Petah Tikva court refuses to drop charges against Marie Pizem

Petah Tikva court refuse

By ABE SELIG
The Petah Tikva District Court on Monday decided not to drop charges against Marie Pizem for the murder of her daughter, four-year-old Rose, whose body was found stuffed into a suitcase in the Yarkon River in November 2008. Earlier on Monday, Pizem's lawyers, Revital Sweid and Merav Greenberg, had urged the court to drop the charges against their client, saying the state hadn't proved Marie was an accomplice in the crime. "The prosecution failed to fill in all of the holes in the indictment," Sweid said during the hearing. "I don't recall such a bare and lacking indictment ever being presented to the court before." "Whatever happened is known only to the defendants," she continued. "And as long as we are deprived of prophetic abilities, we will never know what really happened." The prosecution however, maintained that the evidence against Pizem implicated her as an accomplice, at the very least for persuading Ronnie Ron - Rose's grandfather and the chief suspect in the case - to carry out the murder. According to prosecutors Anna Avidov and Keren Wexler, the idea to do away with Rose came from the mother, who said in her police testimony that she did not want Rose in the house she shared with Ron, saying she couldn't "stand seeing her around." Several letters written by Pizem to Ron and presented in court revealed that she threatened to kill herself if Rose continued to be a part of the new family. Marie also wrote that Rose was "killing my happiness." But Sweid maintained that Marie was referring to the possibility of transferring Rose to the custody of her maternal grandmother in France, and not to murdering her. Rose's biological father, Ron's son, also lives in France. The court decided that the proceedings against Pizem, and against Ron, would continue unchanged. When Ron took the stand, he told the court that he understood he had given Rose "one slap too many," and that he had hit her because she was "going wild" in his car. He also said that immediately after hitting her, he thought Rose was still alive but was curled up quietly in the back seat. It was only later that he noticed she was dead. When asked how he was sure the girl was no longer alive, Ron told the court, "I was in the army and have seen movies." Ron said he then panicked and threw the body in the Yarkon River. A proposition by Ron's lawyers under which he would admit to murdering the child and be sent to jail, and Marie would be acquitted of homicide, has been discussed with the prosecution, but never came to fruition as a deal presented to the court. Ronnie Ron and Marie Pizem were arrested in August 2008 after Ron's mother reported to social services that the child had disappeared. After months of searching, Rose's body was found in the river. Ron has defended Pizem since the day of his arrest, claiming that she knew nothing of the child's disappearance and thought that Rose was attending boarding school in France. Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.