A Tucson jury on Thursday convicted Christopher Clements in the murder and kidnapping of 6-year-old Isabel Celis in 2012.
Clements had been previously tried for the murder, but it ended in a mistrial after jurors were unable to reach a verdict.
Jurors heard 11 days of testimony before starting deliberations on Tuesday. The guilty verdict came Thursday afternoon.
“This is a long time coming for the Celis family,” said Deputy Pima County Attorney Tracy Miller. “They spent 12 years waiting for this day to come.”
Celis family members left the courtroom immediately after the verdict was read.
She noted that the case was “very circumstantial,” but it was nothing prosecutors couldn’t overcome.
“It’s hard, for sure, but jurors did a great job,” Miller said, praising the six men and four women jury panel. “It is a stressful time waiting for a verdict.
Clements had little reaction as the verdicts were read.
True crime buffs Paula Geier and retired police officer Cecilia Ruder spent several days attending Clements’ trial. It’s nothing out of the ordinary for Ruder who would skip class to head to court. Covering a trial like Clements’ was something she said she wanted to do when she retired.
“My heart was pounding so bad,” she said.
Clements is a convicted sex offender with a long criminal record.
He already is serving a life sentence in the separate killing of another Tucson girl, 13-year-old Maribel Gonzalez. She disappeared in June 2014 while walking to a friend’s house.
Celis was taken from her midtown home about five years before her body was found in the desert northwest of Tucson.
Clements told authorities where to find the body, hoping for a break in an unrelated burglary case, the Star has previously reported. At the time Clements told authorities he knew the location of the body but had nothing to do with killing the girl. The body of Gonzalez had been found in the same desert area days after she disappeared.
Clements was charged in 2018 with the separate kidnappings and killings of Isabel Celis in April 2012 and of Maribel Gonzalez in June 2014.
He was convicted in September 2022 in the Gonzalez slaying and was sentenced to natural life in prison for first-degree murder plus another consecutive 17 years in prison for kidnapping.
After the mistrial in the Celis case, jurors who spoke with the Arizona Daily Star said they had no doubt about Clements’ guilt and felt they let the Celis family down by their inability to convict.
Jurors in the first trial blamed a single juror for their failure to reach a verdict.
Among the evidence linking Clements to the Celis disappearance: His cellphone was near the Celis house in the early morning hours the day she was reported missing. Hours later, when he told police he’d been at home asleep, Clement’s phone pinged off towers in the area where her remains were later found, the Star has previously reported.
Attorneys will have a pre-sentencing hearing in late March, with sentencing to follow.
