Unsolved Cases No. 2 – Chaim Weiss – 32 Years Later and Still Unsolved

 

Dear Reader:

To be clear, the following theory contains no accusations. It is one of many theories. We do not suggest a guilty party, though the Wiki page at the bottom does list a student who attended the Mesivta at the same time as Chaim Weiss – just pointing to attendance, nothing more. We have a running theory. It is similar to the one posted by the Reddit user at the very bottom of this post.

One year ago Mr Weiss spoke to Mary Murphy of Pix II (see below) and stated that he wanted to put his child’s soul to rest. We believe he should live to see the resolution of his son’s murder. We also believe that the investigation is not being completed because someone hopes that enough time will pass that its relevance will be diminished. 

To Mr. Weiss, we are sorry for your loss. We believe that there is an answer and we further believe that someone knows it and is simply not speaking. There are a lot of bloggers and journalists working to solve this case where law enforcement has failed you. We think that FailedMessiah may have had the answer, part of the reason for the demise of that site, though we cannot substantiate that for certain.

This case, among many involving the ultra-Orthodox community remains unsolved in large part, we theorize, because the community has people bought and paid for, including law enforcement members.  

The Chaim Weiss case seems like it should have been a no-brainer. People close to the case have told us over the years that some of the former students are now addicts or committed suicide. One does not become an addict unless there are harrowing traumas leading to addiction. Suicide raises similar core analyses. We theorize that there was a trauma suffered by students at the Mesivta of Long Beach. We are not suggesting that this applies to all students. This is being written to help solve a crime, specifically not to defame, particularly when what happened or may have happened to the children in attendance is a travesty. That it has been covered up all these years is simply a tragedy of epic proportions.

Why would a Rabbi be completely unwilling to discuss the death (murder) of a child within his care.  Why would passing a lie detector test administered years ago be the definitive response regarding the students and the rabbis? We do not believe it was a janitor. Nor do we believe that what transpired afterwards had anything to do with Jewish customs. Once you have murdered a child, the rest of the associated Mitzvot are really irrelevant.  He was allegedly bludgeoned to death, first reported as a single wound and then as multiple cuts. We believe that the weapon at the time was a candlestick or something like it, which is the reason why candles were burned (though that may seem to be far-fetched). The kids would not have had access to a hatchet unless it was given to someone to perform an intentional and premeditated act. 

We hope law enforcement will pursue this case. It is about time that Chaim Weiss’ father finds peace.

LAST MAJOR ARTICLE:

Exclusive: Dad of 15-year-old killed in LI Yeshiva dorm haunted by mysterious events leading up to 1986 murder

Nassau County, NY – 31 years after his son was brutally murdered in his yeshiva dormitory, the father of the slain teen has finally given his first public interview in the hopes that someone will come forward with new information.

As previously reported on VIN News (http://bit.ly/2mQD2Qt) 15 year old Chaim Weiss of Staten Island was bludgeoned to death on Halloween night 1986 in his room at the Torah High School in Long Beach.

Authorities said that Weiss’s body was moved from his bed to the floor after his death and that someone had lit a yahrtzeit candle in Weiss’ room, where a window had been left open despite the cold temperatures.

Weiss’s father, Anton, has revealed for the first time to PIX 11 News (http://bit.ly/2mPossB) that several unusual incidents had taken place in the months leading up to his son’s murder.

Chaim had called home from camp crying in July, saying that he wanted to come home, the first such call Chaim had ever made to his parents. Weiss said that just weeks later, yeshiva principal Rabbi Avrom Cooper called on two separate occasions, asking to speak to Chaim who was away in Europe visiting his grandparents. When Chaim returned home, his parents drove him to Borough Park to speak to Rabbi Cooper.

 

 

Exclusive: Dad of 15-year-old killed in LI Yeshiva dorm haunted by mysterious events leading up to 1986 murder

Dad of 15-year-old killed in LI dorm haunted by mysterious events leading up to 1986 murder

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LONG BEACH, NY – Chaim Weiss was the first grandson of a Holocaust survivor; his father, Anton, was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany after World War II.

He grew up on Staten Island, but the joy he brought to his family was short-lived. In the early hours of Nov. 1, 1986 — as Halloween festivities were winding down on the streets of Long Beach, New York—15-year-old Chaim was bashed in the skull as he slept in his Torah High School dorm at 63 Beech Street.

