A young Brooklyn Jewish boy who vanished while walking home from a day camp in one of the safest parts of New York was killed and dismembered by a stranger to whom he had turned or help after getting lost, police said this week.

An intense search for the missing 8-year-old, Leiby Kletzky, ended early in the morning of July 13 with the gruesome discovery of pieces of his dismembered body inside the kitchen of a man who had been seen with the child around the time he disappeared, police said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the 35-year-old suspect, Levi Aron, made statements implicating himself in the boy’s death. Leiby disappeared while on his way to meet his mother in the Orthodox neighborhood of Borough Park.

Police said Aron lives alone in the apartment, in a building shared with his parents. He once had a summons for urinating in public but otherwise did not have a criminal record, Kelly said. — ap