After many long weeks and dozens of deliberations, the testimony of Marie Pizem, the mother charged with murdering her four-year-old daughter Rose
together with her partner Ronny Ron, concluded in the Petah Tikva District Court on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, news surfaced during the testimony that Pizem and Ron had filed for a work visa
to the US about a month before the murder. The couple did not include Rose on the application, something that reinforced the prosecution's claim that Rose's murder was premeditated.
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Mother indicted for murder of daughter Rose takes the stand, relates tough childhood with abusive mother, later victimized by husband. Life changed with pregnancy which bore Rose, Pizem says |
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"When Ronny told me that Rose died in an accident, I believed him," Pizem said Wednesday in court. She immediately added, "Today, I'm not sure anymore. He told me so many lies that I don't know anymore. What kind of person is capable of putting a girl in a bag and throwing her into the Yarkon River if he did not want her death?"
During the prosecution's cross-examination, Attorney Anna Avidov confronted Marie with evidence showing that the mother did all in her capacity "to erase" Rose from her life. The prosecution presented discs of family photos that were found in their home with not one picture of Rose on them. Avidov claimed that Marie and Ronny hid the pictures of Rose.
In addition, Pizem's work visa applications showed that the mother answered that she only had two children in response to the question "How many children do you have?" Pizem said that the couple never really planned to leave Israel and that the application "was just another one of Ronny's projects."
The prosecution claims that this evidence proves that Marie and Ronny planned to murder Rose. However, Marie claimed that she never wanted to move to the US and that she was speaking with her former mother-in-law Betty during that time in order to return Rose to France to live with her.
Pizem's defense lawyers presented the court with many picture albums full of pictures of Rose taken throughout her childhood, and said that the prosecution's claims are absurd.
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