David "DJ" Creato Jr. is accused of killing his son, Brendan, 3, to save his romantic relationship.
CAMDEN -- Jurors in the murder trial of David "D.J." Creato Jr. saw photographs of the body of his 3-year-old son, lying on his stomach on a rock on the banks of the creek where he was found Oct. 13, 2015.
They also heard a crime scene detective testify that the boy's clothing showed signs that someone had purposely put him there.
"The back of his pants were rolled inward and down, where his buttocks were exposed," Detective Nicholas Villano testified Thursday. "It seemed he was placed there and that was used possibly as a grip."
That's exactly what prosecutors believe Creato did after allegedly killing his son. Assistant Prosecutor Christine Shah told jurors he did it to please his girlfriend, as she didn't like children.
Creato has denied the charges. He told investigators the day his son disappeared that while it is unlikely, his son may have walked out of the apartment or been taken by someone.
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Villano, who worked for the Camden County prosecutor's office at the time Brendan died, testified that the boy had a bruise on his back and scrapes on his elbow, stomach and forehead, all of which were touching the rock where he was found.
He testified about an issue that Shah promises will be paramount: Brendan's clean socks. If he had walked to the creek that night, his socks would have been filthy, she said.
When Brendan was found, Villano testified, he had some silt on him from the creek. But the green and gray socks on his feet, which were submerged, were clean, Villano said. Jurors viewed photographs of the socks on Brendan's feet, but the screen showing the images was angled away from the gallery of the courtroom.
To check the theory that the socks would be dirty if the boy had walked, Villano said they brought a 3-year-old to the scene two weeks later, put similar socks over the child's shoes, and had the child make the three-quarter-mile walk to the spot where Brendan was found.
A K9 unit tracked Brendan's scent from his dad's apartment at the corner of Cooper Street and Virginia Avenue, up Cooper Street to South Park Drive, and then into Cooper River Park. His body was found on a rock in a low-flow area of the Cooper River. "They were dirty and wet," he said before jurors viewed photographs of the socks. "They were frayed on the bottom, I'm assuming from shuffling."
They concluded that the creek would not have been able to wash the socks clean again, Villano said, after performing another experiment with socks dangled into the creek for several hours.
As jurors heard in a recording Wednesday, Creato told police that he went to the park with Brendan a few times, but that he had never been himself to the spot where Brendan's body was found.
He also said he was last in the park about a week before.
But when police examined his cell phone, they found a timestamped photo taken two days before Brendan died about 15 yards from the spot where his body was found. That's according to testimony from detective Michael Rhodes, the lead investigator in the case.
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Jurors got to see the spot for themselves Thursday afternoon.
A bus took them, along with Creato, the judge and the attorneys, to the edge of the park on South Park Drive. They walked through a lightly wooded area, across a soggy field and down a path on a hill to the creek bed. The spot where Brendan's body was found, about 15 feet from where the path reached the bottom of hill, was marked with an orange cone.
Judge John T. Kelley barred the media from attending the jury visit, but allowed photographs to be taken after the jurors returned to the courthouse.
The medical examiner was never able to determine an exact cause of death, but said that his brain showed signs of asphyxiation, according to Shah.
Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.