“His soul’s not resting, until we know what happened,” Chaim’s father told PIX11 recently in his first-ever, sit-down interview.  “My heart cries for Chaim constantly.”

The Chaim Weiss case has been written about, on and off, for just over three decades — and it was featured on the national Unsolved Mysteries show in the 1990s.

But there were more questions than answers. Why did Chaim Weiss’ body get moved from his bed to the floor, not long after the murder? Why was the window open?  Who lit a candle in the room?  Why was Chaim sleeping in his own room, unlike most of the other yeshiva students, who bunked up with others?

“We were told not to talk to anyone until after Shabbat (Sabbath),” said former student, Eli Kushner, who was in the dorm building the morning Chaim Weiss’ body was discovered.  “The dorm counselor found him. I remember him telling everyone, ‘Get out of here! We got to call the cops!’”

Rabbi Yeruchom Pitter, who was dean of the yeshiva at the time and still works for the high school, wasn’t pleased when we came knocking on his office door Nov. 15.  But he told us off camera that Nassau County police spent more than a year hunkered down near the yeshiva. They’d interviewed every single person who had anything to do with Chaim Weiss: every teacher, mentor, friend, student and the most remote person he came into contact with.

“They came to my house,” said former classmate Kushner. “They gave everyone lie detector tests. I passed the lie detector test.”

Police never named a formal suspect, but there’s been plenty of speculation about what happened to Weiss over the years.

There was talk about a janitor who quit working at the dorm not long after the murder, but he was ruled out as a suspect.

A mentally ill drifter was looked at. Members of the yeshiva community did not want to consider that it could have been a student or staff member behind a heinous crime.

Rabbi Pitter’s wife, Reena, told PIX11, “In our family, we did think maybe it was one of the janitors.”

Chaim’s father remains troubled that his son was assigned to his own room on the third floor of the dorm, while most students were paired in groups of two or three in bedrooms.

“They must have known exactly where this kid was because you had to go through a lot of different rooms to find him,” Eli Kushner said of the unknown killer or killers. “And you had to pass a lot of kids to get to this kid.”

“This wasn’t some Halloween prank,” Kushner insisted. “This was somebody trying to get back at the family or get back at the kid.”

There was no back way to get to Chaim Weiss’ room on the third floor.

“One way in.  One way out,” Kushner said.

Anton Weiss, from Staten Island, talked in-depth about events that happened before his son’s murder that have long tormented him.

The father told PIX11 his son had called from the school’s upstate summer camp in July 1986.

“He called me up crying in a strong way that he wants to come home,” Anton Weiss recalled.  “I was away on vacation and I told him, ‘Wait until I come back.’”

Weiss said his son never complained of a problem at camp in previous years. When he returned to New York from his Florida trip, he visited his son and “everything seemed to be ok.”

In August 1986, Weiss said he sent Chaim to visit his grandparents in Europe — and that’s when, Anton Weiss claims, the yeshiva’s principal, Rabbi Avrom Cooper, called him at home.

“He said ‘When’s he coming home?  I said, ‘A week or two,’” Anton Weiss told PIX11.

“And then he called me again, and I said, ‘We’re still waiting. He’s coming back next week.’”

Anton Weiss claims Rabbi Cooper seemed eager to talk to Chaim, so the parents made arrangements to drive their son to Cooper’s home in Borough Park, Brooklyn for a meeting.

“He told us to send Chaim in, to wait outside,” Weiss recalled

The teen’s father said Chaim spent about 10 minutes in the house, but when the teen returned to the car, Chaim didn’t want to talk about the conversation.

Anton Weiss said he asked his son what the principal and Chaim discussed. When Chaim was reluctant to speak about it, the father didn’t press him on it.

He now wishes he had pressed more.

“I should have,” the father said.

PIX11 found the former principal, Rabbi Avrom Cooper,  living in Lakewood, New Jersey, where he’s retired.

When we told him Anton Weiss has been looking for answers for 31 years, Rabbi Cooper replied, “I have no answers.”

When we asked Rabbi Cooper about Chaim Weiss’ call to his father from camp in July 1986, he waved his hand and said, “I’m not interested in speaking.”
When we persisted, Cooper said more emphatically, “I said I don’t know anything about it.”

