'Capable of many things.' Roni Ron
Photo: Roi Gazit
Banged her head against the wall. Rose
Photo: Israel Police
Father of missing 4-year-old: There's still hope
Benjamin Pizem says allegations that he beat Rose 'absurd', says estranged father's 'manipulative nature' gives hope his daughter is still alive. Police investigators say Rose suffered range of emotional, developmental problems as a result of maltreatment by dysfunctional adults
Details emerging in the case of a missing French girl believed to have been killed by her grandfather painted a harrowing picture Wednesday of a lonely, confused and maltreated child surrounded by generations of dysfunctional adults.
Feared Dead
Avi Cohen
Dozens of police officers take part in search for four-year-old Rose Ron, believed to have been murdered by her grandfather. Divers look for her body in Yarkon River, while search crews also dispatched to Netanya, where grandfather said he beat her to death
Investigators, neighbors and social workers say 4-year-old Rose Pizem was bounced back and forth between her father in France and her mother in Israel and allegedly abused or neglected by both.
Central characters in the dark drama are a young French mother and her estranged husband's father, who usurped his son's place in the woman's life and fathered two more daughters with her, becoming Rose's stepfather as well as her grandfather.
The police have not published their full names but officers, speaking on condition of anonymity due to court-imposed reporting restrictions, identified the man as 45-year-old Roni Ron and the woman as Marie-Charlotte Renault-Pizem, 23.
Both are in police custody and Ron's mother Vivienne Yaakov is under house arrest.
According to the police and social workers, Yaakov was the first to raise the alarm over Rose, although detectives suspect she may know more than she has told them so far about the case that is dominating Israeli headlines. She wrote to social services on July 22, saying she had not seen her great grandchild since May and feared for her well-being. Police searched Ron's home three weeks later and, finding no trace of Rose, arrested him.
Ron at first told investigators he killed Rose by accident by striking her in a fit of rage, then dumping her body in a river. Then he switched stories a number of times, saying that he had trafficked her to Palestinians, sent her to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish boarding school and arranged for her to go abroad. He then reverted to his original version.
On Wednesday police divers and tracker dogs had still not found the body where the suspect says he put it. Ron says Renault-Pizem was unaware of the killing and accepted his story that he had sent the girl off to an institution in France.
Police are skeptical, saying that when she heard police were searching for Rose she asked a family friend to bring to the house a girl of similar age and size she could pass off as her own.
'It's a completely absurd story'
Police investigators said Rose suffered a range of emotional and developmental problems. They said she had difficulty speaking, wasn't toilet trained and often banged her head against the wall.
Parents of playmates described her as melancholy and appearing to be unwell.
Investigators say Marie-Charlotte Renault met Benjamin Pizem, Ron's estranged son, in Paris when they were both still in their teens.
Rose was born there in 2003 and the following year the couple got married and visited Israel to explore Benjamin's roots and get to know his father.
The trip did not turn out as planned. The young bride and the amorous grandfather fell for one another and in 2005 Benjamin went back to France in disgust, taking Rose with him.
In an interview Wednesday in Paris with Associated Press Television News, the father, Benjamin Pizem, said he had not heard from Rose since 2007 because his mother and stepfather "changed addresses, changed telephone numbers and I never could find them."
But later, the mother told Israeli police, she heard that Rose had been in a French hospital after being abused by Benjamin. She said she went home to fight - and win - a court battle for custody of the child. Benjamin denied that the girl was hospitalized because he beat her. "It's a completely absurd story," he said, countering that she needed treatment because she did not speak and was not toilet trained.
Renault-Pizem returned to Israel with Rose, setting up house with Ron and the two daughters she bore him, now around one and two years old. Israeli media reported the couple were unable to cope with Rose's behavioral problems, and ended up leaving her in the care of Ron's mother Vivienne, who eventually insisted that a better solution be found.
The great grandmother was quoted as saying Ron picked up the girl after that protest, and that she never saw Rose again.
The father had harsh words for his ex-wife, charging that he abandoned her daughter. "I think that if a mother is capable of abandoning her daughter, she's capable of many things," he said.
He said that his father, Ron, the stepfather, was manipulative, and he held out hope for the girl." "I know he's capable of stealing the wife of his son," Benjamin said.
"From that, I think that he's capable of many things. When I see him in videos, I see in his face, even if it's quite a neutral one, he has an expression that says 'you don't know everything, and I'm manipulating all of you.' That's the reason why we think there's some hope Rose is still alive."
