Six years after he murdered and dismembered an 8-year-old boy, Levi Aron now fears that he may be responsible for another death that of his own brother.
During an exclusive jailhouse interview Saturday, the notorious Brooklyn child-murderer said “it’s possible” that his evil deeds might have something to do with the demise of his younger brother.
The corpse of Tzvi “Jack” Aron, 29, was found Friday wrapped in a blanket in the same Kensington home where young Leiby Kletzky’s body was found in 2011.
The brother and other family members still live in the same house on East 2nd Street where Levi smothered and butchered Leiby, and had received vengeful death threats in the days after the murder, and as recently as last month, sources said.
But Tzvi — a quiet man who drove delivery for a Jewish bakery, enjoyed riding his motorcycle and tinkering on cars may have instead died from an overdose, law enforcement sources told.
Toxicology tests are planned for Sunday, as coroners begin an autopsy.
Could the younger brother’s death be it accidental overdose, suicide or homicide be linked to the older brother’s unspeakable crime?
“I hope not,” Levi, 40, answered from Sullivan County prison, his black yarmulke askew and his stare vacant as he spoke.
“I hope it’s not related.”
During an hour-long interview, Levi, who smelled like he hadn’t showered in days, repeatedly stared off in silence, up to a minute each time, blinking rapidly.
Wearing a white t-shirt under a white polo shirt, green prison issue pants and black athletic sneakers, Levi said that he’d only just learned his brother was dead.
“A few people [inmates] told me,” he said. “At first I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
After all, his fellow inmates, he said, taunt him for his gruesome crime, nicknaming him “Chop Chop.” “They usually make up names,” he said. Perhaps this was another way to get under his skin, he wondered.
But when he saw news accounts confirming his brother had been found dead in a blanket, he knew he was really gone.
“I really didn’t know him that well,” Levi said, his voice revealing no emotion.
“I was [only] a little close to him,” he said of Tzvi, who’d last visited three years ago.
Asked how the news made him feel, he said flatly, “A little sad.”
Given the retaliatory threats, could Tzvi’s death have been an eye for an eye?
“Yes, that’s in the Bible,” Levi answered, again staring into space.
Asked if his brother had enemies, he repeated, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
The brothers once lived together at the three-story home, where in 2011, Leiby’s severed feet were found in Ziploc bags, inside an upstairs freezer, besides a gore-splattered cutting board, two days after the boy disappeared while walking the eight blocks home from his Borough Park day care.
Levi confessed to stuffing the rest of the body in bags in a Sunset Park Dumpster.
Tzvi was found dead wearing four t-shirts and hoodie in the only closet of the property’s basement apartment, where he lived alone, downstairs from a third brother, Yerachmiel and his family. Yerachmiel found the body; the brothers parents were away visiting their daughter in Monsey.
Investigators at first treated Tzvi’s death as a homicide. But a closer examination of the blanket in which Tzvi was found has revealed that the large, six-foot-plus man could have wrapped his own self inside of it.
Duct tape was found on the blanket, but the tape wasn’t binding the blanket closed, and could have been stuck there previously, a law enforcement source told The Post.
There was no early sign of obvious trauma to the body, no sign of disturbance at the scene, and no indication of forced entry, the source said.
Empty liquor bottles were found in the apartment, and Tzvi may have abused pills, the source said.
“I do feel sorry for what I’ve done,” he said he’d tell Leiby’s family, if given the chance.
“I don’t know,” he said of why he killed the young innocent.
“Stop asking,” he said, finally.
A BODY found wrapped and bound in a Brooklyn closet overnight has been identified by police sources as the brother of Levi Aron — who abducted, killed and dismembered eight-year-old Leiby Kletzky in 2011.
The corpse of Tzvi “Jack’’ Aron, 29, was in a basement closet at his family’s home in Kensington, Brooklyn, — where Kletzky’s body had been found six years before, reports The New York Post.
Last month, Aron, who lived in the basement, had been threatened, police sources said.
Also in December, someone made a call to the home, sources said, threatening to “burn your house down.”
The motive for the threats wasn’t immediately clear — but Aron family members had also reported receiving revenge threats in the days after the little boy’s death.
Police rushed to the house after a third Aron brother, Yerachmiel, discovered Tzvi’s body.
It had been wrapped in a blanket and bound in duct tape, with only the bare feet protruding.
The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.
Sources said the body had been removed — still wrapped and with the face still obscured — to the Medical Examiner’s Office.
There, coroners planned to work through the night unwrapping it slowly while searching for forensic clues.
Levi Aron kidnapped Leiby off the street in 2011, just two weeks short of the boy’s ninth birthday, after he got lost and asked for directions home.
It was the first time the little boy’s parents had been allowed to walk home alone from school, and they had reportedly practised the route with him the day before.
Aron drove the boy to a wedding in Rockland County before returning to his own house, where he killed and mutilated him.
Aron took a plea deal on murder and kidnap charges in 2012. A friend of the boy’s heartbroken parents said they agreed to the deal,
noting, “You don’t want to sit in the courtroom and hear someone describe your baby’s wounds.’’
The murder shocked New York’s Hasidic community.
Aron is serving 40 years and will not be eligible for parole until 2051.
Neighbours were stunned about the latest development, with some speculating a “curse’’ afflicts the Aron family.
“I’m not God, I can’t answer that,’’ said one resident, who asked that his name be withheld. The victim worked in construction and was “a good-hearted boy,’’ he added.
Another neighbour, Rabbi Yehuda Sommers, said of the other brother, Yerachmiel, “He’s hanging in there.’’