The re-trial of a man accused in the 2012 kidnapping and killing of 6-year-old Isabel Celis began Wednesday morning with the prosecutor telling jurors that the defendant had written the girl’s name on a piece of paper after her killing, hid it under a rock then tied to use it years later as leverage to get out of an unrelated arrest.
After he was arrested on an unrelated burglary charge, Christopher Matthew Clements called his then-girlfriend and instructed her to look for the paper.
”He folded it up, he put it into a plastic baggie, and he hid it under a rock in his front yard,” Deputy Pima County Attorney Tracy Miller told jurors Wednesday during opening statements. “And so, when he was in jail in 2017, he called (his girlfriend at the time) and said, ‘can you go to the front yard, look under this rock, and you’re going to find a piece of paper. Call the FBI and tell them I know where she is.’ “
Clements, 42, is charged with kidnapping, first-degree murder and burglary in connection with the killing of Celis. After a 10-day trial in Pima County Superior Court last year, jurors were unable to reach a verdict, and a mistrial was declared last March.
Four weeks have been set aside for the retrial.
Clements is a convicted sex offender with a long criminal record and is already serving a life sentence in the killing of 13-year-old Maribel Gonzales, who disappeared in June 2014 while walking to a friend’s house. However, jurors in this trial will not be told about Clements’ conviction.
Eric Kessler, Clements’ attorney, implicated Sergio Celis in the disappearance of his daughter.
Kessler told jurors that during the initial investigation detectives could not find any evidence of a struggle nor an “overt crime scene.” Specially trained dogs from the FBI were brought in, Kessler said, but they couldn’t find any trace of an intruder being in the Celis home, so the investigation “centered on Sergio.”
Kessler said one of the girls’ brother was up as late as the timeframe given for the girl’s disappearance and the despite there being several dogs in the Celis home that barked “incessantly,” Sergio Celis told investigators he “didn’t hear anything in the house.” Kessler also pointed out that girl’s window makes a “tremendous screech” when opened, raising doubt that was the way Isabel Celis was taken from her home.
”Even Sergio, the father, wasn’t confident, in fact I think he said it was ‘unlikely’ that anyone came in through Isabel’s window, took her, and removed her out that window,” Kessler said. “(Sergio thought) it was more likely someone came through the front door of the house ... In order to get from Isabel’s bedroom to the front door, Isabel and anyone who was with her, would have to have walked by a sleeping Sergio.”
Detectives discovered messages on the walls of Isabel’s closet in her handwriting, including “I don’t like Dad” and “Dad’s bad,” Kessler said, and that there was no evidence of any kind of struggle and no evidence that anybody forcibly took Isabel from the home, Kessler told jurors.
At the time Isabel Celis vanished, investigators at the time were unable to find fingerprints off the window screen, Miller said, nor was there any DNA inside her room “that they could detect.” However, there were drops of Isabel’s blood on her bedroom floor, between her bed and the window, Miller told the jury.
About one month after Isabel’s disappearance, police “canvassed” the surrounding neighborhood. Clements, who lived nearby, was one of the people interviewed by police. Shortly after this interaction, Clements took a trip to Hawaii, the prosecution said.
About five years later, in 2017, Clements led investigators to the desert area northwest of Tucson where the remains of both girls were eventually found.
At the time, Clements told investigators he simply knew the location of the remains of Isabel Celis but had nothing to do with the killing.
Miller told jurors that Clements’ cell phone “hit off of a cell tower” in the area where Celis’ remains were found, shortly after her disappearance. That information made it able to determine Clements was in the “general area” of where Celis was found and that she noted that Clements changed his cell phone number “in the days after” her abduction.
Miller said that in 2017 investigators also looked through Clements and his girlfriend’s electronic devices.
”This defendant made queries for Isabel Celis over the years,” Miller said to jurors. Some web searched pulled from Clements’ devices included “Isabel Celis sexy,” and “trace evidence found on body,” Miller said.
