Delaware County Daily Times - Aug 16, 2000 Article

Search continues for Katelyn 's body

Delaware County Daily Times (Primos - Upper Darby, PA) - Wednesday, August 16, 2000

Author: ROSE QUINN ; Of the Times Staff

MEDIA COURTHOUSE -- Robert Rivera has been telling people that his daughter Katelyn Rivera Helton is maybe 15 to 25 minutes from the western Delaware County gas station where he and the missing little girl were last seen together.

Friday, investigators and cadaver-sniffing dogs will search a wooded site in Nottingham Township in Chester County, 26 minutes from the Sunoco Station at Routes 1 and 100 in Chadds Ford.

"This particular site fell within the geographic boundary of the area we believe he disposed of Katelyn 's body," Delaware County Deputy District Attorney John Reilly Jr. said yesterday.

The estimated one-quarter mile area to be searched is a former homestead of the Herr's Potato Chip property, a township landmark and popular tourist attraction.

"We gained information that Mr. Rivera had frequented this particular area in the months prior to the murder," Reilly said.

He added, "He wasn't there as a tourist."

Rivera , 33, of Chichester Avenue in Upper Chichester's Boothwyn section, is facing first-degree murder charges -- and a possible death sentence -- in the then 20-month-old child's Aug. 10, 1999 disappearance and apparent slaying.

In subsequent letters to the Daily Times, Rivera said Katelyn is alive, but refused to disclose her whereabouts.

"Only me and God know where Katelyn is," Rivera said in an exclusive jailhouse interview in October.

To date, at least two dozen searches in three states have been conducted in attempts to find the child's body, according to Reilly.

The search will be the first at the Nottingham site.

"I continue to firmly believe that our search is going to yield positive results," Reilly said.

Reilly plans to be at the scene, along with county homicide detectives, Avondale state police and a cadaver dog search team.

Last week -- on the one-year anniversary of Katelyn 's disappearance -- Jennifer Helton made an impassioned plea for information leading to her daughter's whereabouts. Yesterday, she said she was not familiar with the area officials are now targeting.

Pausing, she said, "I wish I did know it."

At a court hearing in May, gas station attendant John McCabe, 16, testified that Rivera seemed to be in a rush as he pulled his car into the station about 7 p.m. Aug. 10, with a blond-haired child crawling around on the seat beside him.

McCabe recalled Rivera putting $2 worth of gas into the car, paying with a single bill and four quarters.

Rivera returned to the station two hours later, "sweaty," according to McCabe. The child was not in the car.

McCabe said Rivera used the bathroom and then called him over to the car, offering a watch for $10 in fuel. The watch was a gift from Jennifer Helton.

Reilly maintains that evidence will show that Katelyn was murdered sometime between 7:16 p.m. and 9:16 p.m.

As a father, Reilly wants to hope that Katelyn is alive.

"As a prosecutor, I know she is not," he said. "The evidence strongly suggests that she is dead."

Earlier this week, Rivera filed a motion stating he's "totally dissatisfied" with defense attorney G. Guy Smith. Smith is Rivera 's second attorney since his arrest last year.