N.J. Toddler Was Smothered Or Drowned, Prosecutors Say

By Anthony Bellano

Camden, NJ -- Brendan Creato, the three-year-old boy who was found dead in a wooded area near the Cooper River in Haddon Township in October, was smothered or drowned, authorities said Tuesday during the arraignment of the boy’s father on murder charges.

Prosecutors allege David Creato Jr., 22, killed his son because his girlfriend hated kids and he was afraid she was cheating on him.

A grand jury this week returned an indictment charging the 22-year-old father with first-degree murder and second-degree endangering the welfare of a child in the death of the 3-year-old.

Brendan Creato was the center of a rift between David Creato and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Julia Spensky. Spensky and David Creato exchanged 9,487 texts between June and the day his son was died, Christine Shah, an assistant county prosecutor assigned to the homicide unit, said during an arraignment in Camden on Tuesday.

He was arrested around 2:15 p.m. on Monday in Washington Township.

Creato’s bail was set at $750,000, his passport was revoked, he can’t communicate with Brendan’s mother or her family, and he can’t leave the state.

“No crime is more serious than murder,” Shah argued, saying that Creato “violated the trust between a little boy and his father.”

Spensky allegedly voiced a strong dislike for children. The two entered into what Shah described as an “intense romantic relationship” in June.

That fall, Spensky went away to college in New York, where Creato allegedly discovered she was talking to another man. Creato and Spensky could only see each other on weekends, and Creato had his son with him every other weekend, per an arrangement between he and his wife, Samantha Denoto.

Spensky allegedly told Creato she would break up with him the weekend before Creato turned up missing and was eventually found dead. Brendan Creato spent that weekend with his grandmother, who dropped him off at David Creato’s house around 8:15 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 12. That was the last time Brendan Creato was seen alive.

The following morning, David Creato reported his son missing, calling 911 and telling authorities, “I just woke up and my 3-year-old’s missing.”

A K-9 unit from the Delaware River Port Authority Police Department tracked the child to a wooded area off South Park Drive in Haddon Township, where he was found deceased shortly before 9 a.m., three hours after he was reported missing.

When investigators discovered his body, his socks were still clean, indicating he didn’t walk there by himself, Shah said.

Multiple autopsies of his body determined his cause of death was homicidal violence of undetermined etymology, and the manner of death was homicide. The autopsies showed Brendan Creato’s brain was deprived of oxygen for some time. There was no evidence of injury or disease that would cause death.

The wooded area in which they discovered Brendan Creato’s body was a spot often visited by his father. David Creato described the spot as “spiritual,” and he allegedly visited the spot between 20 and 30 times in the first four months he was dating his girlfriend, including Oct. 11, two days before Brendan Creato was reported missing.

“He could easily navigate that area in the dark,” Shah said.

Shah said some detectives had trouble navigating the path, which she described as a dirt path with a steep field that was muddy at the bottom.

“His socks were perfectly clean,” Shah said. “We know he didn’t get there under his own power.”

Shah argued that Brendan Creato was afraid of the dark, and had never left his father’s apartment, his mother’s house or his grandmother’s house on his own. She also pointed to the initial call, in which Creato said all both the front door and the hallway door were locked, and he couldn’t imagine his son walking all the way to the Cooper River.

The Camden County Prosecutor’s Office previously determined there were no signs of an intruder, and no indication of physical or sexual abuse. There were also no signs that anything else had been disturbed, and nothing was missing outside of Brendan.

“The evidence is circumstantial, but quite compelling,” Shah argued.

Creato’s attorney Richard J. Fuschino Jr. disagreed, and called the case against his client “weak.”

“Miss Shah argues that DJ was smart enough to smother his son or drown his son in such a way that the only way detectives could determine his cause of death was through exclusion,” he said. “The defendant told detectives during the interview that he was paranoid and anxious about his girlfriend. Why wouldn’t he not tell police about this? The fact is his girlfriend was far away and she had a new boyfriend and that was making him nervous.”

He also pointed out that Creato has no prior convictions, and there was nothing to indicate he would be a danger to anyone else in the community.

“She believes him when he says the doors were locked, but not when, in the same interview, he says ’I did not kill my son,’” Fuschino said. “At no point did he admit anything. ... He’s known this investigation was going on for months, yet he didn’t attempt to run. He’s staying to clear his name.”

Shah said Spensky, who wasn’t referred to by name in court, has not cooperated in the investigation. She argued Creato shouldn’t be permitted to leave the state because he may attempt to visit her and fail to appear for future proceedings in the case.

Early in the investigation, she allegedly said via Tumblr that she was concerned she might be a suspect in a “homicide investigation.”

Bail was initially set at $1 million cash or bond, but Superior Court Judge Edward J. McBride said the case warranted neither the high end or the low end of the spectrum, the $250,000 Fuschina argued.

Creato faces between 30 years and life in prison if convicted.

Brendan Creato’s family was present in the courtroom on Tuesday. They had no comment following the arraignment.