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MI CHAEL G . Dowo
N I ALL MAcGI OLLABHUi -
- A OMI T T E D AS S OLICITOR,
R EPUBL IC O F IRE LAND
Ryan Duck
NYC Department of Probation
210 Joral emon Street
New York, NY 11201
4 2 5 P ~ AV ENUE. 26' " F LOOR
NE W YORK , NEW YORK 1002 2
TELEPHONE 12 1217 51 16 40 FAX 12121 8 7 2 17 7 7
www.mgdowdlaw.com
July 1,201 4
Re: Baruch Lebovits
Ind. No. 11393/2008
Dear Mr. Duck:
I write to you in connection with the pre-sentence report you are presently
prepari ng in the case of the above-named pedophile, whose se . . . :duled to take
place on July 9, 2014. In particul ar, I write to you on behalf of Pinches Kellner, one of the
many 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 were
misdemeanors. However, Detecti ve Steve Litwin, a longtime investigator of sexual abuse of
children who interviewed (Exhibit "A"), concluded that Lebovits was a serial
predator, and suggested to his fat her, Sam Kellner, that a prosecution would be viable if other
victims could be found and encouraged to report their abuse. In his community, Baruch
Lebovi ts was well known as a rampant pedophile, whose prominence and powerful pol itical
connections had allowed him to rape and molest numerous children unchecked for decades.
Amongst his victims was , who came forward in March 2008 and
provided especially harrowi ng Grand Jury testimony, describing how Lebovits started
following him when he was 12 years old, and then, for the next four years, perpetrated
countless horrifi c acts of oral and anal rape upon him. The testimony resulted in Indictment
No. 2600/2008(for crimes that incl uded 31 separate counts of sodomy), before another
victim came forward, namely (the victi m in respect of whom Lebovits has
now pled guilty), resulting in the present, combined, Indictment.
In November 2009, John Lonuzzi, a lawyer claiming 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 Dist rict Attorney and Detecti ve
Steve Litwin to cease further contact with him. However, a short time later,
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Ryan Duck
NYC Department of Probation
July 1,2014
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contacted Detective Litwin and told him that "someone else had retained Mr. Lonuzzi but
that he did not know who had done so," that "he had been pressured and that he was afraid to
say 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 Dist rict Attorney's Office." See
Litwi n Affi davit (Exhibit "B" ), ' i .9- 10. The wit hdrawal of cooperation was closely
coordinated with Baruch Lebovits's attorney. In a 2011 video recording,
explained the means used by the Lebovits fami ly to force Torenhei m out of test ifying against
Baruch 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're
going to be arrested for the cases in which you molested two chi ldren." also
stated that the Lebovits family paid lor Lonuzzi and promised money. In May
20 12, the Dist rict Attorney interviewed a friend of named
(Exhibit "C" J, who confirmed that fled to Israel "out of fear" following a threat
by ll aruch Lebovits's oldest daughter who "called and told him that if he . .. testifies against
her father, he ... would immedia tely be arrested for molestation" because "they would bring
in the two little boys molested as witnesses against him." In September and
October 2012, travel and linancial records were obtained by the Distri ct Att orney showing
that a man named Zalmen Ashkenazi was paying for 's travel to Israel and making
monthly pay-offs to his lath er (Exhibit "0 "). The mortgage on the family home
was also paid off in full. Ashkenazi family members are close associates of Baruc h Lebovit s.
In July 2013, was int erviewed by the District Attorney' s office . li e confirmed
that he ned to Israel lor fear of possible child molestation charges. He also stated, according
to notes of the interview, that "Zalmen Ashke nazi has supplied funds for [Lonuzzi), his
airfare to and from Israel, his apart ment in Israel, and his school fees," and that he "needs
Zalmen Ashkenazi's permission to return to the US when he' s in Israel." In July 20 13, the
District Attorney announced in court that an invest igation was ongoing into witness
tampering 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 proceeding in 20 IO. In the
aforemen tioned video recording, recounted Baruch Lebovits's attempts " to
manipulate [his) father" along with numerous atte mpts to pay him off, including a bribe of
$50,000, to which described his react ion 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 blood
has no price." The pervasive pay-off attempts even included an attempt exposed at trial by
the sole defe nse witness, Berel Ashkenazi (brot her ofZalmen). 's testimony
resulted in a guilty verdic t and, in April 20 I0, a prison sentence of 10 2/3 - 32 years.
However, the now convicted, imprisoned pedophi le and his family were not
yet finished. Within months of the sentence, an affidavit from
material ized in which clai med that he had falsely impl icated Baruch Lebovits at
the behest of Sam Kellner, father of (even though he had originally reported the
abuse to various people years before he met Kellner). Meyer Lebovits, one of Baruch
l.ebovits's sons, recycled a claim he first made in 2009 (almost a year before the trial) that
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Ryan Duck
NYC Department of Probation
July 1,2014
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Baruch Lebovi ts was the victim of an extortion plot by Sam Kellner. Curiously, this claim
was not part of the defense at trial (which was that falsified his accusations to
finance a drug habit ). For reasons the present District Attorney is currentfy investigating, his
predecessor ' s Rackets Division worked with the Lebovits family to arrest Sam Kellner in
20I I, an arrest that was then used by Baruch Lebovit s to secure his release from prison the
following day pending appeal. They also worked together to undermine the conviction
(including the aforement ioned video recording of - present ed to him as a
documentary on his fife for which he was flown to Florida - that in realit y was an
unsuccessful attempt, directed by Rackets Division, to pfy him with drugs and induce a
confess ion that he was part of Kellner' s supposed extortion plot).
This failed attempt notwit hstanding, the original conviction of Baruch
Lebovits was overturned on appeal because of prosecutoriaI misconduct during the trial.
