JERRY WOLKOFF BLOG-IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY SON STEVEN NATHANIEL WOLKOFF, MY FATHER SAMUEL WOLKOFF, AND ALL THE OTHER VICTIMS OF INJUSTICE, EVIL IN THIS WORLD.THEY DIMINISH YOUR RIGHTS,THEN THEY DIMINISH YOUR EXISTENCE, THEN THEY LIE ABOUT IT, SAY YOU NEVER EXISTED, AND THE PROBLEM IS PEOPLE FORGET THE SUFFERING THAT LASTS FOREVER, NEVER KNOWING THE TRUTH BY WHOSE HANDS, OR HOW YOU WERE KILLED.
These are the days of the endless summer
These are the days, the time is now
There is no past, there's only future
There's only here, there's only now
Play this for someone, before it is too late. Before being taken from each other into another life. Play this for someone you have lost forever and REMEMBER those wonderful times you had together.
Most of all, play this for yourself to bring some peace to your soul. THESE ARE THE DAYS
Looking dazed and speaking barely above a whisper, the Brooklyn hardware store clerk pleaded guilty Thursday to charges he abducted,dismembered and murdered the 8-year-old boy who lost his way home. The guilty plea, to charges of second-degree murder and kidnapping, guarantees Levi Aron a sentence of 40 years to life in a case that traumatized the victim’s tight-knit Orthodox Jewish community.
Aron, 36, had previously pleaded not guilty to a first-degree murder and, if convicted, would have faced life without parole. But the family of Leiby Kletzky urged prosecutors to strike a deal to avoid the painful spectacle of a trial.“There is no way one can comprehend or understand the pain of losing a child,” the boy’s father, Nachman Kletzky wrote in a statement distributed to the press. But he added that the plea gave the family “some partial closure on one aspect of this nightmare.” Legal closure came Thursday afternoon after an expressionless Aron was led into the courtroom wearing an orange jump suit, handcuffs and a yarmulke.
Judge Neil Firetog began by telling him that after seeing psychological reports, he was convinced claiming mental illness was “not a viable defense.”The judge then had Aron answer a series of often leading questions about his conduct. His one-word responses were delivered in a low, flat monotone after long pauses and prodding by his lawyers. Aron expressed no remorse and only hinted at motive: At one point told the judge he felt “panic” when he found out there was a frantic search on for the boy, who was still alive in his apartment. The judge asked him what he decided to do, and he responded simply, “Smother.” He also answered yes when asked if he had bound and drugged Leiby. Afterward, defense attorney Jennifer McCann insisted that her client, though under medication, knew what he was doing.“He came here to accept responsibility for his actions,” McCann said. “He understands the charges.” Sure "he understands the charges" says his slimy Lawyer McCann who has been previously quoted as casually saying " “This is what I do,” she said. “You kill people, you call me.”
Though Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynessaid in a statement last August that there were "no circumstances which would lead me to accept a plea bargain,” the deal was reached after Leiby’s parents told the prosecutors they wanted to avoid a trial."We want to thank D.A. Hynes and his team for bringing this to a quick resolution as we requested -- for not forcing us to relive the terror that began when Leiby went missing," Leiby’s father Nachman Kletzky said in a statement read by state Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) after the proceeding. (See full statement by Nachman Kletzky on behalf of his wife and family).
"Those three days of uncertainty were unbearable, but our community led a tireless search and allowed us the comfort of at least knowing the truth of our child’s fate," the statement continued.
Levi Aron may be heavily medicated now, his voice soft and his affect flat, but he doesn't fool anyone, this is a sane criminal, a child killer, who understands not only the charges against him but that he is fully responsible for his deliberate actions in killing a child in such a ruthless, pre-meditated, thought out manner. Despite his pleading guilty there remains a piece of his costume that he unashamedly continues to wear, as if it somehow means what he has done is OK.