When we started to ask about the parents’ claim that they drove Chaim to Brooklyn for a meeting between principal and student, six to eight weeks before the murder, Cooper refused to respond to  our questions and walked into his house, closing the front door.

Weiss’ father remains upset about an encounter he said he had with Rabbi Cooper in court when the Weiss family sued the school for failing to safeguard Chaim.

He told PIX11 Rabbi Cooper suggested Weiss reflect on any bad deeds he may have done as a way of considering why bad fortune may have come to the Weiss family.

“It shocks me to today,” Weiss said.  “What do you think? I stole something,  I did something, I killed something?!”

Chaim’s father still remembered how Nassau County detectives found him at a bar mitzvah in Belle Harbor, Queens, hours after Chaim’s body was discovered at the yeshiva.

He’s hoping former students — who’d now be in their late 40s — might come forward with new information.  Nassau County Police have a hotline number for anyone with tips on the case: 1-800-244-TIPS.

“I think it’s time for people to come forward and say something,” Weiss told PIX11.

The still-grieving father can’t shake the memory of his first-born child.

“He was always full of jokes, a great sense of humor,” Weiss said.  “I was proud to have him as a son.  I felt like he was a gift to us.”

 

ADDITIONAL READING AND VIDEOS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW4xhsFw-24

CHAIM WEISS

Nassau County, NY – 31 Years Later, New Details In Long Beach Yeshiva Murder As Slain Teen’s Dad Gives First Media Interview

A religious student at an Orthodox Jewish school is found bludgeoned to death in his dormitory.

Chaim Weiss

Someone killed Chaim while he slept

CASE DETAILS

Orthodox Jews trace their roots back 5,000 years to the time of Moses and they live according to strict codes that have remained unchanged for centuries. To maintain their traditions, many communities have established yeshivas, which are schools that emphasize the principles of Orthodox Judaism.

Chaim studied at an Orthodox Yeshiva

On November 1, 1986, Don Daly, a veteran Nassau County police detective, was dispatched to a yeshiva in Long Beach, New York, to investigate the murder of one of its students. The victim was 16 year-old Chaim Weiss. A single blow to his skull with a sharp object had severed his spinal column.

Investigators found no murder weapon. There was no evidence of a robbery and no signs of a struggle. Detective Daly realized that this would be unlike any other homicide investigation in his 25-year career:

“Initially, we were dealing with a Saturday, which is the Sabbath. When we arrived at the scene sometime around 8:00 in the morning, it was difficult to talk to anybody at that particular time because the people we’re dealing with, being Orthodox Jews, they’re not able to write. We couldn’t take statements from anybody. We got the impression a lot of the students at that time were afraid to talk to us or were little shy.”

He was last seen reading outside his room

As he investigated the scene, Daly thought the killer might have been familiar with the yeshiva and the customs of Orthodox Judaism. It appeared that Chaim had been killed while he was sleeping. His body was then moved, first from the bed to the floor, and later, to another spot two feet away. According to Det. Daly, Chaim’s window was left wide open on the chilly October night:

“It would be customary in the religion to open a window or a door to let the spirit out. It would also be customary for the body to be taken off the bed because the body should be at the lowest point and the coolest point. The coolest point being the floor, compared to the bed.”

Another ritual would point to a third puzzling clue. One of the rabbis asked to leave a memorial candle in the room, to burn for seven days. The crime scene was then sealed. However, two days later, another candle mysteriously appeared. Det. Daly said that no one in the school ever admitted to having placed it in the room:

“If they lit that candle as a gesture of sympathy or love for Chaim, why wouldn’t they come forward and say that? That’s certainly a good thing to do. Nobody came forward with that.”

The open window had a ritual meaning

Detective Daly set about piecing together the final hours of Chaim Weiss’ life. He learned that Chaim was an outgoing, likable teenager who was at the top of his class. He had been attending the yeshiva in Long Beach for 2 1/2 years. On the day he was killed, Chaim left class with his friends to attend services. Afterwards, he returned to the dormitory. Hours later, Det. Daly said, two classmates saw Chaim reading in the hallway:

“Many of the students do that. Because of their religion, they don’t put lights on and off at that time, on the Sabbath. It was dark, so the lights are left on in the main hallway. The students sit out in the hallway and read.”

