Ex-Girlfriend Of Etan Patz Murder Suspect: He Never Seemed Delusional
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The childhood sweetheart of the man accused of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz told a jury Thursday that she saw no signs Pedro Hernandez was mentally.
Yvonne Velez, the final witness to testify in Hernandez's murder trial, said she and the defendant were girlfriend and boyfriend in Puerto Rico when she was 12 and Hernandez was 15, WCBS 880's Irene Cornell. They met at church, Velez said.
Velez, now 51, was flown in from Puerto Rico by prosecutors to dispute the defense's claim that Hernandez is mentally unbalanced and has been hearing voices and having hallucinations since he was 15 years old.
Ex-Girlfriend Of Etan Patz Murder Suspect: He Never Seemed Delusional
She testified that Hernandez was not talking to himself, seeing things or hearing voices, as far as she knew.
"I looked on him as an intelligent person," she said. "He was warm and nice."
While Velez said Hernandez could be funny and was quiet, she admitted he was capable of turning angry.
Hernandez confessed to police in 2012 that he offered Etan a soda to entice him into the basement of the SoHo bodega where he worked in 1979. Then, Hernandez said, he choked the boy and dumped him in a box with some curbside trash. Etan's body has never been found.
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.
Closing arguments in the trial are set to begin Monday.
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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