I couldn't help but notice that Levi Aron continues to wear his yarmulke (kippa, skull cap) on his head as part of his uniform of the day, orange jail suit, handcuffs, and of course his yarmulke. I think how hypocritical, ugly it is to see the unbearable ease with which the yarmulke is used by him as if it represents a sense of morality about him. He shows no remorse, no regrets for the unthinkable horrific murder of am 8 year old child, but there he is sitting in court with a yarmulke on his head. The yarmulke is supposed to inspire humility. Its purpose to remind the wearer that from the head and down, the body is mine, but from the yarmulke and above the world belongs to god. The Talmud states, "Cover your head in order that the fear of heaven may be upon you". Rabbi Hunah ben Joshua never walked 4 cubits (2 meters) with his head uncovered. He explained: "Because the Divine Presence is always over my head." Levi Aron, hardly a man of god, how many times will he wear this yarmulke for the rest of his life as the blood of the murdered, tortured 8 year old victim Leiby Kletzky stops crying out from his grave and his family lives forever with the permanent pain of what happened to their loved one. Which great mitzvah did Levi Aron complete when he murdered the helpless child Leiby Kletzky that signifies the meaning of why he wears a yarmulke? What kind of spiritual accounting does Aron submit that yarmulke on his head to? How heavy was it on his head when Aron took the life of one of God's creations? I respect those people who truly believe in G-D. For them their belief's are a personal, unbreakable covenant that they live their lives through a set of prayers, principles, and compassion to human kind. Levi Aron, TAKE THE YARMULKE OFF YOUR HEAD, you fool no-one as your deeds stand by themselves showing the animal you are. It isn't a fashion accessory; it's a way of life. It is a commitment, one which you have horrifically broken with your murdering, vile acts. If there is a Hell, you Levi Aron deserve to rot in there with all the evil ever known to mankind.
In keeping to my promise to honor the memory of murdered 8 year old Leiby Kletzky, I will continue to post on my Blog, all stories related to this tragedy until the case is closed.
Zelda Tallman so eloquently states in the Comments Section of the San Mateo County Times " There is a reason that Steven Wolkoff's parents "..don't take no for an answer...". It has to do with justice, and fighting to ensure that when our loved ones die, people in coroners' offices across the state treat their bodies with the utmost respect. The Wolkoffs are fighting to ensure that coroners do not keep our loved ones' organs - just because they want to. They are fighting to ensure that coroners act with professionalism and are objective. What happened to the Wolkoffs happens all the time. People just don't know it. It is absolutely sickening and horrifying. Frontline, NPR and Propublica spent years investigating what coroners in California are doing with our loved ones after they die. I hope the Wolkoffs never "take no for an answer" when fighting for our rights and the need for this kind of change. We should all be so strong"
Most people assume that the immediate legal next of kin have all of the rights of making sure that their deceased loved one is treated with respect and dignity, according to their wishes, in a humane manner.
Wrong, it appears that you do NOT OWN YOUR OWN BODY, NOR DOES YOUR FAMILY. The Coroner owns you, all of you or whatever human part they decide to keep. Laws in most States, in particular California are deliberately kept weak and watered down so that just about anything that a Coroner wants to do with human remains is often considered "legal" by default, since there are only 3 or 4 specific things that a Coroner/County is not allowed to do.
These lobbyists who don't want their clients powers to be eroded in any way, including the power of owning your body.This explains how the barbaric behavior of Government officials was allowed to happened to my son Steven Nathaniel Wolkoff, a long list of similar innocent victims, and their families. I have written about what happened to Steven in many Blog posts, the most recent one dated August 1, 2012.
In San Mateo County California where the Coroners Office, the County Attorney, and other Public Officials allowed the mutilation of my sons body to occur because they do not respect the dignity of dead innocent victims, it is all about their need to cover the asses of those involved in the desecration of my son.
To that end, their use of the ARROGANCE OF JUSTICE, a term that I have coined to describe the absolute power that those public officials who are sworn to protect our legal rights, but instead wield complete power as to what they consider is legal, what is allowed to be released to the public as the "truth", that which is hidden to obscure violations of the law by those in charge.
The County officials through their Law Counsel who casually, rationalizes as if they are talking about a piece of merchandise, that they have done nothing wrong in how Steven's remains have been treated, somehow blaming us as victims in asserting our legal rights for due process, as we not only have a responsibility to do our very best in securing Justice for Steven, but to try to prevent this from happening to other families in the future.
These officials exist to prevent embarrassment to those public entities that employ them, all done at the expense of no justice given to hundreds of thousand voiceless victims and their families. They consider human life as having no value and in their warped minds have not a shred of a clue that their behavior AFTER Steven died is not only disgustingly immoral, heartless, but also illegal.
The ARROGANCE OF LAW exists because those in charge of the Laws can and do whatever they want in deliberately maintaining weak ambiguous laws, distorting, interpreting, and judging what constitutes the "legal truth".
They can because they know that they can, and in doing so these shameless, heartless, unfeeling monsters of the dysfunctional circus system of legal justice in America that mocks the victims harmed by others, enables this broken system to even further rot away, all because they refuse to accept accountability, responsibility for the actions of those in power.
