The Timeline: From Day Camp into a Murderer’s Path

Eight-year-old Leiby Kletzky came out of the double glass doors of the Boyaner day camp and turned left on 44th St., just as he had at the start of a dry run with his parents the day before.

He continued up the block to 13th Ave., to the corner where he had turned right during the prelude to his solo – and where his mother was waiting for him six blocks down 13th Ave.

Instead, he continued straight down 44th St.

He crossed 14th Ave. and soon came into view of a camera outside the Shomrim Locksmith at the corner of 15th Ave. He lived a dozen blocks down 15th Ave., but he did not pause or even gaze that way. One thing he knew for sure was that he was not supposed to meet his mother at home.

He went on down 44th St. with a child’s sense of space and time, his sneakered feet a little boy’s wings, following a fledgling’s errant instinct that going straight was sure to take him to his mother.

If the killer’s account is truthful, Leiby must have trekked straight on to where 44th St. dead-ended at Dahill Road. His continued faith in forward progress then sent him to the right, up this angled street that can confuse even adults.

The boy would have then suddenly found himself at the point of a triangle where three streets intersect, the third being 45th St.

Levi Aron would tell detectives that was the very moment he happened to stride up from the brown 1990 Honda Accord he had just parked on Dahill Road. Aron was on his way to pay a bill at a dentist directly across 18th Ave.

By Aron’s account, Leiby asked him for directions and he told the boy to wait a moment while he paid the dentist. Some investigators wonder if Aron had in fact picked up the boy in the car after spotting him somewhere along 44th St. All agree that a red light or some other chance delay could have kept the boy from happening upon the killer. It seemed to be evil’s own timing.

“Seconds,” an investigator said. “Seconds.”

The triangle is occupied by a car lease broker named Tristate Fleet, and surveillance cameras it installed two months ago show Leiby waiting while Aron crosses to the dentist. The boy stepped over to 45th St. for a moment, but then returned and waited, trusting, unsuspecting.

The footage shows Aron returning and the boy following him to the car. Aron lives next to a public school, but those kids are always with other kids and no doubt would cry out if he tried to grab one. Leiby just rode off with him.

The murderer later sat in an interview room at the Snyder Ave. stationhouse, as calm and matter of fact as if he had never chanced into the boy.

Click below to watch surveillance videos taken at 18th Avenue and 44th Street, previously posted here on Matzav.com:

Video 1:

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Video 2:

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{NY Daily News/Matzav.com Newscenter}