Missing Toddler's Body Found in Israel
Mother, grandfather held in 4-year-old Rose Pizem's disappearance.
JERUSALEM, Sept. 11, 2008 — -- A story that has horrified the people of Israel for weeks finally moved toward some closure today.
In the Yakron River, a diver discovered what police are assuming to be 4-year-old Rose Pizem's body stuffed inside a suitcase. Her parents are being held in connection with the child's disappearance.
Paris-born Rose traveled with her parents, Benjamin Pizem and Marie-Charlotte Renault, to Israel in 2004, so that Pizem could meet Ronny Ron, his Israeli father.
The family vacation went awry when Rose's mother announced that she had fallen in love with Ron and would remain in Israel. Neither of the couples ever married.
Pizem then returned to Paris with Rose but had difficulty raising his daughter and periodically gave her to child welfare authorities, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
When Renault and Ron learned that Rose had been hospitalized because of alleged paternal neglect and abuse, the mother and grandfather, who now had two of their own children, began a custody battle for Rose.
The mother-grandfather couple brought Rose to Israel in December when the mother-grandfather couple won custody.
But when they realized Rose's difficult speech and behavioral problems, they, too, couldn't cope and handed the child over to Ron's mother, Vivien Yaakov, who watched over her great-granddaughter every day.
Yaakov also had difficulties coping with Rose and reportedly demanded that her son find an alternative solution to her daily babysitting.
After another harsh fight with his mother in May of this year, Ron, 45, grabbed Rose and her suitcase and stormed out, according to Haaretz.
Yaakov never saw Rose again, and Renault claims to have never asked where her daughter was. Only when Yaakov wrote to the National Council for the Child in early August did the police learn of Rose's disappearance.
Although police diver Tzafrir Sade had been searching for the body for about a week, it was another diver who found the suitcase, which was full of bones and body parts.
Israeli National Police say the contents resemble that of a little girl.
"I was in a meeting when they called me from the river," Sade told ABCNews.com. "Of course, it's the second I take a break from searching that they find it."
