Brooklyn loner Levi Aron gave people the creeps long before he was charged with slaughtering an innocent child.
The 35-year-old plumbing-supply store stockboy made his neighbors’ skin crawl with the rides he gave neighborhood kids in his clunker Honda Prelude and the way he’d stare at local elementary-school students in a playground.
“The parents on the block wouldn’t want their kids to go near him,” said a neighbor, Chaim Lefkovitz, 39, who added that Aron was prone to furious outbursts.
“Sometimes he would just get angry out of nowhere,” Lefkovitz added. “He was one of those people you stayed away from.”
A family acquaintance, Lee Vogel, 21, said, “There was something strange about him. You know when you see Charles Manson, he has that look in his eye? Levi had that look.”
He worked at a job that paid just above minimum wage at Empire State Supply Co. in Borough Park. His boss called him a “quiet” but good worker.
“He seemed a little emotionally disturbed. He was very quiet, didn’t communicate with people, and he went home,” said shop owner Michael Panzer.
Co-workers described Aron as “slow.” Some said there were signs of trouble.
“Casey Anthony didn’t fit the profile for a killer,” said a colleague. “But looking back now, this guy fit the profile.”
Aron was married in 2004 to a woman named Diana Diunov, according to court records and Diunov’s in-laws. The marriage lasted only about a year. After their breakup, Diunov, 38, was busted on federal fraud and conspiracy charges and is locked up in federal prison until next year.
About a year later, he met his next wife, Debby Kivel, 34, on a Jewish matchmaking Web site.
Kivel told The Post that she and Aron married in March 2006. Aron moved from Brooklyn to Memphis, Tenn., to be with her and her two children.
Kivel said he was injured at age 9 when a car hit his bicycle and it made him nervous around people.
“I am in shock,” she said in Memphis. “He loved children. My kids are now 13 and 10 . . . and he loved them.”
She said that he worked hard as a security guard to make ends meet, but that they eventually divorced in 2007 because of “a clash of character.”
Still, she never saw the shocking criminal charges coming.
“I just talked to him — he seemed like normal Levi,” Kivel said. “Everything sounded fine and normal. This is totally out of character.”
But not all of Kivel’s family shared her rosy view.
“He was a creepy person,” her father, Michael Kivel said. “I gather he went to Hebrew school, but wasn’t smart enough and dropped out.”
Things didn’t go very smoothly during Aron’s time in Memphis. After their marriage fell apart, Kivel said, she filed an order of protection against him. But she added that she did so only because a boyfriend told her it would expedite her divorce, and she later withdrew the order.
Debby Kivel said that after they broke up, Aron was once again briefly engaged.
Aron, who has lived with his family in the area since the early 1980s, gave neighbors the creeps, even when he was young.
“When we walked into [his] house as kids, there was just a very eerie feeling in the air,” said one neighbor. “It was not a nice place.”
(Source: NY Post)
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13 Responses
Are you sure you can trust the New York Post?
What exactly qualifies him as a loner? that he was not currently married?
Seriously, I’m usually pretty cool with what YW reports, but I must draw the line with the item posted this morning about the family of Levi Aron. Stop it. The family did nothing wrong. The ex-wife spoke to the press, that’s her problem. But why mention the father and brothers by name? Did they do anything to deserve the unwanted attention you are now ensuring will be showered upon them?
Afford them the same treatment you would afford yourself. The family did not commit this crime – Levi did. Leave them out of it. Everyone is so busy focusing on the Kletzky’s suffering that they forget that there is another family involved. The Aron family. Don’t you think they’re in pain as well? Does that thought not cross your mind? Or do you not care because you hold them accountable? If that’s the case then you’re wrong. And what you’re doing is wrong. Stop publishing details about the family. If they volunteer information, have at it. Until then, leave them alone.
Can the editors please take his picture down? it’s giving me the creeps.
The Goq – please stop worrying about the definition of world “loner”, or start a thread about it in the CR.
I would take Bombmaniac a step further and ask why a Jewish website would even tell us about his background after the fact).
Clearly he is nuts as we see what he did, no need to bring out his laundry in public and let the blogging community throw their darts at him. Nothing to be gained by this, other than great Gossip.
No two pictures seem alike.
I agree with bombmaniac, but I didn’t get around to feel bad for that family. That file is in use.
Geshmakman, which part of it is undeserved?
#5 I’m well aware what a loner is, I’m just wondering how they came to the conclusion that this person is a loner what is the description based on? what i am more concerned about is if people will label all older singles as loners this is not fair i am single but i am not lonely or a loner!
Obviously an unmarried is more on the path of a loner than a married.
#6 so you basically hold them accountable? all of them? why?!
#7 – its not a questioned of undeserved, its a question of whats the point!
What good will come out of bashing and revealing further proof that this man is mentally insane? Unfortunately he has proven himself to be a lunatic. Discussing his childhood doesn’t help.
Does it make things better? Does it undo the horrific act?
Hey, he was married twice, and engaged a third time. That sounds pretty sociable! Way more than a guy married to one wife for an entire lifetime!
Seriously, that he was a loner is evident in every profile on every website that I’ve seen the last couple of days. Everyone who knew him said he did not hang out with the crowds. He was always in his own world.
being aloner has nothing to do with being an older single! he cld b married and still be a loner so goq please dont take offence. nobody is saying he is a loner due to his current status. they r not binded. (and as a footnote. i hope u find ur zivug bkorov. amen)