Delaware County Daily Times - Jan 14, 2002 Article

So many questions and so much silence

Delaware County Daily Times (Primos - Upper Darby, PA) - Monday, January 14, 2002

Author: MARLENE DiGIACOMO ; mdigiacomo@delcotimes.com

It’s been almost three years since Jennifer Helton last saw her 20-month old daughter, Katelyn Selena Rivera -Helton. The girl has vanished and is presumed to have been killed, leaving the grieving mother without even a grave where she could place flowers to memorialize her loss.

Barbara DiMario, who heads the Delaware County Chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, said that when she told Helton about a memorial garden being planned by the group, Helton’s reply touched her.

“Jennifer said that would be great. She said she didn’t have any place to put a flower for Katelyn and now she would,” DiMario recalled.

The Living Memorial Gardens, created in a wooded area on Furey Road in Upper Chichester, is a peaceful setting with touching tributes from parents whose children’s lives have been taken.

Near the entrance is a small plot emblazoned with the words: “Katie’s Garden.” Even in winter, flowers adorn the patch of ground dedicated to tiny Katelyn .

There are pictures of the bright-eyed child, as well as a tiny Tweety Bird and yellow Teletubbie, which DiMario said were Katelyn ’s favorite toys.

Also engraved on the stones are “prayers and justice for Katelyn ” as well as “ya-ya.”

“Ya-ya was one of her favorite words,” said DiMario. The toddler was just beginning to talk when authorities believe the man she looked up to as daddy silenced her forever.

Her father, 35-year-old Robert Rivera , will go on trial tomorrow, facing a death penalty on charges he abducted and killed his daughter. A jury of seven men and five women was selected and seated prior to the holidays so testimony is slated to get under way tomorrow morning before Judge Charles C. Keeler.

The toddler has been missing since Aug. 10, 1999, when she was allegedly kidnapped and slain. She would have turned 4 years old on Dec. 12.

The case, which arose from a bitter custody battle between Helton and Rivera , has all the elements of a murder mystery because the baby’s body has never been found.

The key issues — which may never be disclosed — are where is Katelyn and what was done to her.

Rivera is alleged to have first assaulted Helton on that August morning when he encountered her in a Wawa in Upper Chichester after the two had been in court earlier that day. Following that fight, he is accused of bursting into the child’s day care provider’s home and kidnapping Katelyn . He told police at one point that he “just wanted to spend the day with her.”

That appears to have been her final day.

Katelyn was last seen around 7 p.m. on that evening crawling around on the passenger seat in a car driven by Rivera as he stopped for gas.

The gas station attendant testified during an earlier pre-trial hearing that when Rivera returned about two hours later, he was “sweaty” but Katelyn was not in the car.

Court-appointed defense attorney G. Guy Smith has argued that there is no evidence the child is dead — let alone who killed her.

Rivera has long frustrated authorities by giving conflicting statements regarding Katelyn ’s whereabouts.

Since her disappearance, authorities said they conducted searches in five states and Puerto Rico utilizing everything from helicopters to cadaver-sniffing dogs and have not found any evidence that Katelyn is alive.

In addition to the nationwide search, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children also participated and disseminated information regarding the child to approximately 79 million computer terminals with negative results, according to court records.

Rivera is alleged to have first told authorities he gave the child away to a couple he met at Longwood Gardens and then recanted that account. He is also quoted as once telling Helton that “you should consider Katelyn dead.”

Assistant District Attorney John F.X. Reilly, during the trial, is expected to attempt to link Rivera to the killing though statements he is alleged to have made to inmates. Testimony will include the discovery on Route 202 near the Delaware-Pennsylvania border of a size 4 child’s sneaker with three sequins and a yellow sock allegedly worn by Katelyn when she disappeared.

A jailhouse informant, who was quoted as telling police that Rivera admitted that Katelyn was dead and that he suffocated her, led police to the discovery of the shoe and sock on the highway, authorities said. Also in a statement to county Criminal Investigations Division Detective Lt. David Peifer, Rivera was quoted as saying, “If I tell you where Katelyn is, I’ll spend the rest of my life in jail.”

In a prison interview in 1999 with Daily Times reporter Rose Quinn, Rivera was quoted as blurting out, “Only me and God know where Katelyn is.”

Rivera has continued to make allegations of her whereabouts including as recently as November, when during a court hearing he accused his attorney of knowing where the child is and doing nothing about it. Smith denied that in court.

There is a gag order in effect so nobody connected with the case is allowed to comment publicly.

In Pennsylvania a body is not required in a homicide case. And this will not be the first murder trial in Delaware County in which authorities proceeded against a defendant for a murder in which a body has not been recovered.

Media attorney James DelBello, who was a Delaware County prosecutor in 1977, brought in a first-degree murder conviction that year against Warlock Robert Nauss of Upper Darby in the killing of Elizabeth Lande, 21. The victim’s body was never found. Nauss is serving a life sentence.

“When I look back on the case, the fact that there was not a body wasn’t something I spent a lot of time pondering,” DelBello said in a recent interview. “I thought the evidence was there to support a conviction and eventually the jury agreed.

“ Proving a murder without a body does involve a different set of circumstances. You have to make a leap between life and nothing. But the issue of presenting the evidence that will convince a jury remains the same.”

DelBello, who chose his words carefully, said he did not want to say anything that would prejudice either side in the Rivera case.

He said he personally knows both lawyers who will be facing off against each other in the trial. “They are both very good, aggressive attorneys,” he said.

During the 1970s, DelBello served in the District Attorney’s office with Smith, a former Republican Swarthmore mayor who is now in private practice in Media and is the court-appointed trial counsel for Rivera .

Court-appointed attorneys are paid by the county and receive $200 for each day of work involving indigent clients, who are constitutionally required to have legal representation.

Bills are submitted and approved by the presiding judge.

DelBello views Smith as an effective attorney who brings a sense of drama to his cases. “He has a dramatic style that causes people to pay attention,” said DelBello.

DelBello, who now handles defense work, has also tried cases against Reilly. “He (Reilly) is a very able prosecutor. He’s very thorough and to the point. He’s always well prepared.”

DelBello said he’s looking forward to a “very interesting trial with some intriguing issues.”

If Rivera is found guilty of first-degree murder, a second proceeding involving the penalty phase will begin.

In that event, Media attorney Steven C. Leach has been court-appointed to handle that aspect of Rivera ’s defense.

The same jury will be called on to decide between a sentence of life in jail or death by lethal injection for Rivera .

There are currently a half-dozen Delaware County defendants on death row in Pennsylvania. Among them is Arthur Bomar, convicted in 1998 of abducting, raping and bludgeoning 22-year-old college student Aimee Willard to death.

The death of a child is one of the delineated aggravating circumstances set down in Pennsylvania law allowing the prosecution to seek capital punishment.

The case against Rivera , accused of driving his daughter to her death, will begin unfolding this week in a county courtroom before a jury that includes a Springfield mother of three, and a Broomall nurse and the father of a 20-month old son.