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NYPD via AP file
Etan Patz vanished in New York on May 25, 1979. Despite an extensive search, his body was never found.
A grand jury has indicted a former SoHo bodega clerk on charges he lured 6-year-old Etan Patz into a basement and killed him 33 years ago, sources familiar with the case told NBC 4 New York.
Pedro Hernandez is charged with murder and kidnapping, the sources said.
Hernandez, who has a history of mental illness, was arrested last spring, decades after Patz disappeared off a SoHo street in a tragic case that has mystified New York City.
Previous story: Grand jury considers charges in Etan Patz disappearance
Police said Hernandez had admitted to luring Patz into a bodega where he worked, near the boy's house, and choking him to death in the basement.
Hernandez's attorney, Harvey Fishbein, said the trial would not solve the mystery of what happened to Patz.
Hernandez, he said, suffers from schizophrenia and has hallucinations. Fishbein said the entire case is based on statements made by his mentally ill client.
"The statements alleged by the people are not supported by any evidence whatsoever despite extraordinary investigative efforts by the police, back then and now," Fishbein said.
Read the indictment here (PDF)
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said at the time that police focused on Hernandez, who now lives in Maple Shade, N.J., after the Missing Persons Squad received a tip from someone who remembered Hernandez speaking of having killed a child.
A spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney said the grand jury found sufficient evidence to charge Hernandez and that the office believes the case should go to trial.
"This indictment is the outcome of a lengthy and deliberative process, involving months of factual investigation and legal analysis," said spokeswoman Erin Duggan.
Jonathan Dienst is WNBC’s chief investigative correspondent. Shimon Prokupecz is a WNBC investigative producer.
Leave a Comment:
Glad to hear they finally caught this sick POS and got him off the streets. Hopefully this will be the "closure" the family has been looking for.
Unfortunately, without the poor child's body, I don't think his family will ever have closure :(
The guy is schizophrenic which adds to confusion. OK, so there WAS a Co-Witness who said She heard him say He KILLED Little Etan. A murder trial with a Role Model NutCase defendant saying something. On the other hand this guy Probably IS The Killer. What A MESS...
There's no body. This guy is mentally impared, which makes him a target for police. Think about it: If he's already "confessed" (probably coerced), then he's got nothing to lose. Why not tell where the body is? I know why, because he doesn't know. No physical evidence, no real proof. And only a fool would accept that as closure.
This is NOT the first time he's confessed, he's done so REPEATEDLY over the years.
I'm surprised they are going through with this however. They never arrested Ottis Toole for murdering Adam Walsh, even though he repeatedly confessed to doing that crime, or others who've done the same, because lack of evidence (other than the confessions) wouldn't support a conviction. I agree with the above posters, without a body being produced, no real resolution will be done for the family.
33 years later. That's is awful. RIP kid
I remember than kid disappearing. I hope they toast him in the electric chair.
NY hasn't had capital punishment or the electric chair since 1963.
Good to see the NYPD now have someone responsible. Surprised that they didn't get on to this bum sooner.
They would have had him sooner had someone said something earlier. He told his church group years and years ago, I think also his family, that he had hurt a child. I guess they thought his confession was enough to grant him a Get Out of Jail Free card. This is a blight upon that church, the church leader, this family....to know for years this man was responsible for such a heinous, horrible deed and to turn a blind eye is unforgiveable. I guess if he killed another innocent person he would be treated with an equal amount of forgiveness by these people...if he confessed to them. Wonder how many confessions a guy gets before someone says "call the police!"?
Also remember when this happened... Kudos to the diligence of the police on unsolved crimes unit... Maybe the family can have some definite closure with a conviction.
"Justice delayed is justice denied"
I was a year older and living in NY when this horrible tragedy happened. Etan's name is one that has been burned into my memory for almost as long as I remember being alive. I still have a hard time understanding how someone can do such a horrible thing to such a precious little boy. I have a 5 year old daughter now and it would just rip me to pieces if anything happened to her. There are so many days after reading these news articles that I go home and hug her so tightly (not that I don't on the other days too). I don't think she'll be allowed to walk anywhere alone until she's about 40. Really makes you realize just how precious our little ones are and just how dangerous this world really can be. The only thing that's changed is that now we hear about so many others all over the country and the world that we would never hear about before.
"Hernandez, he said, suffers from schizophrenia and has hallucinations. Fishbein said the entire case is based on statements made by his mentally ill client." If true, this may not be an example of dogged police work, but simply pinning a murder on someone out of his mind. Years ago I had read that Patz's photo was supposedly found among items related to a child sex ring. Don't know what to believe after all these years.
I'm not going to hold my breath on this one. Basing an entire case around a mentally impaired person's statements to police is pretty weak. Plus we know that in many cases, police have badgered the mentally handicapped into giving false confessions. They are often times victims of the system. It's probably that the police just wanted to get this case out of their hair and magically found a scapegoat. I don't usually believe cases based on this kind of thing unless there is definitive physical evidence or multiple eye-witness accounts that were not coerced. Until there is literal proof aside from a possibly coerced confession from someone who suffers from schizophrenia and has hallucinations, I don't believe it. They haven't even found the boy's body. If this guy did it, he apparantly already admitted that he killed the boy, then there is no reason to keep the location of the body secret.
He probably isn't telling because he doesn't know.
He stated that he put the body in a garbage can. Therefore it was picked up years ago by the garbage collectors.
tragic,they come to our country,and murder our children,?
Where does it say he was from another country? Could have been born here, or in Puerto Rico, which is part of the USA.