Says his testimony was extracted under duress; Police unveil testimonies of babysitter, family friends.
By YAAKOV LAPPINlittle rose 248.88(photo credit: Israel Police)
In the latest in a series of contradictory statements, the man who told police he killed his granddaughter Rose Pizem and threw her body in the Yarkon river has now denied killing the girl.
"This is a lie. I did not kill any girl. The last time I saw her, she was alive," Ronnie Ron, Rose's grandfather and foster father, told journalists before entering a Ramle court, where his custody was extended by ten days.
Ron claimed police had forced him to confess that he killed Rose in a violent rage three months ago. He has given police several contradictory accounts, first telling detectives that he had sent the girl away to a religious boarding school, before confessing to killing her. Police view him as a highly unreliable and unstable source of information, but he remains the chief suspect in what police say is a near-certain killing.
During the custody hearing, police unveiled testimony by a babysitter Ron and Marie Pizem hired to look after the couple's younger two children. The babysitter said the couple had returned home at a late hour, acting strangely before changing clothes.
At an earlier custody hearing, a police representative said suspicions existed that Rose's mother was in the car at the time of her daughter's killing. The babysitter's testimony appears to form one basis for that suspicion.
A letter written by Marie to Ron was also revealed in court, in which she had written, "I am [in] shock over what happened to Rose. I'm a bad mother."
The letter appears to further support the police's suspicions that Marie was involved in the slaying of her daughter.
Police continued to search for Rose's body in the Yarkon river in north Tel Aviv on Tuesday.
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