Daughter testifies at murder trial in 1979 missing boy case
NEW YORK - The daughter of a man on trial for murder in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz testified Monday about her father's unusual behavior in an effort to show that he is mentally ill.
Becky Hernandez, 25, speaking publicly for the first time about the case against her father, Pedro Hernandez, said she wasn't allowed out with friends as a youngster unless she had a written invitation and two weeks' notice - and her father held her hand crossing the street until she was 14.
Etan, who vanished on his way to school, helped galvanize the modern-day missing children's movement; his picture was one of the first to appear on a milk carton - a practice that has since become common in the U.S.
The defense is trying to show Pedro Hernandez's 2012 confession to choking the boy is a delusion.
Becky Hernandez said her father would clean their Maple Shade, New Jersey, home profusely and cook dinner starting at 2 a.m. - the same food every night: chicken, rice and beans. He was hours early for everything and would not allow her to be home alone.
He would sleep for hours during the day, rarely socialized and insisted on sitting in the same church pew every Sunday, she testified.
She also said he saw shadowy figures, a lady in white, and one time said he awoke to find a bald man choking him who then disappeared. She'd come home to find him talking to himself. But they didn't call the doctors.
"We knew he wasn't well, and we didn't want to hurt his feelings," she said. "You know how children sometimes believe in something? That's the type of response we had. My mom always taught me that what he sees and what he believes is not what we have to see."
Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon on cross-examination sought to show Hernandez was strict and abusive and that he still tries to control her from prison.
Pedro Hernandez made a stunning confession in 2012 to choking Etan in the basement of a convenience store where he worked, after police questioned him on a tip. Over the years, he told a prayer circle, a neighbor and his ex-wife that he had harmed a child in New York. At least five people testified about what he said during the trial.
Etan vanished on his way to school on May 25, 1979. His disappearance helped galvanize the modern-day missing children's movement; his picture was one of the first to appear on a milk carton. Over the years, the case bounced around between detectives and units and from local police to federal agents and back.
There's been no physical evidence. During his confession, Hernandez told detectives that he tossed the boy's bag up onto a freezer in the basement of the convenience store.
No body was ever found.