Midwood, Brooklyn, NY - Rabbi's Killer Gets 20 Years

Midwood, Brooklyn, NY - A Orthodox Jew with psychiatric problems, who greeted cops after killing an elderly Brooklyn rabbi was sentenced to 20 years in prison - a stretch he predicted he will not survive.
"I see this as a death sentence," Howard Goldstein, 49, told Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Matthew D'Emic. "The Torah promises a man will live 72 years," he said, before launching into a hateful diatribe against black, Hispanic and Muslim prisoners. "I just don't see myself completing 20 years."

Goldstein has admitted stabbing and beating to death 75-year-old Rabbi Rahamin Sultan in November 2004, even though the man had given him refuge in his Midwood apartment.
Goldstein, who has a history of psychiatric problems, lived alongside the rabbi's decomposing body, wrapped in a blanket, for five days until cops knocked at the door.

In Court, the bearded killer, bespectacled and wearing a yamulke, apologized to Sultan's family, calling the slain rabbi "a gem" who only showed him kindness and generosity.
But Sultan's brother, Joseph, scolded him. "My brother lived each day doing good deeds for the community he lived in," he said. "You've taken away a good citizen from the community. You're never going to make it to the creator. You are a Jew...and we have the laws our creator told us. 'Thou shalt not kill!'"