Levi Aron, NY man, to be sentenced for dismembering 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky

By: Crimesider Staff
Topics: Daily Blotter

Levi Aron is arraigned in Brooklyn criminal court on July 14, 2011 in New York

/ Pool,AP Photo/Louis Lanzano

(CBS/AP) NEW YORK - Levi Aron, the Brooklyn man who admitted to kidnapping, killing and dismembering 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky in July 2011, is expected to be sentenced Wednesday. He faces a prison term of up to 40 years to life.

Pictures: Dismembered remains of missing NYC boy Leiby Kletzky found

Aron, 36, admitted earlier this month to killing the child after the boy asked him for directions. The former hardware store clerk pleaded to lesser charges in a deal that spared him a criminal trial and the possibility of life in prison without parole.

On July 11, 2011, Kletzky got lost walking home alone for the first time from a religious day camp. Aron discovered the boy and took him upstate where he attended a wedding before bringing him to his apartment.

Aron said he panicked after he saw fliers with the missing boy's photo. He then suffocated the boy and dismembered him.

Leiby was Hasidic, an ultra-Orthodox version of Judaism, and the killing shook the tight-knit community in Borough Park, a safe and somewhat insular neighborhood that is home to one of the world's largest communities of Orthodox Jews outside Israel, according to The Associated Press. Aron, who lived nearby, was Orthodox but not Hasidic.

Detectives found the boy's severed feet wrapped in plastic in Aron's freezer. A cutting board and three bloody carving knives were found in the refrigerator. The rest of the boy's body was discovered in bags inside a red suitcase in a trash bin about a mile from Aron's apartment. His legs had been cut from his torso.

Complete coverage of Leiby Kletzky on Crimesider