Police: Likelihood that this is Rose's body is very high

After a month of searches for the body of 4-year-old Rose Pizem, who went missing four months ago, a suitcase with a girl's body in it was pulled out of the Yarkon River Thursday.

The suitcase was found some 400 meters from the spot where the chief suspect in the murder - Pizem's grandfather, Ronny Ron - said he had thrown it into the river.

"The divers trawling the river for the past weeks found a suitcase with human remains and other articles," said Nissim Mor, commander of the police's Central District. "The likelihood that this is Rose's body is very high, but we must wait for verification via an autopsy at the Institute of Forensic Medicine."

However, the Ramle Magistrate's Court delayed the autopsy Thursday, in response to a petition by the missing child's mother and grandfather. Attorney Revital Swid, acting for Marie-Charlotte Renault and Ron, said the petition was intended to prevent the autopsy until a member of their legal team could be present.

Just before noon Thursday, divers hired by the police announced that they had located a suitcase that matched the description of the one into which Ron said he had placed Rose's body before tossing it into the Yarkon. The divers have been combing the river daily, focusing on the area under the bridge near the Dekel country club in Tel Aviv's Bavli neighborhood.

"One of our divers encountered a duffel bag that looked like what we were looking for," explained a member of the diving team. And when the divers opened the bag, they found a skull and remnants of clothes.

The suitcase was immediately taken out of the river, and the police officers who were running the investigation were called. Even Police Commissioner David Cohen hurried to the site, followed by Pubic Security Minister Avi Dichter.

A forensic police team also examined the body and verified that the remains were indeed those of a young girl. Some two hours after it was found, the bag was taken to the forensic medicine institute at Abu Kabir.

Police also went to the house of Rose's great-grandmother in Netanya to inform her of the development. The woman, Vivien Yaakov, was the first to have reported Rose's absence. In addition, they contacted the Paris police, who informed Rose's biological father.

Cohen, the police commissioner, said that indicting Ron and Renault is not a top priority at the moment. He stressed that the police need to proceed with caution in the investigation, which he described as complex.

Police detectives questioned Ron and Renault again Thursday afternoon and told them, separately, that the child's body had been found. Ron - who had previously said "she's not in the river, look for her alive" - reacted with indifference and shrugged. Renault wept without saying a word.

Ron, who is Rose's paternal grandfather and also her mother's live-in lover, is suspected of having murdered his granddaughter in May and dumped a red suitcase containing her body into the Yarkon River. He initially confessed to the murder, but later retracted his confession on the grounds that it had been extracted under duress.