TUCSON, Ariz (KGUN) — The attorney for the man charged with kidnapping and killing 6-year-old Isabel Celis is trying to pin the crime on the little girl’s own father.
Prosecutors made Sergio Celis their first witness. And their first big question was an odd question for prosecutors to ask someone who is a witness, not someone on trial. Prosecutor Tracy Miller asked Celis if he had anything to do with his daughter’s disappearance and death, ”He said, ‘Absolutely not”.
In opening statements, prosecutor Tracy Miller called the case an unbelievable nightmare… a six year old girl kidnapped from her own house with only her bones recovered many years later.
She told jurors Christopher Clements cut a deal with the FBI to take agents to Celis remains if they’d arrange to get unrelated charges against him dropped.
Clements did not say how he knew the location but when Tucson Police detectives looked at his cell phone they found it was in the area where the girls body was found soon after she disappeared from her house. Miller says Police also found sexual pictures of young girls on Clements electronic devices and Clements instructed a girlfriend to dig up a package in their yard—she says that package included a note with Isabel Celis name.
But Clements defense attorney Eric Kessler tried to convince jurors the culprit was really Isabel’s father Sergio. He says Sergio was surprisingly calm the day of the disappearance, and that no one could have silently spirited a forty pound girl out of the house without someone on the inside opening a gate to a high wall around the home.
Kessler said there is evidence at the time of the disappearance the family needed money.
Clements attorney said he knows he can not put Sergio Celis on trial but he does hope to give jurors the sort of reasonable doubt that will compel them to find Christopher Clements not guilty.
Jurors are not allowed to hear testimony of Clements conviction in another child murder case. In November he was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the kidnapping and killed of 13 year old Maribel Gonzalez. Her body was found in the same area where Isabel Celis remains were discovered.
Sergio Celis was criticized right after his daughter disappeared for seeming too calm as he called 911. He said he was trying to keep it together and give police the best information he could.
The trial resumes Wednesday with Clements defense team continuing cross examination of Sergio Celis
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