Levi Aron's attorneys weighing insanity plea

Accused child killer Levi Aron spent much of Monday telling his attorneys about his “normal childhood” and how he listens to loud music to battle the voices in his head.

“He's been hearing voices for quite some time,” attorney Gerard Marrone told reporters outside Bellevue Hospital where Aron is undergoing a psych evaluation. “He tries to quell some of the voices by listening to music. He listens to it with headphones, and he listens to it very loud."

While a Brooklyn grand jury is expected to announce shortly whether it will indict Aron, 35, in the dismemberment and suffocation death of Leiby Kletzky, 8, his attorneys are weighing an insanity defense.

“He definitely has diminished (mental) capacity,” said Marrone. “At times he's clear, he talks about his childhood ... (which) appears to be quite an average childhood, quite normal. But then there's times he just goes someplace else."

Aron seemed to be physically in good shape, said Marrone who conducted Monday’s session with co-counsel Pierre Bazile. They said he was talkative at times, but became uncommunicative when questioned about his life and Kletzky’s death.

On July 11, the boy asked Aron for help after he became lost while walking home from his Borough Park day camp, police said. Aron told authorities that he took Kletzky to a wedding in Spring Valley that night before they returned to his Brooklyn apartment. He said he panicked the next day and killed Kletzky when learned that hundreds were searching for the boy.

Aron was arrested Wednesday at his Kensington apartment, where police found the boy’s feet, three knives and a cutting board in his bloodied freezer. The rest of the body was located in a nearby dumpster.

“We'd like to make a call to the public in general to just dial down the anger a bit. We know that it's a very contentious time, it's a horrible incident, but we have to just sit back and respect the judicial process," Bazile said.

(with Newsday)