Patz case to wrap, go to jury
AFTER A three-month trial, a jury will begin deliberations this week in the case against Pedro Hernandez, a former SoHo bodega clerk accused of killing 6-yearold Etan Patz decades ago.
The panel will have to determine whether Hernandez’s lengthy 2012 multipart confession is reliable enough to prove his guilt after they hear summations beginning Monday.
They will also have to consider evidence about the past investigation into longtime suspect Jose Ramos, a convicted child molester who dated a woman connected to the Patz family.
Lawyers for 54-year-old Hernandez argue his admissions were based on a delusion — a false belief he adopted. His personality disorder and history of hallucinations make him susceptible to believing such fantasies, defense lawyers Harvey Fishbein and Alice Fontier say.
But prosecutors say the confession is solid.
Although Etan’s body was never found, jurors can rely on the strength of the circumstances and the consistency of Hernandez’s own story before and after his May 2012 arrest, Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon has argued.
Hernandez — in a chilling taped statement — said he lured the boy to the basement of the West Broadway bodega where he stocked items and made sandwiches at the time the boy disappeared in 1979. “I started choking him. . . . He wasn’t dead. He was still gasping,” Hernandez said, explaining that he stuffed him in a plastic bag to finish the deed by suffocating the tiny child.
He said he left Etan in a produce box in a garbage-filled alley a block and a half away from the store.
Ramos, however, once told former federal prosecutor Stuart GraBois that he was “90%” sure a boy he picked up and tried to sexually abuse was Etan.
Hernandez was picked up at his New Jersey home on May 24, 2012, one day shy of the 33rd anniversary of the day Etan was last seen.
Hernandez is charged with two counts of seconddegree murder — one for the alleged intentional killing of the missing child and another for causing the boy’s death while committing a felony, kidnapping. He faces life in prison if convicted.