William Page stood a distance away from his 23-month-old daughter and listened to her cry.

Then, he left Nyia in a wooded area of Rankin, on a February day with a subzero windchill factor, and walked home.

And went to bed.

That was Mr. Page's own story -- the one he told police on Feb. 7, 2007 -- three days after Nyia's body, clad in a maroon, yellow and blue sweater, was found frozen to the ground. The diaper she'd been wearing was found along the railroad tracks nearby.

On Wednesday, during the first day of Mr. Page's capital homicide trial, his defense attorney told jurors that they should not believe the recorded statement he gave to the police.

Instead, at the time, Mr. Page was isolated, repeatedly interrogated, worried about his daughter and falsely accused by a 6-year-old boy of molestation, said attorney Christopher Patarini.

"Why is he making the statement? What is going on in his mind?" Mr. Patarini asked. "This is something you're going to have to struggle with."

But, he continued, his client will testify later in the trial and try to explain it.

"Once you listen to the case, you're going to see they have no case," Mr. Patarini said. "What he said was not true."

But Deputy District Attorney Mark V. Tranquilli gave the jurors a different picture, portraying Mr. Page as emotionless even as police first responded to his Braddock home the morning of Feb. 3, 2007, on the report of a missing child.

Nyia's parents, Darlene Robinson and Mr. Page, discovered her missing that morning when they woke up. They and other family members searched the four-story home for her, and when she wasn't found, Ms. Robinson called 911.

During the call, the woman sometimes couldn't be understood through her sobbing.

She told dispatchers she last saw her daughter about midnight, and while she didn't think Nyia had left the house on her own, that the back door was unlocked.

Ms. Robinson described the sweater her daughter was wearing, and the four little ponytails in her hair, held by orange rubber bands -- two on the sides, one on top and one in the back.

When investigators got there, they quickly noticed that Mr. Page was not having a similar emotional reaction as his other relatives, Mr. Tranquilli said.

"The family members were frantic," he said. "Everyone except William Page."

The man also volunteered information to them -- that a blue, electric blanket that had been in the basement was missing, and gave a suggestion that police should look for Nyia along the railroad tracks.

Mr. Page also told officers to look in the basement -- what he referred to as his "dungeon," where he played video games and kept a stash of pornography -- where they found a bloodied Terrible Towel, child's T-shirt and pair of women's underwear.

According to Mr. Tranquilli, Mr. Page tried to explain away the blood. He told investigators in the taped statement that the night she disappeared she went down into the basement while he was there and kept taking her diaper off.

Mr. Page told officers that he was so enraged by that, that he kicked the little girl between the legs --wearing Timberland boots, causing the bleeding.

"That kick never took place," Mr. Tranquilli said. "William Page had to come up with a reason for that blood."

However, when an autopsy was performed on Nyia, the forensic pathologist found no evidence of any sexual assault.

The prosecutor said he would call an expert in child sexual abuse who will testify that it's possible the pathologist missed some internal vaginal injury.

"What did William Page do to his 2-year-old daughter that was terrible enough that he had to freeze her to death?" Mr. Tranquilli asked.

But Mr. Patarini told jurors that they should not jump to conclusions.

"The commonwealth wants to suggest to you that this is a sexually driven case," he said. "Ask yourself, is the case what they say it is?"

Investigators found no fluids on Nyia's body indicating sexual assault, Mr. Patarini continued.

He asked the jury not to allow emotions in the case to overwhelm them.

In the meantime, as Mr. Tranquilli concluded his opening, Mr. Page's mother, who had just entered the courtroom a short time before, had a seizure.

Mr. Tranquilli finished with the jury, as Allegheny County sheriff's deputies called paramedics to the third-floor courtroom.

He told the jurors that Mr. Page had a number of chances to stop what was happening and prevent Nyia's death.

"He chose to abandon her in a ravine that she had no hope of getting out of," Mr. Tranquilli said. "She had four hours [to survive in the cold]. He had chances to undo what he had done. When that 911 call was made, William Page had a chance to save his daughter's life, and he didn't take it."

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