Chapter 6:

Orthodox Jews trace their origins back to the time of Moses, more than 5,000 years ago and their beliefs, rituals and codes of conduct have remained virtually unchanged for a very long time. Orthodox Jewish children attend special schools, Yeshiva, where they are taught the values and principles of Orthodox Judaism.

On Saturday 1^st November 1986, veteran detective Don Daly of the Nassau County Police Department was sent to investigate an apparent murder at a Yeshiva in Long Beach, New York...

Long Beach, The City by the Sea, was a popular summer vacation destination in the 1950s and 1960s but, as air travel and foreign holidays became cheaper, it transformed into a dormitory suburb for New York City. The city’s 2 mile long boardwalk and amusement park had become a center for youth crime and drug dealing by the early 1980s when it was the target of repeated Police crackdowns.

However, by 1986, Long Beach was a place of urban renewal with new housing, new businesses and infrastructure improvements.

The population of Long Beach is almost 50% Jewish and the Mesivta of Long Beach is a popular Yeshiva for Orthodox Jewish boys who have passed the age of Bar Mitzvah. Boys at the Mesivta wear dark suits, white shirts and felt hats and begin their day of religious study at 07:30 when they leave their dormitory on Beech Street to attend morning prayers.

On a normal day, study continues until 9pm in the evening, though many of the boys elect to continue studying the Talmud (the book of Jewish Law) for even longer. In the mid 1980s, boys at the Mesivta were not permitted to watch television or listen to the radio and were not encouraged to read novels.

The Long Beach Mesivta was (and is) a peaceful and ordered place where quiet study and contemplation are valued and encouraged. However, in 1986, there were worrying signs that not all was well in the school or the surrounding community.

In April of that year there had been a fire at the rabbi's temple, Young Israel of Long Beach, which was located just two blocks from the Mesivta. An investigation by the Nassau County Fire Marshall concluded that the fire was a result of arson, though the perpetrator was never apprehended. The previous year a mattress had been discovered burning in one of the Mesivta dormitories without any logical explanation. There had also been a number of minor incidents of harassment of boys from the school which led to them being advised to always walk in pairs on the streets outside.

On previous Halloweens, some boys had their felt hats knocked off their heads and stolen by local youths, so the school had recommended that they did not wear them on the Friday evening of Halloween 1986. To everyone’s relief, Halloween seemed to pass without incident and the school began to enter Shabbat, the day of rest, which is traditionally observed from just before sunset on Friday evening until the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday evening.

One of the pupils at the school was fifteen year old Chaim Weiss, son of Anton Weiss, a wealthy New York businessman. Chaim Weiss was popular, gregarious, outgoing and top of many of the classes he attended. By Halloween 1986, Weiss had been attending the Long Beach Mesivta for over two years. The only slightly unusual thing about Weiss was that he was one of only two boys at the Mesivta who had his own bedroom – all the other boys slept in dormitories or shared rooms.

On Halloween evening, he was seen by other students, sitting in the corridor outside his room, reading. This wasn’t unusual – students did not switch on the lights in their rooms on the Shabbat, reading instead in the corridors where the lights were always left on.

When Chaim didn’t appear for prayers the next morning, someone went to check his room. What they found in the peaceful dormitory room was a scene of unimaginable horror...

Chaim had been struck with what was later ascertained to be a “hatchet-like” object in the back of the head, an injury which most likely severed his spinal cord and killed him instantly. However, his attacker had then carried out a frenzied attack with a large knife, stabbing the boy eleven times in the head with such force that the walls of his small room were spattered with blood, brain matter and fragments of detached scalp and skull. When detective Don Daly arrived at the scene at around 08:00am on the Saturday morning, one glance told him that this was indeed a murder.

Police crime scene technicians and forensic specialists quickly arrived and began to examine Chaim’s third-floor room. They ascertained that Chaim’s body had been moved approximately forty-five minutes after his death, when it was lifted from the bed to the floor.

They also noted that the sash window to his room was open but they failed to find a murder weapon or any sign of a struggle or a robbery – it appeared that Chaim had been sleeping peacefully when the first, fatal, blow was struck. A wider examination showed that all the doors to the building were locked apart from one door which proved to have a defective lock and no doors or windows showed any evidence of forced entry.

Police investigations were initially hampered because of the rules of Shabbat which meant that, in addition to other restrictions, the staff and pupils at the school were not permitted to write until the day of rest was over. However, questioning failed to provide any clues as to why someone might have wanted to kill Chaim.

Police eventually gave polygraph tests to more than forty pupils at the school and a number of members of staff but none of these revealed any viable suspects or motives. A jogger in the area claimed to have seen a boy from the school on a nearby street in the early hours of the morning of November 1st, but this was never confirmed and the boy was not identified.

Police were facing two conflicting theories as to the motive for the murder. The first was that Chaim was a random victim of an act of anti-Semitic violence. The previous arson at the Rabbi’s Temple and some acts of harassment against staff and pupils might have supported this theory, but there were major practical difficulties.

First, Chaim’s bedroom was on the third floor of the building and for an outsider to reach it would have meant passing many other rooms occupied by staff and students. This seems like a suicidal risk for an assailant who simply wanted to attack any student at the school.

Second, Chaim was one of only two boys at the school who slept alone in their rooms. An outsider could not have known this and might have entered any bedroom where there might have been several boys present to raise the alarm. Finally, Chaim’s body was moved around 45 minutes after he was killed. It is very, very difficult to imagine an intruder from outside making his way into the building, killing the sleeping boy and then remaining on the scene for forty-five minutes and risking discovery...

The alternative was that someone from inside the school had killed Chaim. Some people certainly felt that aspects of the crime scene suggested that someone familiar with Orthodox Jewish beliefs and customs had been involved. For example, leaving the window open in a room in which a dead body is located is done to make is easier for the spirit to escape and a body is traditionally placed in the lowest, coolest part of the room – Chaim’s body had been moved on to the floor after death and his window was found to be open.

The problem with this theory was that there was absolutely no known motive for anyone inside the school to have killed the sleeping boy. Various theories were explored including a claim that Chaim and other boys at the school had been subject to sexual abuse by staff and that Chaim was killed because he had threatened to expose this. It was also said that some staff at the school, including a janitor, were of Polish origin, anti-Semitic and prone to violence.

However, Police found no evidence to support any of these theories and excluded them from their investigations.

A few days after the murder, Detective Daly called a meeting in the school of students and staff. He addressed those assembled and asked a number of questions about Chaim and the murder, but to his surprise, most were greeted with complete silence. Interviewed about the case later he said:

“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.”

“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.”

To the present time, the brutal murder of Chaim Weiss remains unsolved. There are no prime suspects, no significant clues and police have been unable to uncover any viable motives.

One Halloween thirty years ago, someone entered the room of a sleeping boy on the third floor of a locked boarding school in Long Beach and killed him in a brief frenzy of violence. But we have absolutely no idea of who that person was or why they killed Chaim Weiss...