Jury deliberations begin in child murder trial

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — It shook Tucson when someone took 6-year-old Isabel Celis from her family home in 2012. We didn't know if she was dead or alive until her bones were recovered five years later.

Is Christopher Clements guilty of kidnapping and killing Celis? The jury began working to answer that question since mid-afternoon Tuesday, following closing arguments.

This is the second time a jury’s tried to decide Clements' guilt or innocence. Last year a jury deadlocked, the judge declared a mistrial and the course was set for the trial today. Before deliberations started, each side had its last chance to persuade the jurors.

There’s no firm scientific evidence, like fingerprints or DNA, to link Clements to the disappearance and death of Isabel Celis. That leaves circumstantial evidence which asks jurors to decide whether a string of circumstances weaves together in a way that convinces them that Clements is wither guilty or innocent.

Judge James Marner told jurors circumstantial evidence can be just as valid, and can carry the same weight as any other evidence.

Prosecutor Tracy Miller told jurors an iPad with a secret folder of young girls in seductive poses showed Clements had a fixation on girls the same age as Isabel Celis—and said it showed Clements has searched for the term "Isabel Celis sexy”.

She said he had made a series of phone calls to the Celis house, supposedly because Clements wanted to buy, restore and sell a car parked outside the family house.

Miller said cellphone tracking put Clements near the Celis house days before the girl’s disappearance, and on the morning after the disappearance put his cellphone in at least the general area where the girl’s body was recovered years later.

It was Clements himself who led detectives to the remains five years after her disappearance. He made a deal to get a burglary charge dropped, but said he only knew the location and had nothing to do with the death.

Clements' attorney Eric Kessler dismissed the iPad full of little girls' photos as no more than an effort to paint Clements as a creep.

He told the jury it’s hard to believe anyone could get the girl out of the house undetected without someone on the inside helping. Throughout the trial he suggested Isabel’s father Sergio was involved somehow, and said Isabel’s mother Becky was inconsistent in what she told detectives right after the disappearance, and five years later after the remains were confirmed.

But in her chance to challenge Kessler’s comments, Prosecutor Tracy Miller outlined a long list of circumstances, from knowing the body’s location, to the iPad full of pictures, to Clements changing his cell phone number the day after the disappearance as enough to find Clements guilty.