It seemed at first like an old-fashioned, only-in-New York murder mystery. On a snowy day in January 2014, the charred remains of Menachem Stark, a Hasidic landlord from Brooklyn, were found in a trash bin at a gas station in Great Neck, on Long Island.

There was tantalizing evidence: surveillance video of a minivan hurrying away from Mr. Stark’s office in the Orthodox enclave of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and a trail of financial improprieties, including the fact that the landlord and his partner were in bankruptcy and that $2 million had recently vanished from one of their accounts. There was even some classic tabloid news coverage: The New York Post featured the story with a front-page photo of the victim in his traditional fur hat beside a headline that read: “Who Didn’t Want Him Dead?”

On Wednesday, however, as the trial of the man accused of killing Mr. Stark, Kendel Felix, began in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, what had once appeared to be a puzzling whodunit was presented to a jury as a bungling, if tragic, robbery gone wrong. Prosecutors described how Mr. Felix, a journeyman carpenter who had once done work for Mr. Stark, and “a team of kidnappers” — many from his own family — had taken part in a plot to abduct Mr. Stark and shake him down for money.

Mr. Felix, 28, is facing life in prison in the case, and the central evidence against him is a videotaped confession. In the confession, parts of which were played during pretrial hearings, Mr. Felix described how he had been approached by his cousin Erskine Felix, another laborer who claimed that Mr. Stark owed him money, and had been persuaded to participate in a scheme to scare the landlord and recover the debt.