Police think the killer probably knew the layout of the dormitory and was probably aware that Chaim was one of only two students without a roommate.  Det. Daly:

“We did have one student who felt that he heard his door open up sometime during the night and then close again, but he assumed it was his roommate. There are a lot of questions that we haven’t been able to answer. We really never got any leads in this case. Nothing from the outside, which is unusual.”

A few days after the murder, Detective Daly called a meeting with the students, teachers, and rabbis. But almost every question he asked was answered by silence.

“We learned at one point that, in their particular orthodox religion, unless you have proof or another witness, mere suspicion alone is not enough to go and say anything or to accuse somebody.”

Police eventually polygraphed 40 students and several of the school’s teachers and rabbis. No suspects or motives were revealed. Who killed Chaim, and why, remains a mystery.

Anton Weiss is Chiam’s father:

“The not knowing makes it much more difficult for me to cope. Certain things I accept. My son’s dead. But the murderer is still loose. All these unanswered questions make me feel very, very uneasy.”

Why would anyone brutally murder a 16-year-old boy who had no known enemies?  Police have uncovered only one significant clue — a jogger stated that he saw a young man a few blocks from the school on the morning Chaim’s body was found.  All attempts to identify the student have been unsuccessful.

 

http://unsolvedmysteries.wikia.com/wiki/Chaim_Weiss

Chaim Weiss

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Chaim Weiss

Real Name: Chaim Weiss
Nicknames: No Known Nicknames
Location: Long Beach, New York
Date: November 1, 1986

CaseEdit

Details: On the morning of November 1, 1986, a 15-year-old Jewish boy named Chaim Weiss was found murdered in his school dormitory in Long Beach, New York. Chaim was an Orthodox Jew who lived in the dormitory of his yeshiva, a school that emphasizes the religious and ethical principles of Orthodox Judaism.
Detective Don Daly was called to the murder scene. He learned that Chaim had died from being struck violently in the back of his head with an unknown object. There appeared to be no evidence of robbery nor signs of a struggle. From the beginning, Daly knew that this investigation would be different.
Because it was Saturday, the Sabbath, Daly was unable to question many of the students and teachers at the school. As the days went on, many were still reluctant to talk to him or the other investigators.
In Chaim’s room, several clues were found to suggest that the killer was familiar with the yeshiva and the customs of Orthodox Judaism. It appeared that Chaim had been killed while he slept. His body was then moved twice, from the bed to the floor, and then from one spot on the floor to another. In Orthodox customs, it was necessary for the body to be taken off the bed and onto the floor, so that it is at its lowest and coolest point.
His window was left open, even though it was cold outside. Orthodox traditions requires a door or window to be open in the room of a deceased person, in order to let the spirit out. After the murder, a memorial candle was placed in the room and it was sealed. Two days later, however, another candle mysteriously appeared. No one admitted to placing the candle in the room.
Detective Daly tried to piece together the last night of Chaim’s life. He learned that Chaim was a outgoing student who did well in class. He had attended the yeshiva for the past two years. On the night of October 31, he left class with his friends to attend services. Afterwards, he returned to the dormitory. Several hours later, two of his classmates saw him reading in the hallway. This was customary, as students did not leave lights on in their room on the Sabbath. He was last seen alive at 1 am on November 1.
Although no students reported hearing anything suspicious around the time of the murder, one student did remember his door being quickly opened and closed at some point. At the time, he assumed that it was just his roommate.
A few days after the murder, Daly called a meeting with the students and some of the rabbis, asking for any information about the case. However, nobody offered any information. Daly learned that their religion prevented them from coming forward unless they had evidence or another witness to back up their claims.
Police eventually polygraphed forty students and several of the teachers and rabbis. However, no useful information was found. Detective Daly and Chaim’s family are still hoping that someone will now come forward. Sadly, Chaim’s murder has never been solved.
Suspects: None known; evidence found at the scene suggests that Chaim’s killer was familiar with Orthodox traditions. It is believed that the killer also knew the layout of the dormitory. The killer was probably aware that Chaim was one of only two students without a roommate.
Police are looking for information about a yeshiva student who was apparently seen on a boardwalk at 7 am on the morning of Chaim’s murder. A jogger noticed the student and felt that he was out of place there. The student was never identified, and it is unknown if he was involved in the murder.
Extra Notes: This segment originally aired on the May 6, 1992 episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
Results: Unsolved. Investigators looked into a former janitor at the school, along with a mentally ill man who attacked senior citizens in their homes near the yeshiva in 1986. However, both men were ruled out. In 2013, Chaim’s case was re-opened by investigators. They interviewed more than one-hundred former students, but reportedly made little progress in the investigation. In 2015, they announced that they believe a student or faculty member was responsible for his murder. However, they have yet to identify any suspects.
In November of 2017, Chaim’s father Anton was interviewed by a news station and recalled several bizarre incidents prior to his son’s murder. In July of 1986, Chaim had called him from summer camp. He was crying and saying that he wanted to come home. According to Anton, this was very out of character for him. In August, Chaim went to visit his grandparents in Europe. During this time, the yeshiva’s principal, Rabbi Avrom Cooper, called Anton several times, asking when Chaim would be back home. He felt that this was suspicious. On another occasion, Cooper had Anton bring Chaim to his home to talk with him alone. After meeting for about ten minutes, Chaim returned to his father. However, he was reluctant to talk about the meeting.
Anton suspects that Rabbi Cooper may have information about Chaim’s murder. Some have speculated that he may have been involved. However, no one has been charged in the case.

