Maoz lawyers: Prison Service 'lost' threatening note

Daniel Maoz, accused of murdering parents, claims he received a threatening note while incarcerated in October.

By MELANIE LIDMAN
Daniel Maoz at J'lem District Court 150 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Daniel Maoz at J'lem District Court 150
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Daniel Maoz, accused of murdering his parents in August of last year, kept one more firecracker up his sleeve for the defense’s closing arguments at the Jerusalem District Court on Monday: a note that threatened his siblings if he revealed his parents’ true murderer, which was mysteriously “lost” during the police investigation.
Maoz claimed that the note was slipped into his cell in October, a few weeks after he was arrested for stabbing his parents, Noah and Nurit Moaz, to death on August 14. He said he showed the note to prison wards, but they assumed Maoz had written a fake note and threw it away.
On Monday, defense lawyer David Barhoom accused the Prisons Service of “an incredible act of destruction of evidence,” because it is impossible to discern whether or not Moaz wrote the note.
Outside the courtroom, Maoz’s lawyer Erez Ben-Zvi said that a third party recently alerted them to the presence of the note, which was not mentioned in the investigative materials. Ben-Zvi added that the note described who had carried out the murders and threatened Maoz’s siblings if he told the truth.
The judges largely dismissed the possibility of the threatening note, because it contradicts Maoz’s own testimony that his twin, Nir Maoz, carried out the murders. Daniel and Nir share identical DNA, which was found at the site of the murders.
Still, Barhoom insisted the note was important because it casts doubt on Daniel Maoz’s role in the murders.
For the first time, none of the Maoz siblings attended the hearing. The Noga Legal Center for the Rights of Crime Victims, which is assisting the Maoz family during the trial, said the family “felt that [Daniel Maoz] was torturing them mercilessly without end.”
Spokeswoman Vered Luvitch added that the family thought that Daniel Maoz “overdid it with his lies.”
On Monday, Maoz began a week of psychiatric testing at the request of the judges. In state prosecutor Yuval Kaplinsky’s closing arguments on June 10, he focused on Maoz’s rapidly evolving versions of the events during police investigations, in which he first claimed to have been in Tel Aviv during the murders, then admitted he had been in Jerusalem, then admitted he had been at home during the murders but didn’t know the murderer’s identity, and then accused his twin of the murder. Kaplinsky questioned Maoz’s mental health and suggested possible schizophrenic tendencies.
Despite the gory nature of the crimes, Maoz’s mental health was never discussed as an issue during the lengthy court proceedings, and he appeared calm and collected while testifying over the past few months.
A ruling in the case is expected in the fall.