Jurors In Etan Patz Trial Watch Another Videotaped Confession To Boy's Killing
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Jurors in the trial of a man accused of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz 35 years ago were watching a second videotaped confession Monday.
Earlier this month, the jury viewed the last of the confessions by Pedro Hernandez, recorded at the Manhattan district attorney's office in 2012.
On Monday, jurors watched another interrogation that took place shortly after Hernandez was picked up by police at his home in Maple Shade, New Jersey.
In this confession, Hernandez is more emotional, crying for several minutes, CBS2's Jessica Schneider reported. At one point, a detective puts his hand on Hernandez's shoulder and assures the suspect, saying, "It's all right," WCBS 880's Irene Cornell reported.
As CBS2's Jessica Schneider explained, all of it was shown as new evidence emerged in the case.
In the video, detectives show Hernandez a photo.
"Who is this?" a detective asks.
"Etan Patz," Hernandez answers.
"What'd you do to Etan Patz?" the detective asks.
"I choked him," Hernandez says.
The confession tape lasted about 45 minutes.
Hernandez says in the video that he went back to work after strangling the boy. He also says he confessed the killing to his wife and friend Mark Pike.
Detective David Ramirez took the stand to explain how he and two other detectives met Hernandez at his New Jersey home and took him to the Camden County Prosecutor's Office for questioning.
Hernandez's ex-wife, Daisy Rivera, and Pike testified earlier in the trial that Hernandez told them he had killed someone while working in a bodega in New York City.
Etan disappeared while walking to his school bus stop in SoHo on May 25, 1979. Hernandez was a teenage stock clerk at a bodega a few blocks from where Etan was last seen.
NYPD detectives drove Hernandez to the SoHo scene where the bodega once stood. Hernandez showed them where he discarded Patz's body in the trash on Thompson Street.
The child's body was never found, but he was legally declared dead as the investigation spanned decades.
Defense lawyers say Hernandez's confession is fiction, dreamed up by a mentally ill man with a low IQ and a history of hallucinations and fueled by more than six hours of police questioning before Hernandez was read his rights.
They also alleged that detectives invoked religion to get Hernandez to help them.
"They're combining the two to give my client the impression that if he says something to help the family he's doing God's work. But it's not real. It's fantasy," Attorney Harvey Fishbein said.
Defense attorneys are not trying to sift through newly discovered evidence.
Late last week police found three boxes of documents at a Harlem precinct that contain handwritten notes from the 1979 investigation.
Hernandez's attorneys said they will have to review 1,400 pages and that may spark a motion for a mistrial or force them to recall a witness.
"We haven't gotten it all yet. We're trying to do two things at once because we're trying to get it resolved for my client. he's been in jail 3 years," Fishbein said.
Defense attorneys maintain that Hernandez is bi-polar and schizophrenic and that his confessions are false.
Etan's disappearance ushered in a new protectiveness into 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.
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