However, whi le awaiting retrial, the false allegations against Sam Kellner fell apart, leading
to the dismissal of the case against him on March 7, 20 14. On that date, the prosecutor stated
in court that neither nor Meyer Lebovits were credible witnesses against Kellner,
that there was "no credible evidence to support " their claims, and that " there are motives of
certain witnesses that go beyond thi s case." In Judge Mangano' s chambers, the prosecut or
went further, describing "complete fabrication" by Meyer Lebovits (in his Grand Jury
testimony) as well as intimidati on and bribery of by the Lebovits famil y and thei r
associates. On March 6, 2014, the same prosecutor represented to me, acting as Sam
Kellner' s attorney, that , along with the investi gation into witness tampering concerning
Torenheim, a further investigation was being initiated into the corrupt prosecution of Sam
Kellner. (The representation was made in order to obtain Kellner' s consent to dismissal of his
case - to that point, he was insisting on a trial in order to expose the truth behind his
prosecut ion.)
Prior to dismi ssal of the Kellner case, Baruch Lebovit s made a final, desperate
effort to keep it afloat. Earlier this year, I spoke to a registered sex offender named Betzalel
Dym, who is yet another victim of Baruch Lebovits (and yet another victim whose abuse by
Lebovits led him in turn to victimize other children). At the time , repr esentati ves of Baruch
Lebovits were claiming that his abuse of children was "only" at the level of misdemeanor
offenses (and therefore time-barred). By remarkabl e coincidence, Dym suddenly emer ged to
claim that Sam Kellner had encouraged him six years earlier to exaggerate his own abuse at
the hand of Lebovi ts from the level of misdemeanor offenses to felony offenses. The
difficulty for Dyrn was following a script that wasn' t properly explained to him. The
problem fo r Baruch Lebovits is that , having so thoroughly ruined the lives of the children he
abused, no matter how badly they are later manipulated by him and his associat es, the truth
always tumb les out. When I asked Dym as to what he meant by "misdemeanors" - the ter m
he kept repeating - he said "to uching." However, when I pressed him, he eonceded that the
offenses had gone far beyond touching, and included multiple acts similar to those
perpetrated by Lebovits upon Rubi nstein.
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Ryan Duck
NYC Department of Probation
July 1, 2014
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Another blatant example of the relent less manipulation by Baruch Lebovits of
his victims can be found by comparing the statement delivered in court by Rubinstein' s
father at the original sentencing in 2010 (Exhibit "E"), with the attitude he and his son are
currently expressing towards the man he addressed as follows: "I want to look this evil man
in his eyes. What this man did is not some tale or script in a horror movie . It is a real horror
story of a man who lived in our community, was trusted by the children and the people. He
went 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 discarded
these innocent chi ldren like trash. You wished to see them comple tely destroyed so they
would not be able to testify against you. You never showed or had any remorse." Doubtless ,
you will note with some puzzlement the difference between then and now. What you
probably do not know, however, is that Baruch Lebovits and his associates finally succeeded
in their effort to pay off Rubinste in and his father (a pay off the District Attorney has
conl ir med in court).
The one victim that Baruch Lebovits could not sway was Pinches Kellner.
Shamefully and sca ndalously, the then District Attorney did his bidding in October 2010 by
surreptitiously dismi ssing the case (Pinches was never told), because Pinches 's father was the
target of a corrupt invest igation into what turned out to be wholly fabricated allegations. The
fates of thc many other victims who came forward are not known by me. They are known,
however, by the present District Attorney. All er the conviction after trial in 2010, it was
repor ted that several more victims reported their sexual abuse at the hands of Lebovits to the
police, and that one law enforcement source described the conviction as the "tip of the
iceberg. " http: //www.nydai lynews.com /new- vork Ibrooklvnl new-people-rabbi baruch-
lebovits-molested- article- I.183382. Now that Bar uch Lcbovits is again faci ng sentencing,
the District Attorney has an obligati on to bring to your attention all such information in the
possession oflaw enforcement, in order to even begin to adequately portray the scale of the
devastation inflicted by Baruch Lebovits on the children of his community (of which his self-
confessed offenses against Rubinstein are but one small part) . The District Attorney has a
further obligation to bring to your attention the status of his investigations into intimidation
and bribery of victims by Baruch Lebovits and his assoc iates, and into the corruption of the
criminal j ustice process that led to the prosecuti on of Sam Kellner and the dismissal of my
client, Pinches Kellne r' s case against Lebovits.
As you know, " [a] present ence report may includ e any relevant information
on the history of the defendant (see CPL 390.30) and may include history not only of prior
offenses for which defendant has been convicted, but even offenses for which he has not
been convicted." People v. Weinsheimer, 68 A.D.3d 901, 890 N.Y.S.2d 128, 129 (2nd Dept.
2009 ).
Thus, in conclusion, I as k that you note in your pre-sentence report that Yako v
Rubinstein is only onc of Baruch Lebovit s' s many victims, and that these victims arc known
to incl ude my client, Pinches Kellner, and Michae l Torenheim. I also ask that you request
from the District Attorney for inclusion in your report the number of other victims who have
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Ryan Duck
NYC Department of Probation
Jul y 1,2014
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reported their abuse by Lebovits to law enforcement, and confirm with the Distric t Att orney
the fact that Lebovits and his associates are curre ntly the subject of one investigation into
witness tampering relating to Torenheim and another investigati on into the corrupt
prosecuti on of Sam Kellner and the dismissal of Pinches Kellner ' s case against Lebo vits.
Sincerel y,
/'] J /j t! )1(' ,
..I.'!Cil'!('", :':.tW l /
NIall Mac6 'lOi abhui
cc: Hon. Mark Dwyer
ADA Anna Sigga Nic ola zzi, Esq.
Art hur Aid ala, Esq.
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