1986 Murder of Jewish Child, Chaim Weiss, still unsolved. Coverup?

Before the internet and before Leiby Kletzky there was a MURDER in 1986. The largest cover-up perpetrated by frum jews in the 20th century. The murderer is still free. WHY?

 

Chaim Weiss, 15, was found dead in his dormitory room at the Mesivta Yeshiva of Long Beach early on the morning of Nov. 1, 1986. The youth had been stabbed repeatedly by someone who evidently was well acquainted with the dormitory and its routine. At first, there was speculation that the murder might have been an act of anti-Semitic violence because of harassment of the Orthodox Jewish boys who attended the yeshiva. However, the investigation soon revealed that Chaim Weiss’s murderer was knowledgeable about religious customs. A window had been left open slightly in the victim’s room, which, according to Orthodoxy, enables the spirit of the dead to depart. Beyond that, a lighted mourning candle was placed on Chaim’s desk. The victim’s father, Anton Weiss of Staten Island, eventually grew disenchanted with how the Nassau police were handling the case. 

He said he felt that the police had been ”outsmarted,” and he requested the naming of a special prosecutor. That was never done. ”There was very little to find in the way of leads,” Lieutenant Nolan said. ”We were dealing with a group that holds very different mores. But eventually, we were able to interview everyone in the school, as well as all past and present employees. ”We couldn’t even find out why Chaim was killed. To this day, we can’t positively state whether it was from inside or outside of the school.”

[Unresolved Crime] The Unsolved Murder of Chaim Weiss (self.UnresolvedMysteries)

submitted 6 months ago * by hannahstohelit

 

