The alleged murder's name is Levi Aron. He is 35 years old and lives at 549 EAST 2ND ST in Brooklyn.
A Brooklyn source close to the situation reports that the arrested man is ultra-Orthodox. .
35-year-old Levi Aron, led police to parts of the missing boy's body in his house in the fridge.. The actual body was stuffed in a red suitcase and hidden in a Dumpster outside an auto repair shop about two miles away, sources said.
Cops said Aron, who works at the Empire Supply hardware store on McDonald Avenue , Kensington, allegedly suffocated the boy before chopping him up. Police said they also found three knives in a butcher block inside Aron’s apartment.
Co-worker said Aron is divorced with no kids and acted completely normal at work yesterday.
“I can’t believe this,” he said. “He was a strange guy, but he was here yesterday and he was fine after killing this little boy.”
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the suspect Levi Aron told detectives that after he picked the boy up in his car and took him to his apartment, he later “panicked” after hearing about the missing person reports, which is why he killed him.
Some of the boy’s remains were found in Aron’s refrigerator, Kelly said.
“This was a horrendous crime,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said at a briefing Wednesday on the case.
Charges were pending, and information about an attorney for Aron, who turned 35 on Wednesday, was not immediately available.
Police got a tip about Aron based on surveillance video released late Tuesday night, and tracked him at his home in Kensington. Kelly acknowledged publicly the Shomrim Patrol for providing a license plate number that lead the to Levi.
When detectives arrived at Aron’s apartment, the door was open, Kelly said. They entered and asked where the boy was, and Aron nodded toward the kitchen, where police found carving knives covered with blood, along with human remains, in the refrigerator.
He then reportedly directed police to an area about 2 and a half miles away, near 20th Street and Fourth Avenue, where the rest of the boy’s remains were found in a black plastic bag inside a red suitcase that had been tossed in a Dumpster.
Aron lives in the third floor of his parents’ house on Avenue C. His parents live on the ground floor and another tenant lives on the second floor of the building.
Kelly said Aron lived in Memphis, Tenn. and moved back to Brooklyn two years ago. He said Aron has one summonses for public urination that he got last year.
“We have no record of this man being reported [as a pedophile],” said Kelly.
Cops said they do not know whether the boy was molested before being killed.
Investigators will be contacting authorities in Tennessee to piece together the details of his life, Kelly said.
