Last update - 00:00 27/12/2006
Investigators: Announcement Katzrin murder had been solved was premature
By Eli Ashkenazi and Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondents
Sources close to the investigation of the murder of Tair Rada said Tuesday that the announcement last week that the murder had been solved was premature.
"It was a mistake ... They should have waited with the press conference and the decisive statements at least until they had support for the initial findings from the murder scene," the sources said.
According to these sources, the investigators are certain that the suspect, Roman Zadorov, is the murderer, based on his confession and his re-enactment of the murder. The sources say that even if the murder weapon or DNA evidence are not found, the case against him is solid. "The suspect's testimony was extraordinary," the sources said. "Only someone who committed the murder could have described things as he did. He knew details about the way the murder was committed, the way the girl had been stabbed and the exact position in which her body was found."
Rada's body was found on December 6 in a bathroom stall in her high school in the Golan Heights town of Katzrin. Until his arrest last week Zadorov worked at the school doing renovations.
Police officials emphasized Tuesday that the material sent to the U.S. for forensics testing was not DNA samples but would not elaborate on its nature.
Despite the lack of physical evidence to support their case against Zadorov, detectives are focusing on him and are not pursuing other leads. They rejected claims expressed in the media in the past few days, according to which Rada must have been murdered by other students because there were signs of strong resistance. According to the sources mentioned above, there is no evidence that Rada resisted the attack or that the perpetrators were children.
Police officials noted Tuesday that the shoes worn by the perpetrator during the murder had not been found. They admitted that even if Zadorov's footprints were found at the scene, that would not be sufficient to tie him to the murder since he may have had a legitimate reason for going into the bathroom where the murder took place.
Detectives questioned Zadorov's father-in-law on Tuesday, apparently in connection to the fact that he and Zadorov had bought identical work boots together - the same boots the suspect wore on the day of the murder. It is not known whether evidence connecting Zadorov to the murder scene, or signs of recent and suspicious cleaning, was found on his shoes.
The shoes are one of many unanswered questions related to Zadorov's arrest and subsequent confession, now repudiated.
On the day of her murder, Rada is known to have gone into the school alone not long after 1 P.M., after sitting outside with a friend during a break, to drink some water. Her body was found that night in the second-story bathroom.
During the break, Zadorov was waiting in the school parking lot for the contractor who hired him to lay tiles in the school's bomb shelters. He had been on the tiling job for two weeks. The contractor arrived at 1 P.M. and delivered materials to Zadorov.
Zadorov claims that he continued working until about 5 P.M. Shortly before leaving he met a janitorial worker and a man who was scheduled to begin working through an employment agency. The three, all new immigrants, began chatting and then decided to take their conversation into the staff room, over a cup of coffee. Three teachers were also in the room.
Zadorov returned to the shelter, changed out of his work clothes, which he left in the shelter, and went home to his wife and their six-week-old baby. He says they did not hear about the murder until the following morning.
Two days later Zadorov returned to the shelter and retrieved his work clothes. He told his attorneys that he threw out the work pants that evening, in front of his family, and that he had told his wife well before that he did not want to keep wearing them because they were too small. The police searched for the pants but did not find them.