The Murder of a Yeshiva Student Killed in His Sleep in 1986 Remains Unsolved

In the 1980s, at 63 East Beech Street in Long Beach, N.Y., sat a dormitory for Torah High School—a yeshiva, a school dedicated to studying the Talmud and other Jewish scriptures. In November 1986, the community experienced an unimaginable loss in the form of the still-unsolved murder of 15-year-old Chaim Weiss, a student who was described as bright and kind.

Who would’ve wanted to harm Chaim, and why haven’t police been able to find his killer?

Anton Weiss, Chaim’s father, was born in a camp for displaced persons in Europe after World War and moved to the New York City borough of Staten Island soon after. He eventually married and welcomed three children into the world: Chaim, his brother, Menachem, and his sister, Rachel.

At 13, Chaim requested to attend the yeshiva. Anton told Newsday, “He went there on his own initiative because he liked the boys so much.” By 1986, Chaim was one of the only students at the dormitory with his own room.

By his parents’ account, they felt their son was safe from the harms of the outside world. That was until November 1, 1986, when the Nassau County Police were dispatched to the dormitory on East Beech Street at around 7:30 a.m. They were directed to the third-floor bedroom, which sat next to a fire escape stairwell.

Upon opening the door, they discovered Chaim’s body lying on the floor, his feet propped up on the bed. Chaim had suffered two catastrophic blows to the face; the force of the blows had crushed his skull upon impact while he slept. The murder weapon was never recovered from the scene.

His room was neat, showing no signs of forced entry or a struggle. Additionally, there were no reports of a disturbance in the night, leaving police puzzled. Police would uncover another baffling clue: Chaim’s body appeared to have been moved from the bed to the floor in the hours after his murder.

The window in his room had also been left open all night, leaving the room a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Chaim had been taking antibiotics for a sore throat before his murder, leading investigators to believe it was not him who had opened it. Nassau County Police built a timeline, with the last known sighting of Chaim alive being around 12:45 a.m. on November 1.

Investigators later believed that the window had been left open for religious reasons, as it is customary for some Jews to open a window in the room of the deceased to allow the soul to depart from the physical body.

The Nassau County medical examiner stated in their report that the murder was a “frenzy-type killing.” Nassau County Police interviewed the yeshiva administration and the lead rabbi, who described Chaim as a diligent student who was very popular and loved playing basketball; he seemingly had no enemies.

With no signs of forced entry, investigators moved their focus to the fire escape door next to Chaim’s room that leads to a stairwell. The main door of the dormitory was locked at all times with a coded lock; however, individual rooms were not locked.

Initially, some questions from the Nassau County Police remained unanswered by the yeshiva’s rabbis, likely due to the Jewish belief of dan l'chaf zechut (to give someone the benefit of the doubt until there is solid evidence). Eventually, several students at the yeshiva were given polygraph tests, with all participants passing.

The Long Beach Jewish community was left reeling following the brutal murder of Chaim, and over 1,000 mourners attended his funeral. With no murder weapon or witness accounts, police were down to their final clue: a single strand of hair that did not belong to Chaim but was found on his bedsheet.

Lieutenant John Azzata of the Nassau County Police Department told the media in 2013 at a press conference that no DNA testing would take place on the hair “until they have someone to compare it to,” fearing testing may destroy the sample.

It's been 40 years since Chaim Weiss was murdered in his sleep, yet investigators are no closer to catching his killer. Some pointed fingers toward a janitor who quit soon after Chaim’s murder and returned to Europe. An FBI profiler would later state they believed Chaim was murdered by someone around his age and possibly by someone he knew well, despite reports that he had no problems at school.

In May 2013, Nassau County Police reopened Chaim’s case, bumping the reward from $5,000 to $25,000. Chaim’s death continues to haunt the Weiss family, and in 2017, Anton Weiss told PIX11, “I think it’s time for people to come forward and say something.”

To date, no one has been named as a suspect or arrested in connection with Chaim's murder.