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in: New York, 1986, Murder,
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Chaim Weiss

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Chaim weiss1

Chaim Weiss

Real Name: Chaim Weiss
Nicknames: Bal Kiahron (Hebrew for "a person capable of understanding")
Location: Long Beach, New York
Date: November 1, 1986

Case[]

Details: Fifteen-year-old Chaim Weiss of Staten Island, New York, was the oldest of Anton and Pessy Weiss’ three children. His grandparents were European refugees who fled the Nazis. Chaim was an Orthodox Jew and attended Torah High School in Long Beach, New York. He also lived in a third-floor bedroom in the school’s dormitory, which was located at 63 E. Beech St., three blocks from the school. About forty other students lived there.
Orthodox Jews comprise only about 1/10 of 1% of America’s population. Their roots can be traced back 5,000 years to the time of Moses. Observant Orthodox Jews live according to strict codes of social and moral conduct, which have remained unchanged for centuries. Hours of daily prayer and a rigid dietary regime are among the ancient rituals that guide the Orthodox Jew through birth, marriage, and death.
To ensure the continuation of their traditions, many Orthodox Jewish communities have established yeshivas – schools that emphasize the religious and ethical principles of Orthodox Judaism. Torah High School is one such yeshiva. On Saturday, November 1, 1986, Don Daly, a veteran Nassau County, New York, police detective, was unexpectedly thrust into this unique environment. At 8am, he was dispatched to Torah High School’s dormitory to investigate Chaim’s murder.
At 7:30am, a dormitory supervisor came to Chaim’s bedroom to wake him up after he failed to show up for their Saturday morning prayers. Instead, he found Chaim’s body still in his pajamas. His body was in an odd position; his lower half was still on the bed, but his upper half was slumped over it, with his head touching the ground. A single blow to his skull with a sharp object had severed his spinal column. The “hatchet-like” murder weapon was not found.
A single strand of hair not belonging to Chaim was found on his bed sheet. There was no evidence of a robbery or sexual assault, or signs of a struggle or forced entry. Almost immediately, Detective Daly realized this would be a unique investigation, unlike any other in his twenty-five-year career.
When Detective Daly arrived at the scene, it was Saturday, the Sabbath. It was difficult for him to talk to anyone because Orthodox Jews cannot write. He could not take statements from anyone. Yeshiva officials told him they could not talk more thoroughly with him until after sundown when the Sabbath ended. He also got the impression that many of the students were either shy or afraid to talk to him and the other investigators.
In Chaim’s room, Detective Daly found a series of clues that indicated that the killer might have been familiar with the yeshiva and the customs of Orthodox Judaism. It appeared that Chaim had been killed as he slept. His body was then moved – not once, but twice – from the bed to the floor, and later to another spot, two feet away. An autopsy indicated that his body had been lying on the bed for several hours before it was moved.
It also seemed strange that Chaim’s window had been left wide open on a chilly October evening, especially since he was sick then. Detective Daly spoke to several people involved in the Orthodox religion. He learned that when a person dies, it is customary to open a window or a door to let their spirit out. It is also customary for the body to be taken off the bed because it is supposed to be at the lowest and coolest point (the coolest point being the floor compared to the bed).
Another ritual would result in a third peculiarity. One of the rabbis asked to leave a memorial candle in Chaim’s room, which would burn for seven days. The crime scene was then sealed, and the students were moved out of the dormitory. However, two days later, another candle mysteriously appeared. No one in the yeshiva admitted to having placed it in the room.
Detective Daly notes that if the person lit the candle as a gesture of sympathy or love for Chaim, why wouldn’t they come forward and say that? It was certainly a good thing to do. However, no one came forward regarding the second candle.
With little else to go on, Detective Daly set about piecing together the final hours of Chaim’s life. He learned that Chaim was an outgoing, likable teenager who was at the top of his class. One of his friends, who lived on the same floor, described him as nice, popular, and smart. He liked playing chess and basketball. He had been attending the yeshiva for two and a half years, studying the Torah and the Talmud.
Chaim’s family did not know if he wanted to become a rabbi (as many yeshiva students did) or follow his father, Anton, into business. Anton says Chaim was loving, joyous, and bright. As far as he knew, Chaim had no problems at the yeshiva and felt comfortable there. Anton says that there may have been “things going on” that were normal among kids but nothing serious.
Chaim’s mother, Pessy, was anxious about him living away from home. Although some of his friends went to yeshivas in different states, his parents wanted him to stay in the New York area. In fact, they did not even want him to leave home. But he felt that he would “excel” at the yeshiva, and he liked the other students there.
In October 1986, Chaim spent three weeks at home for Yom Kippur. He returned to the yeshiva on Tuesday, October 28, just a few days before his death. For unknown reasons, he did not call his family on Wednesday or Thursday as usual. That year, Halloween (October 31) fell on a Friday night, the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath. In the late afternoon, Chaim left class with his friends to attend services. Afterwards, he returned to the dormitory.
Several hours later, two classmates saw Chaim reading in the hallway. According to Detective Daly, many of the students did that. Because of their religion, they do not turn their lights on or off at that time. Since it was nighttime, the lights were left on in the main hallway. So, the students would sit out there and read.
Chaim was last seen alive at 1am, still reading in the hallway. Police believe that the killer knew the layout of the dormitory and was probably aware that Chaim was one of only two students without a roommate. One stairwell led directly from a ground-floor exit to Chaim’s room. However, the police are not sure if the killer used that stairwell or another one.
