Man Held After NY Cops Find Boy's Dismembered Body

A young Brooklyn boy who vanished while walking home from a day camp in one of the safest parts of the city was killed and dismembered by a stranger he had turned to for help after getting lost, police said today. An intense search for the missing 8-year-old, Leiby Kletzky, ended with the gruesome discovery of his dismembered body inside the home of a man who had been seen with the child around the time he disappeared, police said. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the 35-year-old suspect, Levi Aron, made statements implicating himself in the boy's death. Formal charges are pending.

When detectives arrived at the man's attic apartment around 2:40am, they asked him where the boy was and he nodded toward the kitchen, Kelly said. Detectives saw blood on the freezer door and discovered bloody knives, a cutting board and feet inside, according to a law enforcement official. The rest of the body was found inside a red suitcase that had been tossed into a trash bin in another Brooklyn neighborhood. Police and volunteers had been looking since late Monday afternoon for Leiby, who disappeared while on his way to meet his mother in the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park. (More Hasidic Judaism stories.)