Jurors revisit audio and video recordings of Creato

Jurors reached no verdict Thursday in the murder trial of David "D.J." Creato Jr., the Haddon Township man accused in the October 2015 death of his 3-year-old son, Brendan, and instead spent most of the day reviewing audio and video recordings previously presented in court — and asked to revisit more of the evidence when they return next week.

The review began moments after Superior Court Judge John Kelley called the proceedings to order, when prosecutors replayed an hour-long conversation that Brendan's mother, Samantha Denoto, was asked by authorities to secretly record about a month after the boy's body was found.

With portions of the recording nearly inaudible, jurors followed along with printed transcripts.

During their conversation, Denoto, who was separated from Creato, tells him that she is "trying to figure out what happened."

She asks if the door to Creato's apartment was locked when Brendan reportedly disappeared.

"The door was broken," he tells her.

"Did you hear anything? Wake up or anything?"

He tells her that he slept through the night.

"All over the internet, everybody is accusing me … of being a baby killer," he laments.

A minute later, she says, "I can't come to the fact that you would do anything. I'm just [running] your night in my head over and over and over."

Creato has told investigators he put Brendan to bed about 9 p.m. Oct. 12, read him three bedtime stories, and went to bed several hours later. When he woke up at 6 a.m., he said, he discovered Brendan missing from the living room sofa where the boy normally slept. After searching outside, he called his mother, who, he said, told him to call 911, which he did. Haddon Township police arrived moments later. A few hours later they found the boy's pajama-clad body a half-mile away in woods near the Cooper River.

Toward the end of his conversation with Denoto, Creato tells her that he had nightmares that felt like out-of-body experiences in the week before Brendan's death, and wonders if "spirits" led their son out of the apartment to the place where he was found dead.

Medical examiners concluded Brendan died of something akin to asphyxia, but could not determine how.

During the trial, Camden County prosecutors alleged Creato smothered him, perhaps with a pillow, because his 17-year-old girlfriend resented the boy's presence in his life and was threatening to leave him.

On Thursday, jurors listened again to Creato's 911 call reporting that Brendan was missing.

They also watched — for the third time since the trial began in April — Creato's hour-long interview with Camden County detectives at Haddon Township police headquarters the morning Brendan was reported missing.

When one of the detectives informs Creato that "we found your son. He is deceased," Creato shouts, "No, no, no, no,"  many times while pulling at his hair.

"I loved him so much," he cries. "What happened?"

When they tell him he was found "on a shoreline," Creato shouts, "Shoreline of what? Did he drown?"

When the detectives do not answer, he sobs briefly, then answers a series of questions about how he and Brendan had spent the night. After both detectives leave the room saying they must retrieve a document, Creato sits  clutching his arms for about a minute before sobbing. He then turns to the wall behind him and lets out several shrieks before turning around to the table and hanging his head.

Creato, who has sat on the far right side of the attorneys' table throughout the trial, did not position himself to watch the video of the interview Thursday and showed no apparent emotion as it played.

In the video, after the detectives return to the interrogation room, they ask him more questions, including several about his relationship with Denoto — which he describes as "good" — and with his then-girlfriend, Julia Stensky. He replies that Stensky deeply resented Brendan's presence in his life, and says they had had a big fight on the weekend before he died, and that he had told her he would never give up Brendan for her.

"I said, 'I love my son and I want him in my life,' " Creato tells the detectives.

After the jurors returned to the jury room, Kelley told the court that they had asked to review more recordings and a lengthy PowerPoint presentation of Creato's phone and social-media use the night Brendan died. Those are due to be played, he said, when the trial resumes Tuesday.

There will be no proceedings Monday, Memorial Day. Kelley chose not to resume deliberations Friday after several jurors said they had previous commitments.