10 years since Djordje, either killed or abducted, disappeared: Mother convicted and released twice

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of elementary school student Djordje Andrejic (13) from Majilovac near Veliko Gradiste, whose fate remains unknown to this day.

Neither the police nor the judiciary are dealing with this case any longer, so it is not known whether the boy had been abducted or killed. On July 24, 2010, the boy's mother Marina Andrejic (50) was arrested on charges of killing her son by hitting him with the handle of a hoe in the back of the head.

She defended herself in court by saying that Djordje disappeared while they were trying to find a path to return home from a field.

The boy's body was not found even after extensive searches had been carried out, and only in November 2010 hunters found a skull that the Higher Court considered was the boy's. However, experts said that this was not certain because the skull had been washed in bleach, which is done when to destroy the DNA. Then, the question was raised about the third person who brought that skull from some other location, according to experts.

What was in the indictment

According to a report in the daily Novosti on November 26, 2010, the indictment of the Higher Prosecutor's Office in Pozarevac, where Marina Andrejic was twice sentenced to 20 years for the murder of a child to then be acquitted by the Appellate Court in Belgrade due to lack of evidence, stated that the mother and her son got lost in the woods, that Djordje was afraid of the dark, and that she killed him with a blow to the back of the head.

She killed her terrified son, who did not want to go down a path into the unknown in the dark, by hitting the back of his neck and the back of his head with a wooden hoe handle. She seriously injured the boy, whose death was caused by a brain contusion. The accused took the body to the edge of an acacia grove, about 20 meters away, covered it with branches and left it there.

These serious charges contained in the indictment of the Higher Prosecutor's Office in Pozarevac raised against Marina Andrejic from Majilovac, who is charged with the murder of her son Djordje (13), committed on July 22. The indictment alleges that the mother committed the crime in the area of ​​the village of Majilovac, in a forest near a village called Beljanica, while of a sound mind.

The explanation of the indictment states that Marina and her son went to a field outside the village that day to pick green beans. But they got lost along the way. While they were walking, the hoe fell on her leg and injured her, and she covered the wound with the boy's T-shirt.

However, the clogs she was wearing were hurting her, so she took them off and left them, and continued like that along with the son for another hundred meters.

"She noticed one path on a plateau and asked Djordje to follow it in order to find the way to the village, but her son did not obey her," it is stated in the public lawsuit. "He told his mother that he was afraid, because it was already getting dark. Trying to persuade him to take that path, Marina hit him with the wooden handle of the hoe in the back of his neck and head, the blows from which he first knelt down and then collapsed to the ground.

Marina then picked up her son and carried him about twenty meters to the edge of the acacia grove, and since he showed no signs of life, she laid him on his back, covered him with branches and left him there.

"She spent that night sleeping about 20 meters away from Djordje's body, and at dawn went to the place where she left him again and found him in the same position," the Higher Prosecutor's Office stated. "And she left him again. She walked around the area of the village to find her way home. It was only on July 24, around nine in the morning, that she reached an asphalt road that leads to the village of Kurjaca, in the direction of the Nimnik monastery.

On the way, she met shepherd Sladjana Milosevic. She asked to use her mobile phone, to call her family, reaching her husband Dejan. Then, Mikica Obradovic came along in his car and drove her to her house in Majilovac.

"All that time, Marina was not letting go of the hoe," it is stated in the indictment.

When she crossed the doorstep of her home, Marina did not tell her husband that she had killed Djordje. She said something incoherent, stressing that she did not know where her son was. Only once did she mention that she had sent him to find help, because her leg was injured.

The indictment alleges that the mother herself wanted to show the investigating authorities the place where she left her son, but did not show the exact site in the field, instead only repeating that it was there somewhere. She just kept saying, "How can he be gone, how can he be gone!"

On August 20, she changed her statement

At the request of her defense counsel to be heard again, on August 20, the defendant, encouraged by the fact that the body had not been found, changed her statement in an attempt to avoid criminal responsibility. Thus, she repeated her defense, except the previously given confession that she had killed her son - state the allegations in the indictment.

"At the new questioning, she stated again that, upon arriving in Beljanica, she noticed one path," the prosecutor continues. "That's why she asked Djordje to go that way. The boy replied that he was a little scared. After arguing with her, he agreed to go and took the right path."

But the new statement then changes:

"His mother said she was calling out to him. The son was responding for a while, but later stopped. She hasn't seen or heard from him since!"

