Mental illness could not have made it possible for Pedro Hernandez to testify against himself in a 35-year-old murder case that sparked a national movement to protect missing children.
Hernandez, 53, is a married father from Maple Shade, New Jersey who is on trial for charges of second-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping of six-year-old Etan Patz in 1979. According to prosecutors, the first-grader was on his "first big boy walk to the bus stop alone" when he was lured by Hernandez by a smile and a soda before a "beautiful life" was "snuffed out."
"You will hear his chilling confession," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon told a panel of blank-faced jury members on Friday. "What you will see is someone who very keenly controls the information he puts out."
Hernandez was arrested in 2012, after law enforcement received a tip from his brother-in-law Jose Lopez, who the prosecutors say have been trying to contact the police for years. In a videotaped confession made for the police, Hernandez admitted luring Etan into the basement of the bodega where he worked as a clerk and strangled him to death before stuffing the boy's body into a 40-gallon garbage bag placed inside a box that he carried to an alley a few streets away and set it down next to bags of trash. He gave no motive, leading Illuzzi-Orbon to imply that it was sexual.
"You can imagine choking is not the first thing that happened to Etan," the prosecutor said. "It is the second."
Illuzzi-Orbon said May 25, 1979 was the first day Etan was allowed to walk the entire two blocks alone from his home on Prince Street to the bus stop. The night before, he had earned a dollar helping at the local handyman's shop and was eager to spend his hard-earned money for a treat at the corner deli where an 18-year-old Hernandez worked.
But Etan never made it to the bus stop. When he did not return home from school, his parents Stanley and Julie told the police and a massive search that involved hundreds of police officers and volunteers scouring the ins and outs of lower Manhattan. The boy was never found.
Although Hernandez was arrested only a few years ago, prosecutors say he implicated himself a long time ago. Illuzzi-Orbon said on the day after Etan's disappearance, Hernandez quit his job at the bodega and gave up his Roman Catholic faith to join a Pentecostal church, where members can ask for the forgiveness of God without the intercession of a priest. In the 1980s, during a farm retreat, Hernandez reportedly told the members of his church that he had killed a child. Later, he told Ramon Rodriguez, another member, that he killed a boy and chopped up his body. At another prayer meeting, Hernandez broke down and admitted to sexually assaulting and then killing a boy in New York City, said Illuzzi-Orbon.
Hernandez' first wife, Daisy, will also be testifying in court, said prosecutors. Daisy, who is now separated from Hernandez, told Illuzzi-Orbon that when she asked about a photo of Etan cut out from a milk carton lying inside a box of her ex-husband's belongings, he exploded in anger over her question.
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Missing Children's Assistance Act and declared May 25 the National Missing Children's Day. Etan was one of the first missing children whose face was posted on milk cartons.
Harvey Fishbein, Hernandez' lawyer, however, argues that his client's confession cannot serve as evidence against him, a mentally ill man who takes anti-psychotic drugs and has an I.Q. at the level of the lowest 2 percent in the United States.
"He has visions; he hears voices," Fishbein said. "He cannot distinguish between what is real and what is not."
Fishbein said that the prosecutor's reliance on the confession of Hernandez renders them a weak case. He said Hernandez gave police a fictional tale after six hours of interrogation and his statement could not be trusted. He also said that medical records will show that Hernandez has been diagnosed with a personality disorder and has difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy. Hernandez has an I.Q. score of about 70, Fishbein said.
"He's inconsistent and unreliable, yet he's the only witness against himself," said Fishbein.
The attorney said he plans to present evidence against Jose Antonio Ramos, a convicted child molester who was long believed to have murdered Etan. Ramos, then a boyfriend of one of Etan's baby-sitters, has spent 28 years in prison for sexually abusing young boys. In 2004, he lost a wrongful death lawsuit filed against him by the Patzes after a civil court declared him responsible for Etan's death.
Fishbein described Ramos as "cunning, manipulative, intelligent, despicable," and he once told prosecutors he was about 90 percent sure he picked up Etan on the day he disappeared. However, prosecutors never found enough evidence to charge Ramos with a crime.
The attorney said that the accusation against Hernandez is "just another sad twist in this tragic saga," and warned the jury against trying to provide closure to the Patz family.
"There will be no resolution for anyone if the wrong person is convicted in this case," he said.
