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by Pablo Guzmán
NEW YORK (CBS) ― A pool of three reporters from a group that included the Post, Newsday, the Times, the Daily News, and myself, for Channel 2, sat with Cesar Rodriguez in a small office at Rikers Island late this afternoon for what turned out to be a wide-ranging interview, centered around him trying to make people understand why he did what he did to Nixzmary.

Since I spent a large chunk of the day at another part of Rikers trying to speak with Nixzmary's mother, I was not one of the three reporters in the room. But we all met immediately afterwards to compare notes.

"He wasn't disheveled," Lisa Muòoz of the Daily News said. "But he did seem...languid. Low key. His responses were measured. And, we spoke in English."

A corrections officer with a video camera recorded his transport to and from the room. If this guy tripped or fell, they wanted to show it was an accident.

Rodriguez, though, said he hasn't entirely escaped injury since his arrest. "I got hit by other prisoners when I was in holding in Brooklyn, going to court. And I got sucker punched by another prisoner in Bellevue."

He said a guard at Bellevue threw a copy of yesterday's Daily News front page at him and said, "Are you happy now?"

"I have a lot of guilt. I'm sorry for all that happened. I have a problem with my emotions. It builds up; and I hold it all in. I emotionally just burst."

He wanted us to understand it was Nixzmary's fault: she just wouldn't listen. He ran through a litany of what he called her "mischief."

She cut her brothers' and sister's hair. She threw her mother's books. She bothered the cat. She threw the kids' toys. She stole money. She burned the 6-month-old baby's leg with a lighter.

"I hit her like this --- " he shows a fist --- "but not with the knuckles. On the legs. In her back."

Asked about how she once got a black eye, he said, "I probably used too much force."

"One time, the 1-year-old put his hand in a bottle of bleach. I smacked his hand. He never did it again. If a 1-year-old could learn, why not her?"

About tying her to the chair: "I used a rope. But when I saw it left marks, I tried to make it not hurt. I used duct tape, and put it over her arms over a long sweater, so it wouldn't mark her. And next to the chair, I put a table, with a pillow, so she could rest her head while she slept.

"I told her (tying her to the chair) was for her own good.

"I would have to lock her in that room at night, to protect myself and the kids. So I could sleep."

He denied abusing her sexually.

"I'm a good father. I took them shopping. I took this family in, and I fed them.

"When I was growing up, my mother used to beat me with a belt until she couldn't raise her arm anymore."

Rodriguez says the man he thought was his father turned out to be his stepfather, "but he never hit me."

He said that he got so exasperated with Nixzmary, he wanted to give her away, "leave her at the precinct."

When the caseworkers from the city's Child Services agency finally arrived, after the school called the child abuse hot line, Rodriguez says he asked them and the school for advice on how to handle Nixzmary, but didn't get it (ACS says they will not comment on anything Rodriguez says in jail). He says he told a female caseworker he wanted to give her to her maternal grandmother in Puerto Rico, but that the caseworker told him, "No, don't do it. You're going to regret it. She's going to end up hating you."

Rodriguez says things in the home took a final, worse turn after a series of bad events: Nixzmary's mother miscarried; he lost his job as a security guard after being told to take a few days with his wife; they couldn't get the kids anything for Christmas; the cable was cut; he was home all the time, and Nixzmary's behavior was ticking him off.

"I felt like this" (he clenches a fist, and brings it from afar, to his chest).

"Everything was closing in."

He beat Nixzmary more, he admits, but nothing changed. He said she would be silent, mostly, during the beatings, like she was trying to defy or stand up to him.

He didn't want to go into details about the murder -- "I'm on a hot seat" -- but says he talks to her ghost at night: "I ask her why she had to put me through so much trouble." He looks down, wrings his hands, and cries for the first time. "I tell her that I'm sorry, and that I love her."

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