is too late. When we try to cover up or hide molestation, abduction or any other crime to our children it does not go away. It is time to stop protecting the abusers, molestors….. in our community. Let us do something to protect our children.
I think this may be an opportunity for rabbonim etc. To publicize that it would not be mesira for her to have reported this to the police and gotten the (then) rodef off the street.
Police doubts this woman’s claims.
i agree with flatbush resident if she would have spoken up sooner maybe they could have saved him
do you know aron was at the tehillim for him
Maybe the woman down the block did speak with some kind of authority? Maybe she asked a social worker what to do. It doesn’t say either way.
Regardless, it’s a huge lesson to us all to speak up when something so disturbing happens.
BTW, I wish all these reports would stop emphasizing that the monster “panicked” in face of the huge search and that is why he killed Leiby. That pathetic excuse is from the monster’s confession. The confession contains several attempts to blame others and minimize his crime — he also claimed he took Leiby to a wedding (he didn’t) and meant to return him. He ended by saying that he MAY have done something wrong in murdering Leiby.
Gosh, was dismembering a nine-year-old and storing his feet in the freezer part of the “panic” reaction?
Let’s not be manipulated any further by him.
He did not panic. He is an evil, manipulative monster.
aron should be eaten by the lions and wolves.
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING-SAY SOMETHING!
I’m so hurt for the family…I’m studying Administration of Justice and I hope one day to help make a difference in this world!!! This man clearly has pychcological issues that have manifested since childhood…it is a shame that a tragedy like this has to take place before he gets help.