Clements said he was alone hours the night Isabel Celis disappeared

The man accused of kidnapping and killing Isabel Celis spent several hours alone the night of her disappearance, he told police in an interview weeks after she went missing.

Pima County prosecutors played jurors a recording of a police interview with Christopher M. Clements, 41, who is on trial in the case. Isabel was discovered missing from her Tucson bedroom on April 21, 2012, but her fate wasn’t known until 2017 when Clements led authorities to her remains in a desert area, in exchange for the dropping of unrelated charges.

Detective Ana Egurrola was one of the two detectives to interview Clements on May 10, 2012, as part of a widespread search for witnesses or information in the 6-year-old child’s disappearance.

Clements spoke casually with police during the interview, saying he’d gone to meet a friends at a northwest-side Hooters, near Ina Road and Interstate 10, the night in question.

He told them he remembered the details “because that was a really crazy night,” recounting that after the group was done at Hooters, they went to the neighboring bowling alley, where they stayed until it closed at around 12:30 a.m.

Clements said that on his way home, he got a call from a friend asking him to pick her up and take her somewhere. He told police that when he arrived at her house, she didn’t answer his calls, so he returned home.

He was there for not even an hour before she called back, sometime between 2 and 3 a.m., at which time he drove back to the southwest-side apartment complex, picked her up and drove her to her home, he said.

Isabel’s family members previously testified that the family had returned home late from a baseball game on the night she went missing, with Isabel going to bed sometime between 10:30 and 11:30 p.m. She was discovered missing around 8 a.m. when her father, Sergio Celis, went to get her ready for her softball game. Family members found her window ajar and the screen popped out.

Computer, phone, DNA evidence

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Jurors also heard Wednesday from the mothers of two girls whose candid photographs were found by investigators in a My Secret Apps folder on Clements’ iPads. The women both said they didn’t know about the photos until Tucson police came to talk to them in 2021 and showed them the pictures taken in 2013. Both women said they had never met Clements and couldn’t imagine why he had photos of their children.

FBI agent Patrick Cullen, a digital forensic examiner, told the jury about discoveries he made on Clements’ cell phone, including searches in January 2016 for “Isabel Celis sexy,” “Isabel Celis update” and “Isabel was not kidnapped.”

Cullen said he also discovered two web pages that had been viewed on Clements’ phone. One was related to young Chilean girls and the other was called, “Little girls make your body feel like a party.”

Cullen said he only reviewed a digital image of Clements’ phone and not the call detail records maintained by the providers.

Tucson police crime lab superintendent Jelena Myers testified about DNA analyzed in the case, including a few bloodstains found on the floor of Isabel’s bedroom the morning she went missing. The blood DNA matched Isabel’s, Myers said, but the lab was unable to match DNA samples collected from her windowsill, saying there wasn’t enough material to develop a profile.

No DNA matching Clements’ was found at the Celis home, Myers said.

Clements’ attorney, Eric Kessler, asked Myers if wearing gloves guaranteed a person would leave no DNA at the scene. Myers said there’s still the potential for DNA to be left behind. Jurors asked if the lab had been able to match DNA found on Isabel’s bedsheets to anyone, and Myers said DNA from the sheets showed all of Isabel’s immediate family members could have been contributors.

The trial is scheduled to last through May 9 in Pima County Superior Court.