The questions that will decide the Zadorov trial

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Zdorov in the retrial

(Photo: Gil Nehushtan )

Question marks In the Zadorov case The number of hearings in the retrial, which began last September, is increasing. In the face of the “unholy trinity” consisting of Roman Zadorov’s confession to the dubber, his confession to the investigators and the reconstruction he made, the inaccuracies and perplexities in the questions that form the core of the retrial increase: “L, when a drop of blood dripped on the footprint found on the toilet, and how blood reached the toilet paper facility in the toilet cubicle next to the cell where she was murdered.

The important question is whether these doubts will be sufficient to provoke a reasonable doubt, which will also neutralize the power of the confessions.

Zadorov’s trial will resume this morning (Sunday) in the Nazareth District Court, after a ten-day break. To date, testimony from prosecution witnesses has been heard, and these sometimes reveal details that were not heard in the first trial. One of the things that stands out so far, is that in many cases there are many details of the investigation that have not been fully investigated – whether due to negligence, due to shortness of time and budget, and if because at that time no importance was attached to them.

Following these shortcomings, it was decided during the last testimony, in the opinion of the judges and the parties, that Police labs will conduct additional tests for various items Seized during the investigation. Among other things, there will be a re-examination of shoe prints that were found at the murder scene and were not inspected 15 years ago. These are the three imprints for which a retrial was decided. These will be tested by means available today, which are much more advanced. An attempt will be made to compare them with the imprints found near the feet of the deceased, and attributed to people from among those who are looking for her or those who treated her body afterwards.

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Shoe prints will be re-checked

(Photo: Sharon Tzur)

Laboratory tests will now also be conducted on Zadorov’s tools, including the Japanese knife he used for his work, the knife sheath, the tool belt and more. In addition, a discussion will be held as to whether it is necessary to examine the hairs found in the arena and which do not contain roots. The judges noted that if it is decided that there is room to conduct the inspection, the state will find the appropriate budget for it. “We will not leave an inverted stone,” clarified the head of the tribunal, Vice President Asher Kola.

If these tests reveal a forensic finding related to rest (DNA remains, for example), or a complete match to the imprints on the floor, this will in fact block the possibility that Zadorov will be acquitted.

Some of the shortcomings raised so far in the investigation serve the defense, and some the prosecution. For example, the lawsuit (which states that the shoe imprint on the toilet belongs to an “anonymous extractor”) is served by evidence that there were people in the school toilet complex who were not allowed to be in it – including, among others, the wife of the doctor who signed Rada’s death certificate. It later emerged that the samples of her and the doctor’s own shoes, Dr. Eran Herzog, were not taken for examination for comparison with shoe prints found in the compound (the shoes of the policemen who were there were also not examined, and only their photographs were sent to laboratories).

It also became clear – and this was raised by the judges – that the shoes of the ZAKA members who evacuated the body were not examined either. Moreover, the volunteers did not testify after the incident.

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Tamar Nissim Shai, Danny Tzarfati and Asher Kola on a panel tour judges at Nofei Golan School

(Photo: Spokeswoman for the Judiciary)

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(Photo: Spokeswoman for the Judiciary)

However, and this is what the judges mentioned – Advocate Cola, Judge Danny Tzarfati and Judge Tamar Nissim-Shai – it is now quite clear that shortly after the body was found, shortly before 19:00 on the day of the murder, and until the mobile lab arrived for forensic identification shortly after 21 : 00, the murder scene was closed. This weakens the possibility that the foreign imprints were minted at this stage. After 21:00, mainly forensic investigators were at the scene.

Entire discussions were devoted to the question of whether the murdered woman’s blood could drip on the heel of the shoe hours after the murder. Some of the witnesses, who first appeared on the witness stand at the retrial, testified that they saw blood stains under her body when she was evacuated. This led the father of the tribunal to remark that if this evidence had been before Judge Meltzer at the hearing of the Supreme Court, it is not certain that he would have held a retrial.

The defense is served by the indecision of some of the key witnesses who have testified so far on behalf of the prosecution, and changed versions they gave in their cross-examination. Thus, for example, the forensic investigator, Major General Shmuel Piamenta, testified that he did not agree with the opinion of the senior from him in the laboratory, regarding the essence of drowning in blood on the wall that separates the second cell, where the murder was committed, from the third cell. The opinion read: “It seems to me that this is a shoe imprint,” but the witness said that he estimated that it was a handprint. Subsequently, this imprint was not properly tested by the Fingerprint Laboratory. This imprint is significant as it is one of the three “foreign imprints” that eventually led to the retrial.

Other evidence revealed that stains, which were defined as suspicious as blood stains, had not been examined by the laboratory. Thus for example two red spots found on the inner lintel in the cell door. These stains are the only ones found in this area, but it is not impossible that these are paint stains. This, according to the defense version, indicates that the cell door was closed – something that contradicts Zadorov’s version at the time of the reconstruction.

The day after she visited the murder scene: an interview with Ilana Rada

(Photo: Assaf Magal, Alex Bortman)

One of the significant meetings took place about a month ago, At the murder scene itself. The judges with the lawyers, the defendant and also Ilana Rada, Tair’s mother, toured the toilets, the shelter where Zadorov worked, and the various areas of the Nofei Golan school that were witnessed, among others, by Tair’s friends. During the tour, the defense attorney, Adv. Yarom Halevi, brought with him a doll of the appropriate height that represented Tair Rada. He proved that unlike the way Zadorov repeated the murder, the killer could have stood behind Rada inside the cell at the time of the murder. Closed at the time of the murder, and that the reconstruction is unreliable, as determined in previous instances.

An example of the uncertainty and doubts raised by the evidence was given by the head of the tribunal during the testimony of the shoe imprint expert, Yaron Schur. In the first trial, the judges unequivocally accepted his version that on the Rada jeans were found salamander-type shoe prints, a rare shoe that was in Zadorov’s possession. The retrial, however, mentioned a survey conducted among the police at the Katzrin station after the murder, in which about 10% of them – people from the Commonwealth of Independent States – confirmed that they also had such shoes, which they brought with them when they immigrated to Israel. “There is a wonderful verdict from Judge Handel of the Judiciary regarding DNA,” said Vice President Cola. “If in Katzrin it can accommodate 150 or 200 people, it’s difficult.”

Eventually the trial will arise and the question arises as to whether the shoe prints found in the toilet cubicle raise a reasonable doubt as to Zadorov’s guilt, and whether this doubt outweighs the strength of the so-called “unholy trinity” – Zadorov’s confession to the informant, his confession to investigators Also so-called “prepared details”.

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During his testimony, Taurus Kola referred to the core of the retrial: Also the confessions. Elsewhere in the same testimony, her voice revealed a tap from what the judges go through that he once defined as “the only one of his generation.” He said: “We are all human beings, we all have a heart. It is unbearable. For all of us.”

It is not inconceivable that if the judges are under the impression that a reasonable doubt as to Zadorov’s guilt cannot be ruled out, they will seek to shorten the proceedings and turn to the state to withdraw the indictment. Two of the judges of the panel, Cola and French, were in the panel that won the three and a half years ago Chen Ayelet from the murder of his mother. In this case, the judges preceded the reading of the verdict, and announced a acquittal near the hearing of the summaries.

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