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Jonathan Levin, the heir to one of New York City’s most influential business empires, had every opportunity to lead a life steeped in luxury.
Yet, at 31, he chose a different path, leaving behind the corporate landscape to dedicate himself to teaching high school students in the Bronx, driven by a desire to positively impact their lives.
Tragically, this noble pursuit ultimately led to his untimely death.
Jonathan, the son of Gerald Levin, a prominent media mogul and then-CEO of Time Warner, was found dead in his Upper West Side apartment on June 2, 1997, as reported in the Nov. 8 episode of Oxygen’s The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher.
Evidence at the crime scene indicated that Jonathan had been tortured and murdered by someone he knew and trusted.
Clues at the scene suggested that Jonathan had been tortured and killed by someone he trusted.
There were no signs of forced entry and police found takeout containers and plates, still crusted with food, on a coffee table. Just inside the kitchen, Jonathan’s body, lay face down on the floor near a chair. Duct tape around his wrists and ankles suggested he’d been bound to the chair and tortured by his unknown killer.
“I remember the slash cut marks to the right side of the neck and they had a pattern like a serrated knife, like a steak knife,” recalled Butcher, a former medicolegal death investigator for The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner. “Just deep enough to hurt like hell without killing him.”
Jonathan also suffered a gunshot wound to the back of the head, just under his earlobe, and a post-mortem stab wound to the chest.
Jonathan’s wallet was still in the apartment, but it was missing his ATM card and any cash that may once have been inside.
“Could this have been a robbery gone wrong? A fight among friends?” Butcher asked. “But why the torture? This tells me that there was probably something much bigger at stake, something more personal, but what?”
Jonathan Levin Found His Calling As a Teacher
It was a tragic end for a man who had been adored by his students and coworkers.
Jonathan’s parents had divorced when he was 4, but he remained close to his famous father, who was considered one of the most wealthy and powerful men in the city at the time.
Jonathan briefly considered following in his father’s footsteps and entered the business world after college, but it was never the right fit.
“He didn’t want to live the executive life or be in the business world,” NYPD Homicide Detective Darryl Hayes explained. “His calling was to become a teacher. He was a teacher at William Taft High School, which was located in the Bronx and what we found out during the course of speaking with the faculty and students was that he was a beloved teacher. Everybody had nothing but nice things to say about him.”
That included girlfriend and fellow teacher Clotilde “Cleo” Tejada, who came with a coworker to check on Jonathan on June 2 after he failed to show up to work that day. When they were unable to get inside, they called police, who found Jonathan’s decomposing body.
“It was terrible,” Tejada recalled. “It was something like never in my worst nightmares I would think of.”
Clues Point to Surprising Suspect
Crime scene techs dusted the apartment for prints and recovered a serrated knife covered in dried blood that looked as though it had been used to deliver the superficial wounds to Jonathan’s neck.
Police also began talking to those closest to Jonathan to see whether anyone may have wanted to hurt him—but it was a clue on his answering machine that would change the course of the investigation.
“When detectives played the answering machine tape what they found, along with all of the messages from the concerned teachers, was a message from someone named Corey saying ‘Mr. Levin, pick up,’” said Manhattan Assistant District Attorney KJ Dell’Antonia, describing the voice as someone “young.”
Detectives learned the call had been placed at a pay phone near Central Park, but there were no longer any usable prints on the phone. However, authorities did find a print on the duct tape used to restrain Levin. It matched to Corey Arthur, a former student at William Taft High School with a criminal record for drug-related offenses.
“He was somebody that Jonathan had really felt a connection with and really was trying to help,” Dell’Antonia said. “Other teachers and people around him described them as close.”
A manhunt was launched to find Arthur. A tipster led them to the home of Arthur’s aunt, who handed them over a bag of bloody clothes Arthur had been wearing the night of the murder, but his whereabouts were still unknown.
Alleged Accomplice is Identified
At the same time, investigators learned that Jonathan’s ATM card had been used the night of his death to withdraw $800, but the man captured in the surveillance video was too short and stocky to be Arthur.
As NYPD Det. Sgt. Timothy Horohoe noted, “We now have two dangerous suspects that would need to be found.”
Another call on the tip line pointed them to Montoun Hart, a man with past robbery arrests.
Hart agreed to talk to detectives and admitted to being there the night Jonathan was killed as part of a robbery attempt, but insisted he didn’t know Arthur planned to kill the teacher. He told detectives that after tying Jonathan up and threatening him with the knife to get his pin number, he went to the bank. When he returned, he found Arthur holding a gun to Jonathan’s head.
“Jonathan cried out ‘Corey why are you doing this to me?’” Butcher said. “He was so unable to understand why this kid who loved and cared for and who loved and cared for him would do this to him.”
What Happened to Corey Arthur?
Five days after Jonathan’s body was discovered in his apartment, Arthur was tracked down and taken into custody.
Although both men went on trial, only Arthur was found guilty of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 25 years to life behind bars. Hart was acquitted.
