Hunt for Leiby ends in horror; creep confesses

Monsters are real.

An innocent, naive young child, lost and searching for his parents, stumbled into the path of a neighborhood predator who took the kid to his lair and pretended to be his friend before he killed him and chopped his body into pieces, cops said yesterday.

The unimaginable horror played out on some of the safest streets in Brooklyn -- the insular Hasidic community of Borough Park.

"It's every parent's nightmare," said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

SEE HOW LEIBY'S MISSED TURN ENDED IN A NIGHTMARE

The gruesome discovery at suspect Levi Aron's apartment dashed the hopes of hundreds in the community who had spent desperate hours searching for 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky, praying they'd find him alive.

Paul Martinka

SEA OF GRIEF: Police last night help guide the casket of Leiby Kletzky through a crush of mourners from the Borough Park Hasidic community and beyond.

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Aron, who turned 35 yesterday, confessed and was charged with murder last night, sources said.

The plumbing-store clerk -- known to neighbors as a sleazy loner who hung out in playgrounds -- couldn't believe his luck when his prey wandered over to him Monday evening as the child tried to follow his mother's directions to a meeting place just seven blocks from the day camp he had just left, the sources said.

It was the boy's first time walking the neighborhood alone, and he ran into pure evil.

Aron is "Orthodox, he's religious -- but, the fact remains he's just not a human being," said Bob Moskovitz, the coordinator of Shomrim, a local Jewish patrol group. "He's an animal."

Surveillance video shows Leiby innocently speaking to Aron, apparently asking for directions, outside a dental office at 18th Avenue and 44th Street.

He told the boy to stay put while he ran inside and paid a dental bill. The boy stood waiting for him for seven minutes.

"It was very sad," said police spokesman Paul Browne. "The boy looked like he just found somebody who's going to help him find his way home."

Aron -- who police sources believe was acting on impulse -- admits in his confession that he offered Leiby a ride, a source said.

As Aron drove, he said, the boy got confused about where to go, so he took Leiby to his dad's three-story Kensington house, where he lives in the attic. He fed the youngster, and bizarrely claimed to cops that on Monday night he took the boy with him to a wedding in the Rockland County town of Monsey.

"I asked if he wanted to go for the ride," Aron wrote in the confession.

Police have not been able to confirm that account -- but the couple whose wedding Aron claimed to have attended with Leiby got married in Monsey that night, in the hall identified by Aron.