The indictment further alleges that Marina stated that she confessed to the crime under pressure from the police and that they practically told her what to say. The indictment also mentions expert analysis of the skull found on November 7 in Beljanica that was done in Belgrade, which determined that it belonged to the boy, but that there were no traces of injuries on it, the allegations from 2010 stated.

The second expert examination is also included in the indictment:

"The court expert said that, if little Djordje was injured on the back of the head and the back of the neck, as described by his mother in her defense, then the cerebrum got contused."

In the final part of the indictment, Deputy Prosecutor Miroslav Vojinovic stated that, according to the above-mentioned evidence, it had been established beyond any doubt that the defendant committed the criminal offense that she was charged with. The defense attorney of the accused mother, lawyer Srbislav Stojanovix, announced that he would file an appeal against this indictment, because he believed that there was no valid evidence that Marina had killed her son.

For the aggravated murder for which the accused Marina Andrejic was charged at the time, the law prescribed punishment of up to 40 years in prison.

The mother received compensation from the state

Due to the 703 days spent in unlawful detention, after she was acquitted by the Appellate Court Marina received only 2 instead of the 17 million dinars she asked for as compensation from the state.

"The practice is that in such cases, 100 euros are awarded for each day of detention, and Marina was awarded only 2,000 dinars (per day). That is why we have filed an appeal with the Constitutional Court and we have been waiting for an answer for two and a half years. If our appeal is rejected, we will address the court in Strasbourg," Marina's lawyer Srbislav Stojanovic has told Novosti.

Comparing of the skull with the boy's dental record rejected

During the trial, Marina's defense counsel requested that the jaw on the skull that had been found be compared to the boy's dental record, which would irrefutably determine whether the skull was his or not, but the Higher Court rejected that.

"The skull that was found is still in the depot of the Higher Court in Požarevac, because Marina refuses to take it over and bury it, as she thinks that it does not belong to her son," says lawyer Stojanovic.

Husband and mother-in-law passed away, daughter got married

During Marina's detention, her husband passed away, and her mother-in-law received custody of her underage daughter. Later, the mother-in-law passed away too, so Marina started taking care of the girl. In the meantime, the daughter got married, and Marina went to Novi Pazar to work, because she failed to get a job in her home area due to a negative attitude of the environment towards her.

While she was alive, her mother-in-law told Novosti that she was protecting her granddaughter Andjelina from her mother, and that the child was suffering greatly.

"If Marina wants to see her, she should first give me back and bring my grandson Djordje back alive. Marina knows what happened to her child and needs to tell the truth. She is an evil woman!," the mother-in-law said on the eve of the second anniversary of the boy's disappearance. "Marina took the child somewhere and gave it to someone. That's what the whole village is saying. When she was arrested and transferred to prison, I did not allow my granddaughter Andjelina to visit her in Pozarevac."

Novosti also published that the decision of the Center for Social Welfare prohibited the girl from seeing and visiting her mother in the Pozarevac prison, and that according to the director of that institution, the mother had to initiate the procedure for abolishing guardianship.

In a testimony for the daily Kurir from two and a half years ago, Marina said that her husband's family turned her daughter against her, and that they "filled her head with stories that she had sold her brother." She said that they reconciled four years later, when her daughter turned 18.

"I hugged her as if I was hugging her for the first time," she told reporters.

Marina also said that her husband visited her in prison, that they cried together, that he took her letters to their daughter, but that after his death that changed.

He died five months after Djordje's disappearance.

"They knew that Dejan (the husband) would die soon, and that I would stay with the children in the house," she said, adding that after her mother-in-law's death, there was a fight for the house in Majilovac where she lived with her late husband: "We succeeded and the house is now mine and Andjelina's."

She remained a child killer in people's eyes

On the same occasion, she told reporters that she hoped that her son was alive, and described him as an affectionate child.

"He would go around kissing everybody. Me, his sister, his dad... Since the day he disappeared, my life got turned upside down. I can't live without my child, but I can't go into my grave alive. God forbid that anyone should go through something like this," she said.

However, she says that despite the court's decision to acquit her, everyone blamed her for the child's death, and that she was mistreated in prison for that.

"My husband, mother-in-law, their family, they all told me that I was guilty for losing the child. I was arrested soon after. They forced me to confess to something I didn't do. I was already characterized as a child killer in detention," she said, adding that some prisoners physically attacked her, pulling her by the hair.

In 2012, the villagers told reporters that Dejan never lost hope, that he believed his wife and son had been kidnapped and drugged, and that the boy had been taken abroad, as well as that he would return to the village when he turned 20.

(Telegraf.rs)