Frustrated police take Rose's mother to watch search

In another attempt to "break" Marie-Charlotte Renault, the mother of missing 4-year-old Rose Pizem, and obtain information about the case that investigators suspect she is concealing from them, detectives on Wednesday employed the tactic of bringing her to one of the search locations.

Close to noon investigators brought Renault to the area of Tel Baruch Beach, in north Tel Aviv, where she watched as a large number of police officers carried out a painstaking search for her daughter's body in the sand. The search included the use of shovels, as if in an attempt to unearth the body. The investigators observed Renault's reactions carefully.

In particular, they sought to break her refusal to implicate her live-in boyfriend, Ronny Ron, who is also her former father-in-law and thus her daughter's grandfather. The detectives are doing everything in their power to get Rose's mother to request a meeting with Ron so as to get him to reveal where he buried the girl, so far with no success. The hope was that watching police officers with shovels searching for her daughter's body would get her to change her tune under interrogation. During Wednesday's outing at Tel Baruch, however, Renault was observed smiling and did not cry, tremble or otherwise demonstrate signs of weakness as she has when captured by press photographers during her arraignments.

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 actualy 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."