Opening statements made in Etan Patz murder case

NEW YORK -- More than three decades after the disappearance of Etan Patz, the man accused in the 1979 murder of the 6-year-old boy is now on trial.

A standing-room only crowd packed the Manhattan courtroom as opening statements began Friday in the trial of Pedro Hernandez, a man who worked in a nearby bodega at the time and confessed to killing the boy many years later.

In her opening statement, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said Etan was a "tiny man with a big heart" who couldn't wait to walk to his school bus stop alone.

She said his "beautiful little life" was snuffed out the very day he achieved that childhood freedom in 1979, calling the case "a crime that changed the face of this city forever."

Both Hernandez and Etan's father, Stan Patz, sat stock-still as the prosecutor spoke. Hernandez' wife, Rosemary, was also in the courtroom.

Hernandez emerged as a suspect in 2012, based on a tip and a videotaped confession, which prosecutors say was foreshadowed by remarks he made to friends and relatives in the 1980s.

"You will see and hear his chilling confession," Illuzzi-Orbon told jurors. "What you will see is someone who very keenly controls the information that he puts out."

Hernandez's attorneys will try to convince jurors that his confession was false and will suggest the real killer may be a convicted Pennsylvania child molester who had been a prime suspect for years.

In his opening statements, defense attorney Harvey Fishbein said Hernandez "cannot distinguish between what is real and what is not."

Fishbein urged jurors to focus on what he called a lack of evidence against his client.

Etan disappeared while walking to his school bus stop May 25, 1979. He was never found, but the investigation spanned decades and he was declared dead.

Prosecutors have spotlighted Hernandez's videotaped, hours-long confession, in which he says he offered Etan a soda to entice him into the basement of the Manhattan convenience store where Hernandez worked.

Then, Hernandez said, he choked the boy and dumped him, still alive, in a box with some curbside trash.

"Something just took over me, and I was just choking him," said Hernandez, 54, of Maple Shade, New Jersey. "He just kind of stood there, and I just felt bad, what I did."

Defense lawyers say Hernandez' confession is fiction, 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.

A defense psychologist wrote that Hernandez's psychological problems and intellectual limitations make him more likely than other people to confess falsely.

Hernandez's lawyers also plan to point to longtime suspect Jose Ramos, a Pennsylvania prisoner who dated a woman who sometimes cared for Etan.

Authorities said Ramos made incriminating statements when questioned about Etan in the 1980s, though he never confessed to killing the boy.

Ramos has denied it, but a civil court found him liable for Etan's death in 2004 after Ramos stopped cooperating with questioning.

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

Etan's disappearance ushered in a new protectiveness in American parenting.

He became one of the first missing children featured on milk cartons. His parents advocated for legislation that created a nationwide law-enforcement framework to address such cases.

The anniversary of his disappearance is now National Missing Children's Day.