David "DJ" Creato Jr. is accused of killing his son, Brendan, 3, in 2015.
CAMDEN -- The trial of the Haddon Township father accused of killing his 3-year-old son to save his romantic relationship continues for a fourth day Thursday.
David "D.J." Creato Jr., 23, is charged with murdering his son and dumping his body on the side of the Cooper River near his home. He called 911 to report his son missing around 6 a.m. Oct. 13, 2015, and the boy was found dead hours later.
Assistant Prosecutor Christine Shah has told jurors that Creato did it because his girlfriend, Julie Stensky disliked Brendan and didn't want him in Creato's life.
Creato has denied the charges and rejected a 35-year plea deal. He told investigators at various points that his son might have wandered out of the apartment on his own or someone might have come in and taken him.
Jurors on Wednesday heard hours of recordings of Creato talking about what might have happened, among other things. The recordings included a video of Creato speaking with officers before and after hearing that his son was dead, and an audio recording Brendan's mother, Samantha Denoto, secretly made while talking with Creato in November 2015.
Here are five things we learned in the third day of Creato's trial.
Creato felt "energy" at his home and wondered if it caused his son to walk out
Denoto had testified last week that she worked with detectives to secretly record a conversation with Creato in order to collect more information. Jurors got to hear that recording Wednesday.
Near the end of the conversation, Creato started to describe his belief in spirits and how he has felt energy moving in his apartment that scared him.
"I don't want to sound like a crazy person, but maybe there's some kind of like energy that guided him, or some kind of spirits at the lake," he said of his son's disappearance. He said he felt like the area in the park was "sacred."
"Maybe there's some kind of energy that drew him," he said.
Creato also speculated on the call that Brendan might have walked out of the apartment and then ran into "the wrong person" outside. When Denoto said she didn't believe her son could have walked to the river, Creato didn't seem to agree.
Police didn't get as much information from Creato's girlfriend as they wanted
Creato had been dating Julie Stensky, his then-17-year-old girlfriend, for about four months when his son died. She was attending Pace University in New York and they fought about Brendan, as well as Stensky talking to other men.
Rhodes said he contacted Stensky after Brendan was found, and she agreed to make the trip back to Haddon Township to give a statement to police. Days after she did so, investigators discovered public blog posts she had made on Tumblr in which she complained about her relationship with Creato and how she didn't want to be tied down by his "mistake," referring to Brendan. She also posted about Brendan's death, he testified.
Rhodes said the posts made him want to take another statement from Stensky, and while she initially agreed, she later got a lawyer and refused to speak with police further.
Creato had said Stensky visited him that weekend before Brendan's death, but she took the train back to college the morning of Brendan's last day alive.
Rhodes testified that he used surveillance footage, witness accounts and her dorm's keycard data to verify she was at school the night Brendan disappeared.
When and how Brendan's body was removed from the park
Detective Michael Rhodes of the Camden County prosecutor's office testified that another detective from the office removed the body from the bank of the stream in Cooper River Park at 9:50 a.m.
He also told jurors that earlier that morning, while the detectives were collecting evidence and taking photographs, medical investigator Frank Jackson of the medical examiner's office arrived on scene. He called Jackson "the eyes and ears of the medical examiner."
Creato: Girlfriend gave ultimatum about son
Rhodes didn't say that Jackson did any investigations of his own, but said the medical investigator was present and provided the body bag.
Creato's attorney, Richard Fuschino Jr., has in the past said that the medical examiner, Gerald Feigin, should have been at the scene supervising and collecting evidence. Feigin was not able to determine a specific cause of death, but the prosecutor's office says he died from "homicidal violence" that could have been caused by drowning, strangulation or blunt neck trauma.
The defense attorney and other forensic professionals have also questioned why Brendan's body was removed from the water so quickly, not an hour after it was discovered. They suggested it may have limited the amount of evidence that could have been collected there.
Investigators hoped 'fresh' cigarette butts at the scene would help crack the case
Detective Rhodes testified Wednesday that cigarette butts that appeared to be fresh were collected as evidence from the bank of stream where Brendan was found. Because of that, detectives collected DNA samples from Creato and others connected to him, hoping the DNA on the cigarettes might match someone.
It didn't, Fuschino told the jurors during his opening statement last week. He said it didn't match anyone in the Creato family or any of the other people police asked for DNA samples, and didn't match anyone in a national criminal database.
In his recorded conversation with Denoto, Creato said he told police he doesn't even smoke cigarettes.
Brendan's family wasn't informed of his death until about two hours later
Rhodes, who was on the stand all day Wednesday, described waiting until 10:17 a.m. to tell Creato his son was found dead. For sometime before that, while police knew he was dead but Creato didn't, another officer questioned him about the night before Brendan's death, his relationship with his girlfriend, and other topics.
Judge bans media from jury's scene visit
Because investigators wanted to carefully watch Creato's reaction to the news and then to hit him with another round of questioning, Rhodes had to wait until after his long interview with Creato to "make notification" to the rest of Brendan's family.
He broke the news to both sides of the family in a conference room in the Police Station annex, and then told Denoto in an interview room.
In the recorded conversation, both Denoto and Creato discussed finding out after the fact how long police had waited to tell them their son was dead.
Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.