NEW YORK — Thousands of mourners gathered in Brooklyn for the funeral of an 8-year-old boy who police said was abducted and dismembered by a man he approached for help after getting lost on a short walk home from day camp.
The Wednesday night service, held in an outdoor courtyard, drew a sea of men in black hats and coats and women in modest dresses — the traditional dress of the Hasidic Jews who call the neighborhood home. The overflow crowd packed neighboring streets to listen to the ceremony in Yiddish and Hebrew.
The funeral came just hours after police discovered the remains of Leiby Kletzky, and arrested a man who told them he had taken the boy home after he asked for directions, then killed him in a panic after learning that a massive search was under way for the missing child.
Levi Aron, 35, told investigators he took the boy to a wedding in the suburb of Monsey, according to a partial transcript of a written confession posted on the Web site of NBC New York. He said he didn't realize that a small army of volunteers was out searching until the next morning.
"When I saw the flyers I panicked and was afraid," he reportedly wrote on a legal pad during a police interview. NBC said it had obtained a transcript of Aron's handwritten notes from "a law enforcement source."
Detectives found the boy's severed feet, wrapped in plastic, in the man's freezer, as well as a cutting board and three bloody carving knives. A plastic garbage bag with bloody towels was nearby.
"It is every parent's worst nightmare," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Wednesday, following the arrest.
Aron was awaiting arraignment Thursday on a charge of second degree murder.
Leiby disappeared Monday afternoon while on his way to meet his mother on a street corner seven blocks from his day camp, the first time the young Hasidic child was allowed to walk the route alone. Authorities said he had evidently gotten lost after missing a turn, and had reached out to Aron, a stranger, for help.
The gruesome killing shocked the tight-knit Hasidic community in Borough Park, in part because it is one of the safest sections of the city and because Aron is himself an Orthodox Jew, although not Hasidic. The Hasidim are ultra-Orthodox Jews.
"This is a no-crime area," said state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose district includes the area. "Everybody is absolutely horrified," he said.
While the medical examiner's office said it was still investigating how the boy was killed, the body was released so that the boy could be buried Wednesday evening according to Jewish custom.
Speakers at the funeral stressed the community's resilience and unity after what one called an unnatural death.
"This is not human," said Moses Klein, 73, a retired caterer who lives near the corner where the boy was last seen.
The break in the case came when investigators watched a grainy video that showed the boy, wearing his backpack, getting into a car with a man outside a dentist's office. Detectives tracked the dentist down at his home in New Jersey, and he remembered someone coming to pay a bill. Police identified Aron using records from the office, and 40 minutes later he was arrested, shortly before 3 a.m. Wednesday.
Aron told police where to find the rest of the body; it was in pieces, wrapped in plastic bags, inside a red suitcase that had been tossed into a trash bin in another Brooklyn neighborhood, Kelly said.
Police said there was no evidence the boy was sexually assaulted, but they would not otherwise shed any light on a motive except to say Aron told them he "panicked" when he saw photos of the missing boy on fliers that were distributed in the neighborhood. Police were looking into whether Aron had a history of mental illness.
Police said Aron, who is divorced, lives alone in an attic in a building shared with his father and uncle.
Kelly said it was "totally random" that Aron grabbed the boy, and aside from a summons for urinating in public, he had no criminal record. A neighbor told authorities her son had said Aron had once tried to lure him into his car, but nothing happened and she didn't think much of it until the news of the killing, police said.
He lived most of his life in New York and worked as a clerk at a hardware supply store around the corner from his home, authorities said. Co-workers said Aron was at work on Tuesday.
"He seemed a little troubled," said employee Chamin Kramer, who added Aron usually came and went quietly.
Aron lived briefly in Memphis, Tenn., and his ex-wife, Deborah Aron, still lives in the area. She said he never showed signs of violence toward her two children from a previous relationship.
"It's utter disbelief," she said from the toy-littered backyard of her home in the Memphis suburb of Germantown. "This ain't the Levi I know."
Deborah Aron said the couple divorced about four years ago after a year of marriage. She described Levi Aron as a person who was shy until he got to know you and said he enjoyed music, karaoke and "American Idol." She said he attended Orthodox Jewish services in Memphis.
He was "more of a mother's boy than a father's boy," who lived at home until he met her, she said.
She said Levi injured his head when he was hit by a car while riding his bike at the age of 9 and suffered problems stemming from that accident.
Associated Press Writers Karen Matthews and Karen Zraick in New York and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tenn., contributed to this report.