Closing Arguments Begin In Etan Patz Murder Trial
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The case that has haunted New York for more than three decades will soon be in the hands of a jury.
On Monday, jurors heard closing arguments in the case against a 54-year-old New Jersey man accused of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz on May 25, 1979, as the boy walked to school for the first time on his own.
Pedro Hernandez confessed to the crime in 2012 in a case that has confounded law enforcement for decades. Etan's body was never found, nor any trace of clothing or his belongings.
Hernandez was a teenage stock clerk in SoHo at the time Etan disappeared but had never been considered a suspect. His name appears in law enforcement paperwork only one time during their lengthy probe. The Maple Shade, New Jersey, man made the stunning admissions after police received a tip from a relative that he may have been involved in the case.
"I grabbed him by the neck, and started choking him,'' Hernandez told police in a videotaped confession. "I was nervous, my legs were jumping. I wanted to let go but I just couldn't let go. I felt like something just took over me.''
Defense attorney Harvey Fishbein said Monday prosecutors have not shown that the confession was credible and there is no evidence to support charges that Hernandez killed a child.
"Pedro Hernandez is the only witness against himself, and he is inconsistent and unreliable," Fishbein told the jury.
Fishbein even accused prosecutors of manipulating evidence, saying "That's what you do when you don't have evidence," CBS2's Jessica Schneider reported.
The defense says the admissions are the fictional ravings of a mentally ill man with a low IQ and suggests that another man, convicted pedophile Jose Ramos, is the real killer. Defense lawyers called to the stand a former federal prosecutor and FBI agent who worked on the probe into Ramos for years. A former jailhouse informant involved in the investigation testified that Ramos admitted molesting the boy while the men were roommates in prison. Jeffrey Rothschild said Ramos recounted in horrifying detail how he molested Etan and many other boys.
"I've never been the same since that day,'' Rothschild said. "I thought my life was just a total wreck and a complete and total mess, but there are other people deeper or darker than me.''
"As the U.S. attorney said, as the FBI said, Jose Ramos is probably the person involved in the disappearance of Etan Patz. Most certainly it's not Pedro Hernandez," said Fishbein.
Prosecutors say Hernandez's confession is sound.
The trial began in late January, and jurors have heard from dozens of witnesses. Members of a prayer circle testified that Hernandez made tearful admissions during a retreat in the summer of 1979 that matched some of what he told authorities on video 33 years later: He gave a child a soda, took him to the store basement and choked him. One said Hernandez also admitted abusing the boy. Hernandez denied molesting Etan to police.
Mark Pike, Hernandez's former neighbor in Camden, New Jersey, testified that during a 1980 front-porch chat, Hernandez described how a boy in New York threw a ball at him, and "he lost it'' and strangled the child.
"I just said, 'Why?''' Pike recalled. Hernandez gave no answer, he said.
About two years later, Hernandez told 16-year-old girlfriend Daisy Rivera he wanted to come clean about "something terrible'' -- he had strangled a "gringo muchacho,'' or white guy, who offended him while in New York.
Etan's photo was one of the first on milk cartons. His disappearance, along with other children, helped galvanize the national missing children's movement. May 25 has been named National Missing Children's Day.
Prosecutors begin their closing arguments on Tuesday.
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