Suspect in Tucson child's slaying washed car the day she disappeared

The man accused of kidnapping and killing 6-year-old Isabel Celis spent more than $100 cleaning his car the day she was discovered missing from her bedroom, bank records show.

The next day, Christopher Clements made a purchase at a restaurant near the Celis house that Tucson police were using as a command post for their search for Isabel.

Isabel was last seen on April 20, 2012. Her fate was a mystery, and Clements wasn’t identified as a suspect until March 2017, when he led authorities to her remains in exchange for the dropping of unrelated charges and his car being released from impound.

Detective Jeff Lockwood testified Thursday at Clements’ trial about activity he found in Clements’ bank statements from 2012, and telephone records from 2011, which included calls from Clements’ phones to the Celis house, although family members have testified they did not know him.

The bank records showed the $110 charge to Simoniz carwash and the purchase at Five Guys burgers in the area of East Broadway and North Craycroft Road. In the days after Isabel’s disappearance, police used the restaurant’s parking lot to set up their mobile command post for the search.

While Clements was a frequent visitor of Simoniz, according to his bank records, his typical purchase amount was $15-$25, Lockwood said.

Clements’ defense attorney, Eric Kessler, asked Lockwood if he knew that Clements told detectives during a 2012 interview that he was self-employed buying and selling cars. Clements told police he’d driven to Phoenix to purchase a car on April 19 and spent the day on April 21 trying to sell the car.

Police conducted that routine interview while canvassing homes in the neighborhoods around the Celis home for witnesses and information about the missing child, long before Clements became a suspect.

While Department of Motor Vehicle records showed Clements had five cars registered to his name between January and April 2012, Lockwood said, there were no additional charges at the carwash of more than $100.

On May 18, 2012 — 10 days after police interviewed Clements — he spent nearly $900 on a plane ticket to Hawaii, Lockwood said. His bank accounts showed activity in Hawaii from May 20 through 24, with purchases in Tucson resuming on May 25.

Six months before Isabel’s disappearance, in October and November 2011, two phone numbers linked to Clements called the Celis’ landline, Lockwood said.

On Oct. 23, 2011, one of Clements’ phones made three calls to the Celis house between 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., each lasting less than a few seconds. The next day, there were two more phone calls also lasting less than a few seconds.

A month later, on Nov. 28, 2011, another phone belonging to Clements called the Celis house, and the call disconnected immediately after it was answered. Lockwood said a zero-second phone call like that would indicate the line was busy or that one of the parties immediately hung up.

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Kessler asked Lockwood if the short length of the calls indicated no conversations took place, and reminded him that call logs don’t specify which person made the call.

Kessler also said that in 2012, the Celis family had a nonworking Acura parked on the side of the house. He asked Lockwood if he knew that two of Clements’ ex-girlfriends told police he used to drive around town and look for Hondas and Acuras to buy.

Ex-neighbor; FBI agent testify

Thursday’s testimony opened with a witness for the defense, who was called out of order due to scheduling issues. The state has not rested its case.

Jill Sena, a former neighbor of the Celis family, told jurors her daughter and Isabel played together a few times. She said the morning Isabel was found to be missing, she encountered Isabel’s father, Sergio Celis.

“I saw him on the street riding a bike,” Sena said. “Slowly.”

Sergio Celis told jurors last week that he chose to search for Isabel by bike instead of car because he could cover more ground that way and wouldn’t be limited to the roadway.

The state’s case resumed with testimony from FBI agent Tony Taylor, who described a call that came into the bureau’s public assistance line on Feb. 10, 2017, saying “a person at the Pima County jail named Christopher Clements had information on the missing Isabel Celis.”

Taylor said that when FBI agents went to visit Clements in jail, he was expecting them. The agents opened the conversation with “You know why we’re here,” he said.

On March 2, they made a deal with Clements to drop the unrelated charges for which he was being detained and to release his car from impound. After the deal was made, they were handed a document with the words “Avera Valley and Trico Road” written on the back, Taylor said.

The next day, Taylor and others went with Clements to a desert area near Avra Valley and Trico Roads, where Clements told them to look for a large tree with dense brush underneath.

After a few wrong turns, Clements pointed to a tree line he said looked familiar. A short time later, authorities found partial skull bones, later identified as belonging to Isabel.

The trial is scheduled to resume Friday at 10:30 a.m. in Pima County Superior Court.