Court delays autopsy of body found in Yarkon River

A Ramle Magistrates Court on Thursday accepted a petition issued by an attorney for the mother and grandfather of a missing four-year-old girl, who sought to delay an autopsy on a body found in a Tel Aviv river earlier in the day.

Representing Marie-Charlotte Renault and Ronny Ron, Revital Swaid said the petition was made to prevent the autopsy from going ahead until a representative of Ron and Pizem's legal team could be present.

Swaid said she hopes the representative will be able to ensure that the autopsy team will take steps to determine whether or not the cause of death was murder or accidental in nature.

Ron is suspected of murdering his granddaughter in May and dumping a red suitcase containing her body into the Yarkon River. Divers have repeatedly searched the river for the suitcase for the past six weeks. Ron, who Rose's paternal grandfather and also her mother's live-in lover, initially confessed to the murder but later retracted his confession on the grounds that it had been extracted under duress.

Police divers on Thursday found a red suitcase in the Yarkon River believed to contain Rose's body.

Just prior to noon on Thursday, divers reported locating a suitcase that matched the description of the one into which Ron said he had placed her body before throwing it into the Yarkon River.

Police commissioner Dudi Cohen said that filing an indictment against Ron and Renault is not a top priority at the moment. Cohen added that the police need to proceed with caution in the investigation, which he described as complex.

Police spokesperson Mickey Rosenfeld said bones were discovered inside the suitcase. He said the remains are being taken to a lab for identification.

The contents of the suitcase cannot be determined conclusively, as forensic analysts have yet to arrive on the scene. However, initial indications suggest that investigators have indeed found Pizem's remains.

Police and volunteers had been searching the river and areas surrounding Netanya for weeks in search of the girl's body. Ron had confessed to killing the little girl and throwing the suitcase containing her remains into the river, but on Tuesday recanted his confession.

Renault is also in police custody.

Police on Wednesday continued their search in the northern Tel Aviv areas of Glilot, the Reading Power Station and the Yarkon River, in addition to Tel Baruch.

Detectives working the case dismissed Ron's recanting of his confession Tuesday on the grounds that it was coerced. Ron did not leave his cell Wednesday to answer questions about his statements.

"I didn't kill her, the confession was extracted from me under duress. The last time I saw her she was alive," Ron said Tuesday at Ramle Magistrate's Court, where he and Renault were arraigned for an extension of their remand. At the start of the hearing, Ron shouted: "It's all lies and falsehood, it was all under duress!".

Members of the investigation team on Wednesday expressed surprise over statements by Police Commander Uri Weiskopf to the Knesset Interior and Environment Committee Tuesday according to which the police have no evidence that Rose Pizem was actually murdered. The investigators repeated their claim that the evidence exists, and is the basis for the repeated extension of the suspects' remands to custody.

On Wednesday night the Israel Police Spokesman's Office issued a clarification: "Weiskopf stressed at the start of the session that he had no intention of referring to the evidence in the case regarding the disappearance of Rose because it is still an active investigation. However, in mentioning the act of throwing the suitcase into the Yarkon, he noted that up to that very moment the police did not have findings or proof that it actually took place - and his statements referred solely to the action of throwing the suitcase and not to Rose's murder."

	Rose's mother, Marie-Charlotte Renault, with investigators near Tel Baruch beach on Wednesday. (Channel 2)