By: Fern Sidman
According to court documents obtained by the New York Post, it has been revealed that Nachman Kletzky,
the father of Leiby Kletzky, the little Brooklyn boy who was kidnapped and butchered after losing his way after leaving day camp in Boro Park on July 11th, has filed a $200 million lawsuit against the boy’s alleged murderer and his family.
The suit seeks $100 million in punitive damages from Levi Aron, who is charged with the boy’s gruesome murder and the same amount from his father, Jack Aron, in whose house the boy was murdered and his body dismembered and calls the murder of 8-year-old Leiby, “one of the most horrific crimes in the history of the County of Kings.”
Kletzky’s attorney, Mark Goldsmith, who filed the two suits in Brooklyn Supreme Court, said, “What’s driving the lawsuits is a sense of justice and to compensate the family as best we can. The acts are horrific and horrendous, and the level of damages should reflect that.” He also alleged that Aron’s father knew the boy was being held captive inside his house at 466 East 2nd St. in Kensington.
Goldsmith who represents the firm of Jakubowski, Robertson, Maffei, Goldsmith and Tartaglia, LLP in Saint James, New York, added that: “We find it hard to believe that the father was unaware the boy was in the house all that time. The allegation is he knew of some of the instrumentality of torture.” Moreover, the suit claims the elder Aron “permitted tools of terror to be and remain at said premises, knowing of the vicious, assaultive and murderous propensities of his son, Levi Aron, who resided at said premises.” Property records show that Aron’s house has a market value of $720,000.
The suit against Levi Aron charges that, “the defendant’s culpable acts were utterly reckless, malicious, wanton, willful and exhibited a depraved indifference to the health, safety, freedom and rights of Leiby Kletzky.”
Aron, 35, admitted to abducting Leiby on July 11 after the child became disoriented leaving camp alone for the first time. The accused killer confessed to smothering the child and then carving up the body, tossing some of Leiby’s body parts into a dumpster, but leaving his feet in the freezer. In his hand-written confession, the cold-blooded suspect said he picked up Leiby on July 11 and let him sleep overnight, intending to bring him home the next day. Instead, he panicked at the ferocious scope of the search and decided to kill him after making him a tuna sandwich. “I went for a towel to smother him in the side room. He fought back a little bit but eventually he stopped breathing,” the confession said. “I was still in panic from the fliers and afraid to bring him home.”
The Kletzky lawsuit adds a series of blows for Aron’s defense team, the first being Justice Neil J. Firetog’s decision that Aron was mentally competent to stand trial, knocking his case for an insanity defense and the upbraiding that Pierre Bazile and Jennifer L. McCann received by the same judge for their lack of legal experience. In a hearing on August 22nd, Justice Firetog castigated the two; raising questions about their ability to handle such a complex case in lieu of the fact that Bazile and McCann posted discussions of the case on their Facebook pages, as well as complaining about the release of public documents to the media and for not providing the Department of Corrections an approved list of visitors for their client.
According to a transcript of the hearing, Bazile 40, is a former police officer who was admitted to the New York State bar in 2007 and McCann, 30, is a defense lawyer specializing in insanity defense pleas. McCann said at the time that she and Bazile would introduce psychiatric evidence at the trial, a filing necessary to pursue an insanity defense, but a decision on whether to use such a defense could still be months away, she said, as the defense is still vetting psychiatrists to examine Mr. Aron.