I never thought I would do a writeup here, but this case grabbed me as soon as I heard about it a year or so ago. There was already one done by Robin Warder promoting his podcast, which is very good, but I decided to do some internet sleuthing to get as far to the bottom of it as possible, as a lot of people when summarizing the story fall prey to a lot of misconceptions, specifically about the Orthodox Jewish angle (Unsolved Mysteries made it seem like freaking Fiddler on the Roof…). I’m a member of the same religious group as Chaim, my rabbi actually attended the same school as him (though many years before), and my brother currently attends a similar school, so this case really hit home. Not to mention the brutality of the crime- it’s hard to imagine how anyone could commit murder in such a bloody and unhinged manner.
THE FACTS:
Chaim (pronounced kh-EYE-im) Weiss was a fifteen-year-old Orthodox Jewish student at the Yeshiva/Mesivta of Long Beach, a high school and post-high school yeshiva (boys’ religious school) in Long Beach, Nassau County, NY. He was by all accounts very intelligent and well-liked and didn’t have any known enemies. He dormed at the yeshiva and, uniquely, had his own bedroom- something which people after the fact said was due to his academic achievement. All other boys lived in shared rooms. He was on the third floor and had a window in his room, not connected to a fire escape (though there was one on the other end of the hall). The doors to the dorm building were securely locked.
Friday October 31-Saturday November 1, Chaim (along with the rest of the school) was in the dorm for the Sabbath. Friday night, after prayers and dinner, Chaim went to his room and was later (at bout 1 PM) seen reading in the hallway (the lights were off in the room and on in the hall- this is very typical on the Sabbath). The next morning, a dorm counselor knocked on his door to remind him that he had to attend prayers and discovered Chaim’s body. The first appearances indicated that he had been bludgeoned to death. The police were immediately called.
Investigation later discovered that Chaim’s body had been moved twice after his murder- from the bed to different positions on the floor. He also had not been bludgeoned but rather hacked with a hatchet, as there were several cuts found on his head. The window of his room was found open.
The police investigated the school and interrogated and polygraphed the teachers and many of the students, all of whom passed the examinations. A coroner stated that the injuries which Chaim had received were similar to those found in two other murder victims in the area- however, the modus operandi was entirely different (the other two victims were elderly and in their own homes). The police were convinced that the murderer must have been familiar with the school in order to commit the crime.
Anton Weiss, Chaim’s father, later sued the school for $15 million for not keeping his son safe; the suit was later settled.
In 2013, the case was reopened, and many people were re-interviewed; by 2015, the police announced that they were convinced that the murder was an inside job by someone in the yeshiva. However, they did not name any suspects or produce any new evidence.
THE RANDOM DETAILS:
People love random details, especially when they’re of a bizarre religious nature. Some writeups of the crime include these details, which I personally think are basically irrelevant:
– His body being on the floor and his window being opened were seen as part of Orthodox Jewish death rituals. IMO this is possible, but that would indicate that the perpetrator was either someone who was very well-versed in rabbinics or someone who had just personally had a close experience with death, as most Orthodox Jews do not know these laws.
– There was a mysterious candle found with his body. This is not true, as it happens, but is rather a misrepresentation of the actual situation. After Chaim’s body was found (and after the Sabbath, when it is forbidden to light candles), the school lit a memorial candle in Chaim’s room. One day a few days into the investigation, despite the fact that the room was guarded by police, a second lit candle was found in the room. However, this seems to have no connection to the case and people involved seem to agree that an absent-minded rabbi accidentally lit a second candle without people realizing.
-Unsolved Mysteries mentioned a mysterious man seen on the pier near the school early Saturday morning, who may have been a student of the school and may have had a connection to the crime. I don’t know whether he was ever located, but I’ve seen no reason to believe that he had any connection to the case.
-Friday was Halloween, a time when, historically, Jews had sometimes had problems with anti-Semitic egging, gang violence, etc (my father has stories from his yeshiva experience ten years earlier). The school stated a belief that the attack was anti-Semitically motivated due to Halloween and that the attacker snuck in and out of the building and murdered Chaim. While this can’t be discounted fully, it seems unlikely, as one student was targeted and the murder seemed to be done by people familiar with the school building.
– According to students, Chaim had had a run in with a school janitor. Some in the school therefore believed that he had come in to the building to kill him out of revenge. The police investigated the janitor and cleared him of suspicion.
– A boy in a nearby dorm room claimed to have seen someone open and close his dorm room in the middle of the night- as though he was looking in the different rooms for a specific person. If this is reliable (due to the student’s half-asleep state it might not be) and if this person was the murderer, this could indicate either that the murderer was an outsider who didn’t know his name around or that, if the person was an insider, he wasn’t familiar with which room was Chaim’s. Alternatively, he could have been making sure that nobody was awake to potentially witness the crime.
– A few years after the crime, Chaim’s family got an Easter card addressed to him which said, “Know what happens to chickens when they get too old to lay Easter eggs? They Dye. Happy Easter.” There were no other indications on the card as to the sender, and this doesn’t seem to be a helpful clue.
