Juror Who Voted Not Guilty In David Creato Murder Trial Speaks Out

HADDON TOWNSHIP, NJ — The forewoman of the jury on the David “DJ” Creato murder trial is speaking out, and she claims jury deliberations were contentious from the very beginning. This ultimately resulted in a hung jury in the case of the Haddon Township man accused of killing his 3-year-old son, Brendan. The Camden County Prosecutor’s Office has said it will re-prosecute the case, and a status hearing is scheduled for July 5.

The final vote from the jury was 10 guilty, 2 not guilty on the first-degree murder charge, according to the Philly Voice. The jury never voted on the second-degree child endangerment charge. The forewoman said she was one of the two not guilty votes, and that she was hated by the members of the jury who wanted to convict Creato.

“In my mind, I made the right decision,” she told the site. “When the prosecution was done with its case, we still didn’t know who did this, where it happened, when it happened or even why it happened.”

She said she was unconvinced by the prosecution’s claim that Creato killed his son because his then-girlfriend didn’t like children. She also was concerned with the prosecution’s handling of the case, and later learned of Camden County Medical Examiner Gerald Feigin’s checkered history.

Fuschino also attacked Feigin’s credibility throughout the case. The cause of Brendan’s death was never entirely clear, with Shah using the phrase “homicidal violence of unknown etiology.”

Investigators believed the child was either smothered or drowned, and the uncertainty has been attributed to the fact that Feigin didn’t respond to the scene as soon as the body was discovered, as required by state law.

The law states the examiner must report to any scene that includes any type of suspicious death, including violent deaths and deaths in which the cause isn’t immediately clear, among others.

Feigin didn’t respond to the scene for several days. Fuschino attempted to have the case dismissed based on these circumstances. He even pointed to two cases in Massachusetts Feigin appeared to have mishandled, and a recent case in South Jersey in which a woman’s hand was left behind at a crash scene.

The forewoman decided to speak out after four jurors who voted guilty spoke to philly.com in a story published last week. Those who spoke said they put their emotions aside, and felt Creato’s story was inconsistent. They pointed to the fact he said he was asleep from 10 p.m. on Oct. 12, 2015, until 6 a.m. on Oct. 13, 2015, despite evidence that showed he used his cell phone at about 1:30 a.m.

Creato reported his son missing at about 6 a.m. the morning of Oct. 13. Brendan’s body was found in Cooper River Park about three hours later.

The initial jury consisted of 11 women and three men. The final jury was made up of nine women and three men, after two of the women were randomly chosen to serve as alternates. It viewed the interrogation of Creato by Haddon Township police in the hours after he reported his son missing multiple times during its deliberation after viewing once during the trial itself.

The case was ultimately declared a mistrial on May 31.

All jurors who spoke to the media said the main question on their minds was “if the father didn’t do this, then who?” Now it’s a question that will be left to another jury to ponder.

Attached image: David Creato appears in court Thursday, May 4, 2017, during day seven of his trial in connection with the death of his 3-year-old son, in Camden, N.J. Creato maintains his innocence. (Joe Lambert/Camden Courier-Post via AP, Pool)