Delaware County Daily Times - Sept 14, 2000 Article

Where is Katelyn ?

Delaware County Daily Times (Primos - Upper Darby, PA) - Thursday, September 14, 2000

Author: MATT ZAGER ; Of the Times Staff

MEDIA COURTHOUSE -- A teary-eyed Robert Rivera seemed on the brink of revealing the whereabouts of his missing daughter during an interview that CID Detective David Peifer recorded.

The tape of the November 23, 1999, interview was played for the first time in public, at Rivera 's pre-trial hearing yesterday.

Throughout the interview Peifer pleads with Rivera to tell police where they could find his daughter.

Rivera comes close several times, falling silent at the last moment and leaving the persistent CID detective in a quandary.

Rivera is charged with murdering his daughter, Katelyn , who would now be close to three years old. He took the 20-month-old girl from a babysitter's home Aug. 10, 1999. The child's body has not been found.

"When you find her, you gotta promise she's not going back to her mother," Rivera said at one point in the taped interview.

"You think I killed my daughter or something and that's not the truth," he said later in the recording.

Rivera saw Peifer in court that November day and asked to talk to the detective, Peifer said.

When Peifer asked him about a shovel that many believe was used to hide his daughter's body, Rivera said, "I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to incriminate myself."

In a long narrative, Peifer yesterday told the court about the investigation that took place Aug. 11, 1999, the night Rivera was arrested.

Peifer said he and other investigators took Rivera to Longwood Gardens to check his story about taking Katelyn there the night before and giving her to a couple of strangers in the parking lot. Rivera told police he instructed the couple to take the toddler away forever, because he was going to jail and he didn't want Katelyn 's mother, Jennifer Helton, to have her.

"I kept telling him (that night) that the people who go to Longwood Gardens, aren't the type of people who take a child and not report it," Peifer said. "I said it doesn't add up."

Also yesterday, Defense Attorney G. Guy Smith continued to try to keep some witnesses from testifying against his client. Smith said Rivera talked to these witnesses without understanding his right to have a lawyer present. The lawyer said allowing these people to testify would violate Rivera 's constitutional rights.

Smith questioned Peifer about an episode when Peifer and two other investigators were driving Rivera back to prison after his March arraignment on murder charges.

Peifer had asked the investigators in the car that day if they thought Rivera 's new status as an accused murderer would result in him being moved to another cell block with other accused murderers.

Rivera responded by saying, "No, there are other murderers on my block (now)," Peifer said.

Rivera appeared in court yesterday wearing a large gold cross on a gold chain. He remained calm throughout the hearing, in contrast to previous days when he had made remarks to people in the courtroom and demanded to have himself removed.

The pre-trial hearing continues today. Other witnesses expected to take the stand include Katelyn 's mother, a former girlfriend of Rivera 's and a prisoner named John Fleming who said Rivera gave him information about the missing girl.