'Post' learns diving company that found body hired only last week after top cops begged for help.
By YAAKOV LAPPINRonnie Ron and rose 224.88(photo credit: Channel 10)
After almost three weeks of grueling searches, divers Thursday finally found the body of four-year-old Rose Pizem in a piece of soft red luggage on the bottom of the Yarkon River.
It could have all ended much earlier, however, because the professional diving company that found the body was contracted to lead the underwater searches only last week, after lengthy wrangling with police over the cost of the work, the company's CEO told The Jerusalem Post.
During the first three weeks of searches in the Yarkon, police relied heavily on volunteer divers, as negotiations between the Haifa-based Gal Yam diving company and police stalled.
Gal Yam's CEO, Ilan Nixon, said that despite the best intentions and skills of the volunteer divers, a great deal of confusion and disorder marked the searches.
After a bitter internal debate, police decided not to hire Gal Yam due to the proposed price tag.
"You have to understand, to have the boats, the right equipment, diving suits that are immune to polluted waters, navy-qualified divers, and to transport all of this from Haifa to Tel Aviv costs money. We were prepared to volunteer for a few days, but we could not sustain weeks of operation there on a volunteer basis [as the police wanted]," Nixon said.
After getting nowhere with the volunteer-based diving force, on the evening of August 31, a senior police officer turned to Nixon with a desperate request.
"We were at a joint conference, and he asked me to send my divers into the Yarkon," Nixon said, adding that the policeman cited the immense pressure he faced to locate Rose's body.
Gal Yam agreed to begin work at a reduced price.
"This is no longer about money, it's about finding Rose," Nixon said.
On September 1, Gal Yam's divers went into action. By the end of the day, police had banished the volunteers and insisted that Gal Yam search the waters alone, Nixon said.
"We scanned every centimeter of the river. We found shoes, dolls, cellphones. If the suitcase was in the river, we were going to find it," Nixon said.
He added that he believed Ronnie Ron, Rose's grandfather, who had confessed to killing the girl, tried to retract his confession on Tuesday because "someone told him we were getting close to the body."
Revital Swid, lawyer for Ron and Rose's mother, Marie-Charlotte Pizem, rejected that allegation.
"Don't give Ron that much power. He doesn't communicate with anyone while in custody and he did not know where the searches were," she said.
A police spokesman said some divers had been paid for their work from the moment the searches began. He denied police had stalled an agreement with Gal Yam due to the money issue.
As the body lay in the L. Greenberg Institute for Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir, a Ramle court approved Swid's request that a private pathologist hired by Ron and Pizem monitor the autopsy.
"The court has accepted our request," Swid told the Post.
The autopsy is expected to play a key role in the future trial of Ron, who will likely claim he accidentally killed the girl in a fit of rage, while police will seek to prove that the killing was premeditated, and that Marie-Charlotte played an active role.
"Now we wait for an indictment," Swid said.
The body was found hundreds of meters from where Ron told police to search. After being confronted with news of the discovery, he reportedly was slow to react, saying it proved he had told the truth. Marie-Charlotte was said to have cried upon hearing the news.
"This is a big relief for the police," Central District police chief Cmdr. Nissim Moor said. "We understood that Ron is a complex individual who told different things to different people. We stuck to the places where we thought we needed to look."
"The Yarkon was our central search target," said Dept-Cmdr. Avi Noiman, commander of the district's Central Unit. He added that a "very difficult stench" left little room for doubt as to what the red bag contained.
Tzafrir Sade, a lead diver for Gal Yam , said he preferred not to discuss what he saw inside the bag.
"It's not pleasant," he said. "We scanned the river, ruling out section after section. We always hoped to find it. This has turned into a national craze. I wanted to end it. I was almost sure we would find it."
Betty Sghaier, Rose's paternal grandmother, said, "I want her body brought to France for burial. I want her body repatriated. She has nothing to do over there, I will do everything to have the burial in France."
Describing Ron and Marie, Sghaier said, "They are monsters, assassins, they have no heart. I want Ronnie and Marie-Charlotte punished, let them rot in jail. They have destroyed Rose's life. They don't deserve the death penalty, they must pay."
AP contributed to this report.
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