A forensic expert testified that Maribel Gonzalez may have been suffocated, despite the lack of any signs of physical injury to her body.
Dr. Jennifer Chen was the 11th witness to testify in the stateβs case against Christopher Matthew Clements, a convicted sex offender who is facing kidnapping and first-degree murder charges in 13-year-old Maribelβs 2014 death.
Clements, 40,Β is four days into his trial on charges of kidnapping and murdering Maribel. He faces a second trial in February in connection with the kidnapping and death of 6-year-old Isabel Celis, who went missing from her bedroom in 2012.
Days after Maribel's body was discovered in an Avra Valley desert area on June 6, 2014, a Pima County medical examiner ruled that her cause of death was homicide by unspecified means. This determination was based largely on the circumstances, Chen said Thursday.
The medical examiner who conducted Maribelβs autopsy has since retired, but Chen, a forensic pathologist with the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, reviewed the records and said she agreed with the previous findings.
βThe circumstances are suspicious and show evidence that there was an attempt to conceal the body,β Chen said, adding that Maribel was found without clothing or shoes. βThe body was covered by two tires, and other branches and plant debris was also placed above the tires. (And she was) located in remote desert area that would be very difficult to walk to.β
Chen said that while the cause of death βhomicide by unspecified meansβ is no longer commonly cited and instead is now referred to as an βundeterminedβ cause, that doesnβt change the findings or the circumstances. She also told the jury Thursday that undetermined causes of death are not uncommon, especially in Arizona.
Neither are suffocation deaths without any detectible injuries, according to Chen.
βEspecially in a person this age,β Chen said, adding that when a person is younger, all the structures in their body are more pliable and donβt show injury as easily as if theyβre older or more brittle.
In addition, the muscles in Maribelβs neck showed signs of decomposition, which could obscure any injuries to the area, Chen said, adding that it doesnβt take a substantial injury to cause suffocation.
β(A person can) cause death without actually compressing the airway or breaking any bones in the neck,β Chen said. βA lack of oxygen can occur when the blood vessels are compressed enough to stop blood flow to your brain.β
Chen said the medical examinerβs office was not able to rule out the possibility that Maribel was strangled to death, reiterating that many suffocation deaths have no findings at autopsy.
Defense questions
During his cross examination, Clementsβ defense lawyer, Joseph DiRoberto, questioned Chen whether it was possible Maribel died from a condition called Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood.
But Chen said there was no evidence of that and sheβs never heard of a case of it that occurred under similar circumstances to Maribelβs death.
After consulting briefly with Clements, DiRoberto asked Chen if she had ever heard of a case of a sudden, accidental death where a person who is with the victim then conceals the body in an attempt to avoid getting in trouble or being blamed.
βIβve never had a case where the body was transported to another location,β Chen said.
Chen did say later that if she didn't know the location and details of how the body was discovered, she could not have determined the cause of death to be homicide.
Cell phone evidence
On Friday, cell phone tracking expert Sy RayΒ testified about Clements' movements the night of Maribel's disappearance.
Ray, a former law enforcement officer, now owns ZetX, a company that developed software which compiles cell phone data and uses it to map individual phones' movements.
Using his program, WiFi data and GPS data provided by At&T, Ray said he was able to track the movement of Clements' cell phone on the night of June 3 and morning of June 4, 2014.
Ray used a map overlaid with Clements' cell phone's locations to show jurorsΒ how the phone traveled from his house and around town, then back to his home before it headed north on Interstate 10. From midnight to roughly 2:30 a.m., the phone pinged off cell towers in the Avra Valley area that covered the location where Maribel's body was eventually found.
Ray told jurors that based on the various towers it connected to during that time, he believed "the device was traveling during a good portion of the time."
From there, the phone was turned off for four hours, with no location available until around 6:45 a.m., when it came back onto the network on a tower near Speedway and I-10. Shortly after, Clements' cell phone showed that he had likely returned home.
The timeline provided by Ray's analysis of Clements' phone data lines up with Clements' ex-girlfriend's testimony the day before about his whereabouts on the night of Maribel's disappearance.
DiRoberto questioned the accuracy of Ray's findings, pointing out during cross examination that the cell towers Clements' phone pinged off of in the Avra Valley area could have covered hundreds of square miles of terrain.
While Ray said that was true, he pointed out it was not physically possible for Clements' phone to have "wandered" those hundreds of miles.
'Maybe I have, maybe I haven't'Β
Also on Friday, jurors watched a recording of Clements' nearly hour-long interview with Pima County Sheriff's Detective Miguel Flores, who was assigned to Maribel's case for its entirety.
Flores interviewed Clements on Aug. 15, 2017, after he'd been identified as a suspect while assisting another law enforcement agency on an unrelated investigation.
Earlier that year, Clements led investigators to the area of Avra Valley and Trico Roads, walking them to within a few feet of where Maribel's body had been discovered, and commenting that the area looked familiar. At that time, the location of where Maribel's body was found had not been released to the public.
During the interview, Flores and Clements went back and forth for several minutes about if he knew Maribel or had ever seen her before.
"I donβt know. Maybe I have, maybe I havenβt," Clements said with a chuckle at one point.
Clements repeatedly asked why the detectives were talking to him and how his name was linked to Maribel's case. When detectives asked where he lived and worked at the time of her disappearance, Clements laughed at them, sitting back in his chair.
Eventually, he contended that Maribel's name did sound familiar, saying he pays attention to the news. Detectives pushed forward, asking if they had any reason to investigate him for sexual assault of Maribel.
"I'm not involved with anybody's murder, that's one thing I can say with clarity," Clements said. "I havenβt killed anybody, I havenβt raped anybody, I havenβt done anything of the above. But the kind of questions you're asking me? Iβm not stupid, either. You wouldn't be asking that question unless you had a reason to."
After much back and forth, officers eventually convinced Clements to submit a DNA sample, promising him a cigarette if he complied. They were able to collect the cheek swab without incident.
As the video played in the courtroom, Maribel's mother, Valerie Calonge, kept her eyes trained on the television screen above.
Clements focused intently on the notepad in front of him, scribbling with his pen.
The trial will resume Tuesday in Pima County Superior Court, with Flores' testimony scheduled to continue. The trial is expected to run through the end of the month.
