Convicted Murdered Of Rabbi Dovid Okunov HY’D Makes Bid To Overturn Conviction

by CrownHeights.info

Carl Miller, the teen convicted of the murder of Rabbi Dovid Okunov HY’D, a Lubavitcher who was murdered on the streets of Crown Heights in 1979, is looking to overturn his conviction, claiming that he was not in town on the day of the murder.

Rabbi Dovid Okunov was brutally gunned down at the age of 68 on his way to morning shacharit on Montgomery Street. On Thursday, October 25, 1979 (Daled Cheshvan) at 7 a.m., Reb Dovid, as he was affectionately known, was shot in the head with one bullet. A much beloved Torah teacher and community worker, Reb Dovid died at the scene. The entire Lubavitch community and Jews in New York were in a state of shock when the murder story appeared in the New York Times and Daily News.

Days after the killing, then teenager Carl Miller of Crown Heights, was arrested and jailed. Police classified the murder motive as a robbery —Miller was caught with Reb Dovid’s tallit—and not as a racist incident. He was tried and sentenced to 22 years on charges of pre-meditated murder.

“Reb Dovid did not die alone or without a rich legacy,” said one of his grandchildren. “He left a remarkable family of askanim, activists for Yiddishkeit. He had a noble history as a lifelong fighter for Judaism in the Soviet Union in times and places when the practice of Yiddishkeit was risky, even mortally dangerous.”

At a special Motzai Shabbat farbrengen, during the Shiva, the Lubavitcher Rebbe spoke of the horrifying loss of Reb Dovid’s life. “He was a man who sacrificed his life in Russia. He succeeded in escaping and coming to this free land only to be murdered on his way to do a mitzvah.”

At that farbrengen, the Rebbe broke down and cried—he had known Reb Dovid in Russia since 1926 when Reb Dovid was a student and the Rebbe was about to become the son-in-law of the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn. Hundreds of chassidim, seeing the Rebbe in tears, also cried at the senseless loss of such a beloved chassidic figure.

But the Rebbe composed himself and announced that a yeshiva would be built “over his grave,” specifically a Jewish day school dedicated to serving the needs of boys from the Soviet Union. The Rebbe suggested that the new Torah institution be called Yeshivat Ohel Dovid in tribute Rabbi Dovid Okunov, who, at the time of his murder, was working to help Jews who were trapped behind the Iron Curtain.