We will keep on fighting, doing our very best to obtain Justice for Steven and all others victimized by the Coroners Office, Government officials, those who would rule us by their evil.
San Mateo County's attorney John Beiers words are stated above about our legal fight to obtain JUSTICE FOR STEVEN NATHANIEL WOLKOFF in the desecration by them of Steven's human remains.
Mr. Beiers further arrogantly says a fourth filing by us is a "colossal waste of public resources."
Apparently Mr. Beiers considers our right to due process under the laws of the United States and California as a waste of time, money and an annoyance to him.
Mr. Beiers apparently does not believe that the desecration by his County of the dignity deserved by my son in death and the horror in the manner it has damaged our family, is worthy of his valuable time. Nor does he seem at all concerned about the way a human being can be killed in San Mateo County and no one in authority has ever fulfilled their sworn duty to protect the remains of my son from being abused in any manner, by the defendants, including his own Office's legal conflict of interest in this case in originally allowing this inhuman behavior to take place .
A human life apparently is cheap in San Mateo County and the only thing Mr. Beier's gets correct is that the Wolkoff Family does not take no for an answer when you have stolen our son's soul from him. I am certain that the good Citizens of San Mateo County would agree with me and do the same in trying to gain justice for their loved ones.
See you in Court Mr. Beiers, Oh yeah, you won't be there since your Office has wasted a ton of money in tax payers money by hiring a large private Law Firm to do your dirty work in covering your ass and that of the others involved in violating my son's body. After all it is only about covering your asses and not about being accountable for the true facts of the horrific acts your Office, plus the Coroners Office allowed to happen to Steven.
What are you so scared of Mr. Beier's in allowing a Jury of your neighbors to decide whether what happened to Steven was a violation of his rights, a violation of laws that you are trying to manipulate by hiding behind, and which has damaged us beyond agony that any parents should ever experience.
Shame on you, shame on the San Mateo County Government, how any of you can sleep at night is beyond me. You have no conscience nor courage to do the right thing and admit you have violated the sanctity owed to a dead person, a victim, and their family.
I wonder how the people of San Mateo County feel about what you have done in the past to their own dead, to our son, and in the future to other families. Hopefully by our not taking no for an answer, others will be spared from your cruelty in disrespecting the remains of our loved ones.
Couple sues San Mateo County Coroner for fourth time over son's brain
REDWOOD CITY -- A New York couple have refiled for the third time their lawsuit which claims San Mateo County's coroner broke the law when he let an ambulance company take samples of their dead son's brain.
Jerald and Sandra Wolkoff's suit, filed Tuesday in San Mateo County Superior Court, alleges state rules require officials to get permission to turn over body parts to investigators in certain circumstances. The Wolkoffs say they never gave their OK for Coroner Robert Foucrault to give some of their son Steven Wolkoff's brain stem to American Medical Response.
Although judges have dismissed the three previous iterations of the Wolkoffs' lawsuit, each time they also allowed the family to file a revised complaint.
Steven Wolkoff died after a July 21, 2008, car crash on Highway 1 near Green Oaks Way.
His parents alleged, in a separate 2009 suit, that American Medical Response workers made medical errors that led to their son's death. The company got Wolkoff's brain tissue in preparation for its defense against the wrongful death case, which has since been settled for an undisclosed sum, attorneys said.
San Mateo County's attorney John Beiers said the Wolkoff's case against the coroner has already been thrown out three times and that a fourth filing is a "colossal waste of public resources." He added Foucrault didn't do anything wrong and there's no legal basis for yet another suit.
"Apparently they don't take no for an answer," said Beiers. "Everything that's in their complaint has already been (thrown out)."
Foucrault has been accused previously of mishandling the remains of the dead. Isolina Picon sued the coroner in 2007 after learning his office had retained her son's heart. Picon's suit was later dismissed.
The Wolkoffs' attorney Steve Brewer said his clients, who are devout Jews, were horrified to find out they had buried their son without all of his body parts and that his brain had been dissected. Judaism considers dissection, except for urgent reasons, a matter of "shame and gross dishonor," the complaint says.
Brewer said he hopes the judges have given his client three chances to refile because they see some validity in their complaint."We're kind of dancing with the judge," said Brewer. "We're trying to find the language he would find acceptable to let us pursue this."
What does all this mean? It is about the agony and indescribable pain of victims and their families. Can anyone really understand, feel, imagine what 8 year old Leiby Kletzky felt in his last few minutes of life before his body was literally torn apart, limb by limb, by the animal Levi Aron.