Detective Daly says that if someone came up the main stairwell and down the hallway towards Chaim’s room, they would have passed by several other rooms that were all occupied by students. Nobody saw or heard anything unusual, such as yelling or screaming. However, one student said he heard his door open and quickly close that night. At the time, he assumed it was his roommate coming in.
Detective Daly says that there are several questions that they have been unable to answer regarding Chaim’s murder. They have not received many leads. And they have not received any information from “the outside,” which is unusual.
A few days after the murder, Detective Daly called a meeting with the students, teachers, and rabbis. He believed that someone at the yeshiva had answers to his questions. He was desperate for information and implored them to come forward. But almost every question he asked was answered by stony silence.
Detective Daly later learned that in Orthodox Judaism, mere suspicion alone is not enough for you to accuse someone unless you have proof or another witness. As a result, the students would not talk to investigators about other students, who they might suspect, or what their feelings were because they did not want to put any blame on anyone without more than mere suspicion.
Police interviewed nearly everyone who had “anything to do with” Chaim, including teachers, mentors, friends, students, neighbors, and other yeshiva employees. They also polygraphed forty students and several of the yeshiva’s teachers and rabbis. However, Detective Daly obtained no useful information from the polygraph exams. It seemed as if he would never find a suspect or a motive.
Detective Daly believes someone from the yeshiva has information about Chaim’s murder. He would like for anyone with any information at all to come forward, whether they did not want to tell investigators at the time because it was mere suspicion or because they have a different feeling now. He says that “mere suspicion” would be helpful to the investigation. He would like those people to come forward with their suspicions so that he could go out and investigate them.
Chaim’s father, Anton, says that the “not knowing” makes it much more difficult for him to cope. He accepts certain things: his son is dead, but the killer is still at large. He says that all the unanswered questions make him feel very uneasy. One question above all others continues to haunt this case. Why would anyone brutally murder a fifteen-year-old boy with no known enemies?
Police have uncovered only one significant clue. A jogger stated that he saw a young man who could have been a yeshiva student a few blocks from the school at 7am, shortly before Chaim’s body was found. All attempts to identify the student have been unsuccessful.
In 1988, Anton began his own investigation into Chaim’s murder. He interviewed several of Chaim’s former rabbis and classmates. He obtained lists and records regarding the yeshiva students. He also filed a $15 million wrongful death lawsuit against the yeshiva, claiming they caused Chaim’s death because of their “negligence, recklessness, and carelessness.”
Anton claims the yeshiva was negligent because the back door lock was broken, and no dormitory counselor was in the building that night. He also claimed that school officials were refusing to help find the killer. The yeshiva denied the allegations. Anton says the lawsuit was merely a “legal tool” to get the yeshiva’s officials to cooperate in the investigation and that he would donate the money to charity if he won the suit.
Chaim’s family and friends are offering a $100,000 reward for clues leading to an arrest and conviction in this case.
Suspects: Chaim’s killer is believed to have been familiar with certain customs in Orthodox Judaism. The killer is believed to have left a window open in the room to let his spirit out and placed his body on the floor so that he was at the lowest and coolest point in the room. The killer is also believed to have known the layout of the dormitory. And they may have known that Chaim was one of only two students without a roommate.
The police have been unable to identify a yeshiva student who was seen a few blocks from the yeshiva at 7am on the morning of Chaim’s murder. It is not known if he has anything to do with the case.
Several students, teachers, and rabbis were interviewed and polygraphed in relation to the case. However, no suspects have ever been identified.
Although the front door of the dormitory had a combination lock, some of the dormitory’s doors and windows were unlocked, leading to the possibility that someone from the outside was responsible for the murder. Yeshiva officials speculated that the killer entered through a window after climbing the fire escape. However, no evidence supports this theory. Some investigators do not believe an outsider was responsible.
Investigators initially looked into two potential suspects. One was a janitor at the dormitory who quit shortly after the murder and moved back to Europe. The other was a mentally ill man who attacked senior citizens in their Long Beach homes in 1986. However, both men have since been ruled out as suspects.
The yeshiva’s administrator claimed that the dormitory had been burglarized in the years before the murder. There had been previous incidents of harassment against the dormitory’s students, possibly related to anti-Semitism. A police officer was assigned to accompany them to and from the yeshiva.
On the night before the murder (Halloween night), several students were either chased, taunted, or hit by eggs in three attacks by “neighborhood thugs.” However, it is unknown whether these incidents had anything to do with the murder. The police also looked into the possibility that a “Halloween thrill seeker” committed the murder. However, that theory was later ruled out.
One former student theorized that the killer was trying to get back at either Chaim or his family.
An FBI profiler theorized that the killer was someone Chaim knew well and was possibly around his age. They believed that the murder was planned in advance. They theorized that Chaim’s intelligence and successes in life and the fact that he sometimes criticized others may have “fueled” his killer’s emotions. The profiler suggested that jealousy may have been a motive. They described the killer as “highly intelligent” but criminally unsophisticated.
Extra Notes:

  • This case first aired on the May 6, 1992 episode.
  • An Unsolved Mysteries researcher discovered the case after reading about it in the New York newspaper Newsday.
  • It was also profiled on The Trail Went Cold and Killer Instincts podcasts.
  • Over 1,000 people attended Chaim’s funeral.
  • Some sources state: Chaim was sixteen; he was struck or stabbed repeatedly in the head, neck, and face with a “heavy type of knife”; he was found at 7, 7:15, or 7:50am; he was last seen studying with another student in his room or talking with classmates about their vacations and classes; he was last seen at 12:45, 1:20, or 1:25am; and the person who found him was the dorm counselor or dorm leader.

Results: Unsolved - In May 2013, Chaim’s case was reopened by investigators. They reviewed forensic evidence and interviewed more than 100 former students. But as of October 2015, they had made little progress in the investigation. Around that same time, they announced that they believed a student or faculty member was responsible for the murder. However, they have yet to identify any suspects.
In November 2017, Chaim's father, Anton, was interviewed by the news station PIX11. He remains troubled by the fact that Chaim was assigned to his own room while almost everyone else was paired in groups of two or three to a room. The yeshiva claimed he was randomly assigned to it. Anton also recalled several bizarre incidents that occurred before the murder.
In July 1986, Chaim called Anton from the yeshiva’s upstate summer camp. Chaim was crying and saying that he wanted to come home. Anton told him to wait until he got back from a trip. When Anton returned home and visited the camp, Chaim seemed fine. He noted that Chaim had never mentioned having any problems at the camp in previous years.
In August 1986, 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 and saying he wanted to meet with Chaim. Anton felt that was strange.
When Chaim returned, his parents agreed to take him to Rabbi Cooper’s Brooklyn home for the meeting. Rabbi Cooper told them to send Chaim in and for them to wait outside. After about ten minutes, Chaim came back out. However, he did not want to talk about their conversation. Anton now wishes that he had pressed Chaim more about the conversation.
Anton also recalls an encounter with Rabbi Cooper after Chaim’s murder. According to Anton, Rabbi Cooper told him to reflect on any bad deeds he may have done to consider why bad fortune may have come to the Weiss family. Anton also says that detectives found Rabbi Cooper at a bar mitzvah just hours after Chaim’s murder.
PIX11 contacted Rabbi Cooper and asked him about Chaim. He said he had “no answers” regarding the case. When they asked him about Chaim’s call from camp, he said he was “not interested in speaking.” When they asked him about his meeting with Chaim, he refused to answer their questions and walked into his house. Anton suspects that Rabbi Cooper may have information about Chaim's murder. Some have speculated that he may have been involved in it.
Shortly after PIX11’s interview with Anton, they received a call from a former student who had attended the yeshiva in 1976 and 1977 when he was fourteen. He claims that one rabbi physically abused him regularly, punching, kicking, and twisting his ear, among other things. He blames Rabbi Cooper for allowing the abuse to occur.
PIX11 also learned that a yeshiva student hanged himself in a dormitory shower several years before Chaim’s murder. The dean’s wife claims that the student had “problems” and was depressed.
The police have reported receiving new tips since PIX11’s interview with Anton was released. They are continuing to investigate potential suspects in the case.
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