The accused killer of 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky faces a grand jury today to be arraigned in Brooklyn on charges of second-degree murder. The child's funeral took place Tuesday night.
According to sources quoted by NBC New York, Aron gave a lengthy confession to New York police about the murder.
He told detectives he spent “several hours” with Leiby. But he said he “panicked” when he saw posters plastered all over the neighborhood and knew that thousands were searching for the child. The news allegedly prompted him to decide to kill the child; he confessed to suffocating the little boy and dismembering his body in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.
Aron went to work a few hours later, as a stock clerk at the Empire State Supply Co. hardware store on McDonald Avenue in Kensington, according to a co-worker who spoke to a local news outlet. “I can't believe this,” said the co-worker, who requested anonymity. “He was a strange guy, but he was here yesterday and he was fine after [allegedly] killing this little boy.”
When police tracked Aron down early Wednesday morning, and asked him where Leiby was, he nodded towards the kitchen. Inside the refrigerator, its handle covered in blood, was a butcher block cutting board with three knives. In the freezer police found the child's severed feet. Aron subsequently led them to a dumpster two miles away, where Leiby's other body parts were stuffed into a black plastic bag packed into a red suitcase and flung into a dumpster in front of an auto parts shop.
A Confession May Not Be Enough
Even with a confession, there will still a trial, according to Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.
“As a recovering defense attorney, many times I had reason to believe the person had been hoaxed into giving a confession when I was a defense attorney,” Hynes told listeners Thursday morning on the popular New Jersey-based “JM in the AM” Jewish radio talk show.
He added that although it was possible an indictment could be handed down by the Grand Jury in one day, that may not happen. Hynes also said he intends to ask the judge to permit media cameras in the courtroom when the case comes to trial.
“I have always made the case for transparency,” Hynes said. “I think people have a right to know what is happening.”