TUCSON, Ariz (KGUN) — A jury cannot agree on whether Christopher Clements is guilty or innocent in the kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Isabel Celis.
The jurors considered the case for approximately seven hours over two days.
Judge James Marner accepted the jury's assertion it can not come to a unanimous verdict and declared a mistrial.
A mistrial does allow prosecutors to put on a new trial. A decision on that will probably not be made right away.
When Isabel Celis disappeared in 2012 the case drew national attention.
The mystery of how the little girl could be removed from an occupied home undetected made the mystery seem deeper.
Early suspicion fell on Sergio Celis, the girl’s father. People thought he seemed suspiciously calm as he called 911. For a time, Tucson Police pursued Sergio Celis as a suspect but he was never charged and the case turned cold.
Then in 2017, Christopher Clements came forward, and told the FBI he knew where to find the remains of the girl—and he’d share that information in return for getting some unrelated charges dropped.
He led investigators to a remote site north of Tucson, where Avra Valley and Trico roads meet. There, detectives found scattered bones DNA matched to Isabel Celis.
Detectives took a closer look at Clements and found that the day Isabel Celis disappeared, Clements' cell phone had connected to a tower that covered the area where her remains were recovered.
A search of his iPad and computer showed he had searched for terms like, “body found in desert,” “trace evidence on body” and “Isabel Celis sexy."
A locked folder on his iPad also held a large collection of images of young girls in provocative poses.
In the trial, Clements' defense called the photos character assassination unrelated to the case. They rapped the cell phone tracking as unreliable and said it does not make someone a criminal if they know information about a crime, like the location of Isabel Celis' bones.
The Clements defense team worked to trigger doubts about Clements' guilt, largely by raising again the idea that Sergio Celis had a role in the girl’s disappearance.
To try to defuse that effort, prosecutors called Sergio Celis as a witness and asked flat out if he had anything to do with his daughter’s death. He said, “Absolutely not.”
Clements was previously found guilty in November for the kidnapping and killing of 13-year-old Maribel Gonzalez in June 2014.
