Last update - 00:00 02/07/2007
Police: Suspected killer of Kaztrin teen retracted second confession
By Eli Ashkenazi, Haaretz Correspondent
Roman Zadorov retracted two separate confessions to the murder of 13-year-old Tair Rada in the girls' bathroom of a school in Katzrin last September, the police officer in charge of the investigation testified in Nazareth District Court on Sunday.
The day after Zadorov confessed to the murder and reconstructed the crime, he retracted his confession, then confessed again, this time offering a sexual motive for the crime, but refused to sign the revised confession.
Superintendent Yoram Azoulay said that in the second confession, Zadorov recounted that when he was 8 years old, a group of girls picked on him and beat him on his buttocks and testicles. Zadorov said that Tair resembled one of those girls and described his desire to hurt her sexually and physically.
Sections of Zadorov's interrogation were screened before the court, along with the murder reconstruction.
According to the interrogation and Azoulay's testimony, Zadorov encountered Rada on the school's indoor staircase with her cursing him as she went up the steps. He followed her up and into a stall in the second-story bathroom. There he pulled out a box cutter and slit her throat.
Ilana Rada, Tair's mother, said she remains unconvinced that Zadorov is the killer. "There are still a lot of contradictions," she said Sunday. "Maybe he was at the scene, but there was somebody else there. He was there and knows things," she said.