letter to probation re lebovits -

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MI C H A EL G . Do wo

N I ALL MAcG IOLLABH U i -- A O M I T T E D AS S OLIC ITOR ,

R EPUBL IC O F IR E LAND

Ryan DuckNYC Department of Probation210 Joral emon StreetNew York, NY 11201

4 2 5 PA~K AV ENU E. 26'" F LO ORNE W YORK , NEW YORK 100 2 2

TELEPHONE 12 1217 51 16 40 FAX 121 21 8 7 2 17 7 7www.mgdowdlaw.com

July 1,201 4

Re: Baruch LebovitsInd. No. 11393/2008

Dear Mr. Duck:

I write to you in connection with the pre-sentence report you are presentlyprepari ng in the case of the above-named pedophile, whose se . . . :du led to takeplace on July 9, 2014 . In particul ar, I write to you on behalf of Pinches Kellner, one of theman y victims of Baruc h Lebovits.

] was molested by Baruch Lebovits in february 2008. Initially,the District Attorney declined to prosecute, apparently because the alleged offenses weremisdemeanors. However, Detective Steve Litwin, a longtime investigator of sexual abuse ofchildren who interviewed (Exhibit "A"), concluded that Lebovits was a serialpredator, and suggested to his father, Sam Kellner, that a prosecution would be viable if othervictims could be found and enco uraged to report their abuse. In his comm unity, BaruchLebovi ts was well known as a ramp ant pedophile, whose prom inence and powerful pol iticalconnections had allowed him to rape and molest numerous children unchecked for decades.Amongst his victims was , who came forward in March 2008 andprovided especially harrowi ng Grand Jury testimony, describing how Lebovits startedfollowing him when he was 12 years old, and then, for the next four years, perpetratedcountless horrifi c acts of oral and anal rape upon him. The testimony resulted in IndictmentNo. 2600/2008 (for crimes that included 31 separate counts of sodomy), before anothervictim came forward, namely (the victim in respect of whom Lebovits hasnow pled guilty), resulting in the present, combined, Indictment.

In Novem ber 2009, John Lonuzzi, a lawyer cla iming to be acting on behalf of, informed the District Attorney on the eve of trial that he was no longer

cooperating with the prosecution, and instructed both the District Attorney and DetectiveSteve Litwin to cease further contact with him. However, a short time later,

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contacted Detective Litwin and told him that "someone else had retained Mr. Lonuzzi butthat he did not know who had done so," that "he had been pressured and that he was afra id tosay what had happened," that "his father did not want him to talk to [Del. Litwin)," and that"he had been told not to talk to [Del. Litwin) or to go to the District Attorney's Office." SeeLitwin Affidavit (Exhibit "B" ), ' i .9-10. The withdrawal of cooperation was closelycoordinated with Baruch Lebov its's attorney. In a 2011 video recording,explained the means used by the Lebovits fami ly to force Torenheim out of test ifying aga instBaruch Lebovits: "They, they terrorized him. You have no idea what they did to him...[T jhey came to tell him that, ' If you're comi ng to court to testify against my father you 'regoing to be arrested for the cases in which you mo lested two chi ldren." alsostated that the Lebovits family paid lor Lonuzzi and promised money. In May20 12, the Dist rict Attorney interviewed a friend of named(Exhibit "C" J, who confirmed that fled to Israel "out of fear" following a threatby llaruch Lebovits's oldest daughter who "called and told him that if he . .. testifies aga insther father, he ... would immedia tely be arrested for molestation" because " they wou ld bringin the two little boys molested as witnesses against him ." In September andOctober 2012, travel and linancial records were obtained by the District Attorney showingthat a man named Zalmen Ashkenazi was paying fo r 's travel to Israel and makingmonthly pay-offs to his lath er (Exhibit "0 "). The mortgage on the family homewas also paid off in full. Ashkenazi family members are close associates of Baruc h Lebovits.In July 20 13, was interviewed by the District Attorney's office . li e confirmedthat he ned to Israel lor fear of possible child molestation charges. He also stated, accord ingto notes of the interv iew, that "Zalmen Ashke nazi has supplied funds for [Lonuzzi), hisairfare to and from Israel, his apartment in Israel, and his school fees," and that he "needsZalmen Ashkenaz i's perm ission to return to the US when he' s in Israel." In July 20 13, theDistrict Attorney announced in court that an invest igation was ongoing into witnesstampering by the Ashkenazi and Lebovits families.

