Prosecution Rests In Etan Patz Trial; Defense To Present Evidence Monday
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Prosecutors have rested in the murder trial of a man accused of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979.
Defense attorneys will begin presenting evidence Monday. The trial is expected to last at least another month.
Earlier, prosecutors made a presentation that jurors won't soon forget, WCBS 880's Irene Cornell reported.
Prosecutors staged a chilling demonstration using a small boy and a banana box of the type Pedro Hernandez confessed to using to dispose of Etan's body, Cornell reported.
Hernandez told authorities he choked the boy in 1979, then put the body in a bag and tossed it in a box.
The demonstration is intended to show that Etan's body would have fit into such a box, bolstering Hernandez's confession.
The photos show a box lined with a black plastic garbage bag and the little boy scrunched over, facedown inside the box. The child volunteer was 45-inches tall, weighing 48 pounds -- just Etan's size.
The prosecutor pointed out they never closed the plastic garbage bag around the child, but he did fit "neatly" inside the box.
Etan's body was never found. Defense attorneys say Hernandez's confession is fiction.
The child who posed is not identified. His face is obscured in photos shown to the Manhattan jurors.
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