Judge rejects bid to toss charges against Creato

The attorney for David "D.J." Creato Jr., the Haddon Township man charged with killing his 3-year-old son, Brendan, lost a bid in court Monday to have the indictment against his client dismissed, and slammed the medical examiner who handled the case, calling him a "disgrace."

"This boy deserved better than what he got from the medical examiner's office," Richard J. Fuschino Jr. said in Superior Court in Camden.

He said Camden County Medical Examiner Gerald Feigin should have inspected the wooded area where Brendan's pajama-clad body was found, slumped over a rock, on the day of the discovery, not five days later. Fuschino also alleged that Feigin misled the grand jury into believing he had gone to the scene sooner than he actually did.

Camden County Assistant Prosecutor Christine Shah said that Feigin followed the law, and that it is standard procedure for the Prosecutor Office's crime scene unit to remove a body from a scene and deliver it to the medical examiner's office, as happened in this case.

"There was not a single thing that Dr. Feigin did wrong in this case," Shah said.

Judge John T. Kelley said that based on his review, there was nothing to indicate that Feigin misled the grand jury.

Feigin could not be reached for comment Monday, and a woman who answered the phone at his office said he was out this week.

Still undecided is whether Kelley will allow prosecutors to use as evidence the statement Creato gave to investigators the day Brendan's body was found. Fuschino, in a separate motion, said detectives misled Creato and never told him he was a suspect. Prosecutors said Creato allowed investigators to search his phone and question him.

Kelley said Monday he wanted to see a video recording of the interview and would make a ruling at the next hearing, June 2.

After the hearing, Creato's father, David Sr., said, "We support our son 100 percent."

Florence Creato, who is D.J. Creato's grandmother and Brendan's great-grandmother, said D.J. had bought books at Barnes & Noble to read to Brendan in the days before the boy's death.

"He loved that baby," she said. Seeing D.J. in court, she added, was "very sad."

"Just wish he was home," she said.

Brendan's mother, Samantha Denoto, who did not live with Creato at the time of the death, attended the hearing but did not speak to reporters afterward.

A grand jury in January indicted Creato, 22, on charges of murder and endangering the welfare of a child. He remains at the Camden County Jail with bail set at $750,000.

Prosecutors alleged that Creato killed Brendan to stop his 17-year-old girlfriend, who disliked children, from leaving him. She was away at college when Brendan died, authorities said.

A K-9 unit discovered Brendan's body in a wooded area three-quarters of a mile from Creato's apartment on Oct. 13, three hours after Creato had called 911 to report his son missing.

Feigin, who told the grand jury that this was a "difficult case," called in a colleague from his office, Charles Siebert, as well as the acting state medical examiner, Andrew L. Falzon, to review the autopsy findings on Brendan.

They concluded that Brendan died of "homicidal violence," and prosecutors said an examination of Brendan's brain showed an abnormality consistent with oxygen deprivation that can be caused by asphyxiation, drowning, or strangulation.

An exact cause of death was never determined.

Fuschino accused Feigin on Monday of running a sloppy investigation, and said Feigin had done a "terrible job."

"He is a disgrace," Fuschino told the court. "He has a horrific, horrific past as a medical examiner."

In 1997, Feigin's work drew controversy in a high-profile Boston case.

He had performed an autopsy on Matthew Eappen, an 8-month-old child whom Louise Woodward, his au pair, was later convicted of murdering.

Feigin ruled that Matthew had been slammed against a hard surface and died as the result of head injuries. He initially said the injury was the equivalent of a 15-foot fall, but acknowledged during the trial that such an injury could happen from a far lesser height.

A judge later reduced the murder conviction to involuntary manslaughter, saying Woodward's actions were not motivated by malice, and set her free.

In 1998, Feigin left the state medical examiner's office in Boston and was appointed Gloucester County's medical examiner.

That year, he reversed a finding from his predecessor, Walter I. Hofman. Hofman had ruled the death of Rowan University student Lynn Anne Darren, 22, was a homicide, and concluded she was "forcibly pushed" to the floor of her Glassboro apartment, which police found in disarray.

Feigin, who conducted a second autopsy at a funeral home where Darren's body had been preserved, ruled her death accidental. He replaced Hofman six months into the investigation.

"I had all of the DNA and knew that all of the blood in the apartment was hers," Feigin said in a 1999 interview. "Dr. Hofman didn't have this information."

In 2003, in a case he ruled a homicide, Feigin testified that the burns and bruises found on 5-year-old Jacob Lindorff's body signified a pattern of abuse by Heather G. Lindorff, a Franklin Township woman who had adopted Jacob from Russia.

Lindorff's attorney questioned Feigin's findings, and alleged that Jacob had died from "rebleeding" of an old head injury suffered in Russia.

Lindorff was eventually acquitted of aggravated manslaughter and convicted of a lesser charge of endangering the welfare of a child.

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