Etan Patz's mom says at murder trial that son was trusting

NEW YORK - The mother of a 6-year-old boy who vanished on his way to school 35 years ago testified Monday that he was trusting but also scared of being lost or alone.

Julie Patz recounted her time living in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood when her son, Etan, was little. Etan disappeared on May 25, 1979 - the first time he walked to school alone.

"That was the last time I saw him. I watched him walk one block away," Julie Patz testified at the murder trial of store clerk Pedro Hernandez, who's accused of killing Etan. "I turned around and went back upstairs and that was the last time."

The boy was "totally outgoing and trusting of everyone - totally nonjudgmental about people," his mother said. "Everyone that he met once was his friend and was a nice person."

But while Etan craved independence and was eager to become a grown-up, Patz said, "at the same time he was very fearful of being lost or left alone by himself."

Julie Patz cried when talking about how she felt in the hours after she learned Etan was missing.

"I don't remember a thing about that night and the next day, quite honestly," she said. She recalls only having "very rubbery legs," an upset stomach and difficulty walking, thinking and talking.

Hernandez was a teenage shop worker in 1979 when New York police jotted down his name among those of many people they met during their feverish search.

But it wasn't until 2012 that Hernandez emerged as a suspect. The apparent breakthrough in the case was based on a tip and a videotaped confession that prosecutors say was foreshadowed by remarks he made to friends and relatives in the 1980s.

In the videotaped confession, Hernandez says he offered Etan a soda to entice him into the basement of a bodega where Hernandez worked. Then, Hernandez said, he choked the boy and dumped him, still alive, in a box with some curbside trash, reports CBS New York.

"Something just took over me, and I was choking him," said Hernandez, according to the station. "He just kind of stood there and I felt bad, what I did."

Hernandez's defense hinges on convincing jurors that the confession is false, dreamed up by a mentally ill man with a low IQ and a history of hallucinations and fueled by over six hours of police questioning before Hernandez was read his rights. After confessing, Hernandez told a defense psychologist his memory of the killing "feels like a dream" and he wasn't sure it had really happened.

Hernandez's lawyers are also suggesting that the real killer may be Jose Ramos, a convicted Pennsylvania child molester who was a prime suspect for years. Ramos had dated a woman who sometimes cared for Etan and authorities said Ramos made incriminating statements when questioned about the child's disappearance in the 1980s, though he never confessed to killing the boy. In 2004, after he stopped cooperating with authorities, a civil court found Ramos liable for Etan's death.

In considering evidence that reaches back to 1979, jurors will delve into a missing-child case that helped inject a new protectiveness into American parenting.

Etan became one of the first missing children featured on milk cartons. His parents helped advocate for legislation that created a nationwide law enforcement framework to address such cases, and the anniversary of his disappearance became National Missing Children's Day.

The trial is expected to last up to three months. In addition to Etan's mother, witnesses are expected to include psychologists, an inmate informant who knows Hernandez, and possibly other informants testifying against the earlier suspect.