Man pleads not guilty in Tucson girls’ deaths

The man accused of killing two Tucson girls and burying their bodies in the desert pleaded not guilty Monday afternoon in Pima County Superior Court.

Monday’s arraignment marked Christopher Clements’ first court appearance since law enforcement announced he had been indicted on 22 charges related to the killings of 6year-old Isabel Celis and 13-year-old Maribel Gonzalez in a Sept. 15 press conference. Police records indicate there may be additional victims. The Arizona Daily

Star reported that both girls’ families were in the courtroom for the hearing. Clements still had a lingering black eye from a recent fight in a Maricopa County jail.

The 36-year-old was recently transferred to Pima County from Maricopa, where he had been held on unrelated charges of burglary and fraud since 2017.

Law enforcement shied away from providing any information about what led them to Clements during the new conference, saying only that the FBI received a tip about a man who had information about Isabel’s disappearance.

It was actually the man’s fiancée who tipped off the Tucson FBI office in February 2017, according to a recently unsealed search warrant filed in Pima County Superior Court. She told investigators Clements knew where Isabel’s body had been dumped.

Isabel was reported missing in 2012 after her father discovered she wasn’t in her bedroom in the morning. The screen on her bedroom window had been removed. Her disappearance led to an exhaustive search and widespread media attention. Police never named any suspects.

FBI agents met with Clements in the Pima County Jail after they received the fiancée’s tip. He told the agents he wouldn’t lead them to Isabel’s remains unless his two pending burglary charges were dropped and his impounded car was released.

The agents agreed.

On March 3, 2017, Clements led FBI agents to a remote desert area northwest of Tucson where Isabel’s body had been buried beneath a tree, according to the search warrant. Her death was later ruled a homicide.

Investigators realized it was the same location where Maribel’s body was found in 2014, three days after she didn’t return home from visiting a friend. She disappeared from the area where Isabel lived.

After Isabel’s body was found, Clements told police he didn’t kidnap or kill the child, the warrant said. He refused to say what happened to her or how he knew where her body was buried.

Despite this, the FBI kept its end of the deal, and Clements’ burglary charges were dismissed. He was then extradited to a Maricopa County jail on unrelated burglary and theft charges.

Court records indicate Clements’ criminal history spanned more than 20 years and four states, including a 1998 conviction for molesting a 4-year-old girl in Oregon. He also had prior convictions for theft and assault in Washington and Oregon. He failed to register as a sex offender in Florida in 2006.

In 2008, Clements was sentenced to 46 months in prison in Tucson after he failed to register as a sex offender when he relocated to Arizona in 2007.