9-year-old Brooklyn boy, Leibby Kletzky, missing after leaving day camp, $100,000 reward offered

A frantic, full-scale search kicked into high gear Tuesday for a missing boy who disappeared after leaving a Brooklyn day camp.

Leibby Kletzky, 9, was last seen at his school, Yeshiva Boyan in Borough Park, around 5 p.m. Monday after coming back from a field trip, cops said.

The Orthodox Jewish boy was supposed to meet his mother soon after but never showed up.

There were conflicting reports that a surveillance camera captured images of the boy walking at the corner of 13th Ave. and 50th St.

"Right now, as we speak, (police) dogs are tracking the boy's scent," said Jacob Daskel, coordinator of Borough Park Shomrim neighborhood patrol. "We are trying to map out a map detailing where he has been."

Several business leaders in the community along with Assemblyman Dov Hikind have offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the boy's safe return.

"This is every parent's and every community's worst nightmare," Hikind said. "Anyone with credible information of Leibby's whereabouts should immediately contact the authorities."

The boys parents held vigil in the family's home on 15th Ave. Leibby is the second youngest of their five children, neighbors said,.

"Leibby is a carbon copy of his dad. He's a very good kid, a great kid. He's an angel. He has no rebellious streak to him," said family fried Schmuel Eckstein.

Daskel said those who knew the boy could not imagine he would have wandered off on his own.

"The boy's teachers told us he is very obedient. Very quiet. If someone told him to get in a car. He would listen. We hope and pray that someone hasn't done that," Daskel said.

Leibby is about 4 feet tall and weighs 50 pounds. He was last seen wearing a blue shirt with green and white stripes, blue pants, black leather belt, black socks, black sneakers and a knapsack reading "Nechmod Day Camp."

Daskel said searchers worried that if the boy had been abducted, efforts may have been made to obscure his identity.

"Maybe someone cut off his payes \[side-locks\] and took off his yarmulke," he said. "Keep a look out for that."

Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at (800) 577-TIPS.

yes details from NY Post
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/missing_year_old_klyn_boy_found_SsxgaRkRSOXDdtevuPT2XP

>>The dismembered body of a missing 9-year-old Hasidic boy was found at two locations in Brooklyn and police this morning arrested a suspect in the slaying who had the child’s severed feet in his freezer, sources told The Post.

Police made the gruesome discovery after raiding a Kensington home and arresting 35-year-old Levi Aron, who led them to parts of missing boy Leibby Kletsky’s body, stuffed in a red suitcase and hidden in a Dumpster outside an auto repair shop about two miles away, sources said.

Cops said Aron allegedly suffocated the boy before chopping him up. Police said they also found three knives in a butcher block inside Aron’s apartment.
Tragic: Leibby Kletzky, 9, was found dead.
Paul Martinka
Tragic: Leibby Kletzky, 9, was found dead.
Police investigate the trash bin where part of the boy’s body was found.
Paul Martinka
Police investigate the trash bin where part of the boy’s body was found.

It was a tragic end to the “angelic” boy, who disappeared Monday afternoon after getting lost while walking alone for the first time from his Borough Park day camp and following a man down a busy street, sparking a massive search.

“There are no words, just no words, to describe the sense of what happened here,” said State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn).

details Daily News (Post article gives suspect’s name, see above)
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/07/13/2011-07-13_body_of_missing_boy_leiby_kletzky_8_found_in_dumpster_in_park_slope.html

>>The body parts of an 8-year-old Brooklyn boy who vanished while walking home alone from camp were found Wednesday in a refrigerator of a man being questioned in his disappearance, police sources said.

The ghoulish discovery of Leiby Kletzky early Wednesday morning capped a frantic two-day search for the child.

The Orthodox Jewish boy’s apparent body parts - including his severed feet - were in the refrigerator of a 35-year-old man, who lives in a third-floor attic apartment on E. Second St. in Kensington, one of the sources said.

Other pieces of the boy were found in a suitcase wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag in a Dumpster on 20th St. in Greenwood Heights, between Fourth and Fifth Aves., said the NYPD’s top spokesman Paul Browne.

The suspect, who has no prior arrests on record, was taken into custody at 2:40 a.m. at his apartment. He made statements implicating himself in Leiby’s death, Browne said.

“He has no excuse,” a source said. “He doesn’t know why he did it.”

The source said the suspect, whose name was not immediately released, used a knife to chop Leiby up.

Leiby was last spotted alive around 5:30 p.m. Monday, when a surveillance camera captured him standing about a block from a dentist’s office on 18th Ave. near Dahill Road in Brooklyn, the sources said.

Footage showed the boy following a bearded man, who was visiting the dentist’s office.

Detectives tracked down the dentist at his New Jersey home Tuesday night and learned the boy’s disappearance coincided with the suspect’s visit there to pay a bill, Browne said.

Another dentist and a receptionist at the office helped cops find the suspect’s name and address in their files, Browne said. The suspect was arrested 40 minutes later.

There is no indication Leiby knew the suspect previously.

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