Despite a similar campaign of intimation and attempted bribery directed at, Baruch Lebovits was unable to prevent a trial proceed ing in 20 IO. In the

aforemen tioned video recording, recounted Baruch Lebovits's attempts " tomanipulate [his) father" along with numerous atte mpts to pay him off, including a bribe of$50,000, to which described his reaction initially, "Wow, f don't know, $50 ,000,and I don' t have a penny to my name," but ultima tely, "My blood is not for sale . .. my bloodhas no price." The pervasive pay-off attem pts even included an attempt exp osed at trial bythe sole defe nse witness, Berel Ashkenazi (brot her ofZalmen). 's testimonyresu lted in a guilty verdic t and, in April 20 I0, a prison sentence of 10 2/3 - 32 years.

However, the now convicted, imprisoned pedophile and his family were notyet finished. Within months of the sentence, an affidavit frommaterialized in which claimed that he had falsely implicated Baruch Lebovits atthe behest of Sam Kellner, father of (even though he had originally reported theabuse to various people years before he met Kellner). Meyer Lebovits, one of Baruchl.ebovits's sons, recycled a claim he first made in 2009 (almos t a year before the trial) that

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Baruch Lebovi ts was the victim of an extortion plot by Sam Kellner. Curiously, this claimwas not part of the defense at trial (which was that falsified his accusations tofinance a drug habit ). For reasons the present District Attorne y is currentfy investigating, hispredecessor ' s Rackets Division worked with the Lebovits family to arrest Sam Kellner in20 I I, an arrest that was then used by Baruch Lebovit s to secure his release from prison thefollowin g day pending appeal. They also worked together to undermine the conviction(including the aforement ioned video recordin g of - presented to him as adocumentary on his fife for which he was flown to Florida - that in reality was anunsuccessful attempt, directed by Rackets Division, to pfy him with drugs and induce aconfess ion that he was part of Kellner' s supposed extortion plot).

This failed attempt notwithstand ing, the original conviction of BaruchLebovits was overturned on appea l because of prosecutoriaI misconduct during the trial.However, whi le awaiting retria l, the false allegations against Sam Kellner fell apart, leadingto the dism issal of the case aga inst him on March 7, 20 14. On that date, the prosecutor statedin court that neither nor Meyer Lebovits were credible witnesses against Kellner,that there was "no credible evidence to support " their claim s, and that " there are motives ofcertain witnesses that go beyond this case ." In Judge Mangano ' s chambers, the prosecutorwent further, describing "complete fabrication" by Meyer Lebovits (in his Grand Jurytestimony) as well as intimidation and bribery of by the Lebovits family and thei rassociates. On March 6, 2014, the same prosecutor represented to me, acting as SamKellner' s attorney, that , along with the investigation into witness tampering concerningTorenheim, a further investigation was being initiated into the corrupt prosecution of SamKellner. (The representation was made in order to obtain Kellner' s con sent to dismissal of hiscase - to that point, he was insisting on a trial in order to expose the truth behind hisprosecut ion .)

Prior to dismissal of the Kellner case, Baruch Lebovits made a final, desperateeffort to keep it afloat. Earlier this year, I spoke to a regis tered sex offender named BetzalelDym, who is yet another victim of Baruch Lebovits (and yet another victim whose abuse byLebovits led him in turn to victimize other children). At the time , representati ves of BaruchLebovits were claiming that his abuse of children was "only" at the level of misdemeanoroffenses (and therefore time-barred). By remarkable co incidence, Dym suddenly emerged toclaim that Sam Kellner had encouraged him six years earlier to exaggerate his own abuse atthe hand of Lebovi ts from the level of misdemeanor offenses to felony offenses. Thedifficu lty for Dyrn was following a script that wasn' t properly exp lained to him . Theproblem fo r Baruch Lebovits is that , hav ing so thoroughly ruined the lives of the child ren heabused, no matter how badly they are later man ipulated by him and his associates, the truthalways tumb les out. When I asked Dym as to what he meant by "m isdemeanors" - the termhe kept repeating - he said "to uching." However, when I pressed him, he eonceded that theoffenses had gone far beyond touching, and included multiple acts similar to thoseperpe trated by Lebovits upon Rubinstein.

