Brooklyn butcher Levi Aron was sentenced today to 40 years to life in prison for murdering and dismembering an 8-year old boy, ending a gruesome chapter to one of the city’s most horrible crimes.
Aron showed little emotion as a Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Neil Firetog pronounced the sentence, the result of plea deal cut three weeks earlier.
During that guilty plea, Aron, 36, admitted that he abducted the lost boy, Leiby Kletzky, last summer, then smothered him and chopped up his body amid an intense search for the boy, who missed a turn on his way home from day camp.
Aron abducted Kletzky July 11, 2011 at 18th Avenue and Dahill Road, in Brooklyn. Aron then took the child to his apartment, at 466 East 2nd St., where he killed him, hacked his body into several parts and kept his feet in the freezer.
Leiby’s heartbroken parents, Nachman and Esther Kletzky, stayed away from the sentencing. They let the statement that they issued after Aron’s guilty plea speak for itself.
“They feel that justice has been done,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a family friend. ““Every time the story appears, it brings them back to the day it happened.”
“It’s incredibly painful, incredibly difficult, so hopefully now the spotlight will move on and that’s what they want.”
Prosecutor Julie Rendelman spoke of the tragedy of a life cut painfully short.
“An innocent and angelic boy named Leiby Kletzky left his school and simply lost his way,” Rendelman said. “If he had run into any normal person he would have been safe.”
“Levi Aron, taking advantage, chose not to make Leiby safe, chose not to take him home to his loving family,” Rendelman said. “He made a choice that day. He could have let Leiby go, let him become a man and get married someday. He chose to take this boy’s life.”
Aron’s lawyer Howard Greenberg urged officials to protect his client in jail.
“If he’s not put in private custody while he’s in jail he’ll be murdered,” Greenberg said. “There’s a lot of sick and demented people in jail, so I worry for his life. His sentence is 40 years – not death.”