– There was also some weird etching on Chaim’s gravestone- I wrote about it at length in comments here https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/7vb6yv/unresolved_murder_have_there_been_any_longform/. I don’t believe they have any bearing on the case.
– On Unsolved Mysteries and in other media, the detectives on the case made it seem as though the yeshiva’s staff and students were deliberately unhelpful for religious reasons. First of all, as mentioned above the yeshiva was in fact fully helpful to the police in terms of allowing interviews and closing off the dorm for months for investigators. Secondly, the idea that religious reasons would prevent them from speaking is not farfetched- the two laws which could theoretically be meant are lashon hara (speaking ill about another) and mesirah (“snitching” to the authorities). I personally believe that the second is ridiculous (this is a murder, after all), the first COULD have had an impact on people feeling less inclined to air suspicion about people who they may have only had vaguely weird feelings about. That said, I don’t think it’s a significant factor, due to the seriousness of the case.
SO WHAT (DO I THINK) HAPPENED?
As mentioned above, police currently believe (though they have shared no specific evidence) that the murder was committed by a yeshiva insider. The question is why. On internet message boards I have seen several theories about potential homosexual relationships and love affairs between students which led to a murder. Perhaps, though this is complete speculation and none of the proponents of these theories can give any evidence besides “boys in boarding school.” Others say the same thing about potential fighting over a girlfriend, which I find ridiculous because a) the boys were dorming and wouldn’t share a social group from home b) the school would never give them the freedom to socialize with girls in Long Beach so that they would know girls in common (and c) that I just think it’s out of character for those sorts of kids- but I’m prepared to be wrong).
There are two more clues which I think can possibly be linked:
– I have seen on several comment sections and chatrooms that apparently, a boy hanged himself in a bathroom at Long Beach. I don’t remember seeing his name or any reason which was given for the suicide, but it’s suggestive.
– Last year, Anton Weiss gave an interview to a local news station about how a few months before the murder, Chaim called him crying from summer camp (though he later seemed fine) and that in August, Rabbi Avram Cooper, the school principal, called to ask to meet with Chaim and later did in fact meet with him at his home. Chaim didn’t reveal what he discussed with Rabbi Cooper, who refused to talk to reporters in the news segment.
My theory is that Chaim was being sexually abused by someone in a position of authority, if not in the yeshiva then possibly in camp. Sadly, this is a problem which has certainly been present in the Orthodox Jewish community, and has been swept under the rug in the past. What seems likely to me is that an older boy (perhaps a dorm counselor, though not necessarily the one who found him) or young teacher was grooming and abusing him, and that Rabbi Cooper was either investigating or covering for the abuser, leading to his wish to speak to Chaim. The thing is that there is a MASSIVE gap between abusing someone and murdering them with a hatchet- and I believe that this is why a) people who may have known or had an inkling about abuse might have passed a polygraph, because they genuinely did not believe that the events were related and b) Rabbi Cooper might not have wanted to talk about the abuser, given that even if he genuinely thought he was an abuser, he didn’t think he was a murderer. In fact, it seems crazy even to me- I have never before heard of an abuse case in the Orthodox Jewish community that led to murder, particularly murder so violent. However, that is where the evidence seems to lead me. Supporting the possibility that the abuser was someone in the school is that another boy committed suicide- while there is no indication that this boy was abused, it’s not impossible to imagine, and we know that this is the second death in not so many years in a freaking boys’ school. I believe that the abuser was an older student (students can be up to their mid-twenties or even older in the post-high school division) or very young rabbi because someone obviously old-looking might have seemed more conspicuous in the dorm building if discovered.
The problem is that I still cannot understand how it led to murder. The most interesting question for me is where the hatchet came from – I haven’t found ANY information on that, and I find it fascinating, because the average suburban New Yorker doesn’t exactly carry one around and there are much more obvious and readily available murder weapons. I also want to know whether they have any POIs, as they haven’t announced any.
Chaim’s tragedy is a horrifying reminder to me that as much as I want to believe that religion is good and its practitioners are peaceful, horrible things like this can still happen- but it’s disturbing to think that someone in my community could be a cold blooded murderer. Chaim didn’t deserve this, and if he had lived he would be in his late forties, probably with teenage children and maybe even with a grandkid or two. Yehi zichro baruch (may his memory be blessed).

(Also, if anyone is interested in the case and has questions about the religious angle, please ask me and I’ll see if I can help! News coverage often makes it seem a lot more mysterious and arcane than it actually is.)

EDITED: I did a bit more reading just now and a couple of things I want to add:
– Anton Weiss, in the same interview (though it didn’t make it onto the TV segment, which is why I didn’t see it), said that when he sued the school, Rabbi Cooper actually told him that the murder happened because of something which his family did.
– Another possibility which I actually think could be just as valid as the possibility that Chaim was being abused himself- he could have been the witness to someone else being abused or something of that nature.