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Another blatant example of the relent less manipulation by Baruch Lebovits ofhis victim s can be found by comparing the statement delivered in court by Rubinstein' sfather at the original sentencing in 20 10 (Exhibit "E"), with the attitud e he and his son arecurrently expressing towards the man he addressed as follows: " I want to look this evil manin his eyes. What this man did is not some tale or script in a horror movie . It is a real horrorstory of a man who lived in our community, was trusted by the children and the peop le. Hewent on to ruin so many innocent lives j ust to serve his own selfish sick pleasures. I ask you[Baruch] Mordechai Lebovits, where is your soul? After you had your sick fun you discardedthese innocent chi ldren like trash. You wished to see them comple tely destroyed so theywould not be able to testify against you. You nev er showed or had any remorse." Doubtless ,you will note with some puzzlement the difference between then and now. What youprobably do not know, however, is that Baruch Lebov its and his associates finally succeededin the ir effort to pay off Rubinste in and his father (a pay off the District Attorney hasconlirmed in court).

The one victim that Baruch Lebovits could not sway was Pinches Kellner.Shamefully and sca ndalous ly, the then District Attorney did his bidding in October 2010 bysurreptitiously dismissing the case (Pinches was never told), because Pinches 's father was thetarget of a corrupt invest igation into what turned out to be wholly fabricated allegations. Thefates of thc many other victims who came forward are not known by me. They are known,however, by the present District Attorney. Aller the conviction after trial in 20 10, it wasrepor ted that several more victims reported their sexual abuse at the hands of Lebovits to thepolice, and that one law enforcement source described the conviction as the " tip of theiceberg." http://www.nydai lynews.com /new-vork Ibrooklvnl new-people-rabbibaruch-lebovits-molested-article- I .183382. Now that Baruch Lcbov its is again facing sentencing,the District Attorney has an obligation to bring to your attention all such information in thepossession oflaw enforcement, in order to even begin to adequately portray the scale of thedevastation inflic ted by Baruch Lebovits on the children of his community (of which his self-con fessed offenses against Rubinstein are but one small part) . The District Attorney has afurther obligation to bring to your attention the status of his investigations into intimidationand bribery of victims by Baruch Lebovits and his assoc iates, and into the corruption of thecriminal justice process that led to the prosecution of Sam Kellner and the dismissal of myclient, Pinches Kellne r' s case against Lebovits.

As you know, " [a] presentence report may includ e any relevant informationon the history of the defendant (see CPL 390.30) and may include history not only of prioroffenses for which defendant has been convicted, but even offenses for which he has notbeen convicted." Peop le v. Weinsheimer, 68 A.D.3d 901, 890 N.Y.S.2d 128, 129 (2nd Dept.2009 ).

Thus, in conclusion, I ask that you note in your pre-sentence report that Yako vRubinstein is only onc of Baruch Lebovit s ' s many victims, and that these victims arc knownto include my client, Pinches Kellner, and Michae l Torenheim. I also ask that you requestfrom the District Attorney for inclusion in your report the number of other victims who have

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repo rted their abuse by Lebov its to law enforcement, and confirm with the Distric t Attorneythe fact that Lebovits and his associates are curre ntly the subject of one investigation intowitness tampering relating to Torenheim and another investigati on into the corruptprosecuti on of Sam Kellner and the dismissal of Pinches Kellner 's case again st Lebo vits.

Sincerely,/'] J /j t! )1(' ,~ ..I.'!Cil'!('", :':.tW l /NIall Mac6 'lOi abhui

cc : Hon. Mark DwyerADA Ann a Sigga Nic ola zzi, Esq.Arthur Aid ala, Esq.

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