Let us not forget the permanent living agony, emotional damage, ever present demons that the parents, sisters, and family of Leiby Kletzky must endure for the rest of their lives. It is NOT something that ever goes away or gets better, it bleeds profusely forever.
No-one should ever question whatever the parents of Leiby Kletzky decide to do or not in the circus of the legal cesspool and Court clowns of Judges, lawyers, media. There can never be any justice given for horrific killings of innocent victims who lie 6 feet under in graves, rotting away while their killers stay alive, gone forever, their lives stolen from them and their loving families.
It is also about the Lawyers for Levi Aron who have reached the obvious conclusion that they will never be able to convince a jury that their client was insane and somehow not responsible for his depraved killing of an 8 year old.
IN FISCAL YEAR 2010, the New York Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) had $2.7 billion in prison expenditures. (In 2011, DOCS merged with the Division of Parole to become the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.) However, the state also had $812.5 million in prison-related costs outside the department’s budget. The total cost of New York’s prisons—to incarcerate an average daily population of 59,237—was therefore almost $3.6 billion, of which 22.8 percent were costs outside the corrections budget.
The "Brooklyn Butcher" who killed little Leiby Kletzky and hacked up his body will likely die in prison under a plea deal that’s got his blessing and that of the slain boy’s parents. His incarceration will cost much more than the above average inmates annual cost as he will require complete isolation from the rest of the prison population, no doubt a special Kosher diet, and the various amenities such as Cable TV that prisoners receive.
Levi Aron, whose gruesome murder of the 8-year-old boy shocked the city last summer and stunned their insular Orthodox Jewish community, would receive a prison sentence of 40 years to life, according to sources.
“There is a deal,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents the Borough Park neighborhood where Leiby lived and has been speaking for the boy’s family.
The confessed killer would get 25 years to life in prison for murder, plus 15 years for kidnapping, sources said. Hikind, who said he plans to read a statement from the family at Aron’s court appearance next week in Brooklyn Supreme Court, said the murderer could still scuttle deal and prolong the agony for Leiby’s family.
Assemblyman Dov Hikind told VIN News, “Ever since a story broke this afternoon, our office has been inundated with calls. It is our understanding that a deal has been reached but things can change. Until this is officially announced, it’s premature to say that this matter is concluded.
“The Kletzky family has been through more than any of us can or should imagine. They want to bring this to a conclusion without the additional pain of a lengthy trail. “I will be at the court next week to address the public and press on behalf of the Kletzky family, at their request. The family asks that their privacy is respected. They have been through quite enough.”
“At any moment, Levi Aron can change his mind,” Hikind said. “Until this is officially announced, things can change.” Aron faced life without parole if he had been convicted by a jury of first-degree murder.
But Leiby’s parents couldn’t face the agony of a trial. And the dead boy’s dad, Nacham Kletzky, had been discussing the plea with leaders in the Jewish community, sources said.“They don't want to have any more open wounds,” a family friend said. Leiby’s family wants “to bring this to a conclusion,” Hikind added.“The family has to live with this for the rest of their lives,” he said. “The idea of having a trial was not something that they wanted to go through. They want to make sure that there is justice.”
Neither prosecutors nor the defense lawyers for the confessed child killer, Howard Greenberg and Pierre Bazile, would comment on the pending deal.
But still-seething neighborhood residents said Aron should never be allowed to walk free again.
“He’s an animal,” said 50-year-old Charles Gazal. “It's not enough. The way he cut the kid's body up, he should be gone for the rest of his life. He's just an animal. Everyone here was shaken last year.”
In Leiby’s old building on 15th Avenue, where his parents no longer live, a 35-year-old mother of three said Aron’s punishment is “the least he deserves.You’re not going to bring Leiby back either way though,” she added.
A father of two who also lives in the building, and identified himself only as M. Gottlieb, said Aron “should be in for life.”“It’s very hard to take such a piece of news,” he said. “We wouldn't expect any punishment except life in prison.”
"Brooklyn Butcher"after the sickening details of his crime were revealed, is accused of snatching the lost boy off the street last July.
Aron held Leiby captive for more than a day, then smothered him in a panic when he realized a massive search was underway, police said. Under police questioning, Aron admitted that he chopped up the body and left the boy's feet in his freezer.
Aron’s lawyers insist their client, who has grown morbidly obese in jail, is schizophrenic and have vowed to pursue an insanity defense. Recently, Aron’s defense team turned over the results of a psychiatric exam by their expert to prosecutors.
In keeping to my promise to honor the memory of murdered 8 year old Leiby Kletzky, I will continue to post on my Blog, all stories related to this tragedy until the case is closed.
