Articles On Information: Prosecutor in Etan Patz Case Says Suspect’s Many Confessions Ring True

In Closing, Prosecutor in Etan Patz Case Says Suspect’s Many Confessions Ring True

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A former store clerk accused of murdering 6-year-old <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/etan_patz/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Etan Patz.">Etan Patz</a>
 first confessed to the crime in 1979 to a prayer group and has admitted
 to the killing more than a half-dozen times — to his family, to the 
police, to a prosecutor and, finally, to several psychological experts, a
 prosecutor said in her closing argument on Tuesday.</div>
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In
 a four-and-half-hour summation, the prosecutor, Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, 
told a jury in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that the defendant, 
Pedro Hernandez, had never retracted any of those confessions, the 
details of which she argued have the ring of truth. And some of his 
admissions, she noted, occurred decades before he was interviewed by the
 police. “The defendant never took any of it back,” Ms. Illuzzi-Orbon 
said.</div>
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The
 prosecutor hammered away at the defense argument that Mr. Hernandez had
 invented a false confession under police pressure because of his low 
I.Q. and a personality disorder that made it hard for him to distinguish
 fantasy from reality.</div>
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Instead,
 Ms. Illuzzi-Orbon painted a picture of Mr. Hernandez as a quiet, 
observant and canny man who watched Etan when he went alone to a store 
where Mr. Hernandez worked or waited at a nearby school bus stop. She 
asserted that the motive for the killing was sexual, though Mr. 
Hernandez has denied he molested Etan.<br />
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<a href="http://articlesoninformation.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="http://articlesoninformation.blogspot.com/" class="media-viewer-candidate" data-mediaviewer-caption="Stanley Patz, the father of Etan, in court during a break Tuesday. The jury is expected to begin deliberating Wednesday." data-mediaviewer-credit="Brian Harkin for The New York Times" data-mediaviewer-src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/04/15/nyregion/15PATZ-JP/15PATZ-JP-superJumbo.jpg" height="400" itemid="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/04/15/nyregion/15PATZ-JP/15PATZ-JP-master180.jpg" itemprop="url" src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/04/15/nyregion/15PATZ-JP/15PATZ-JP-master180.jpg" width="267" /></a></div>
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                <span class="caption-text">Stanley Patz, the father of Etan, in court during a break Tuesday. The jury is expected to begin deliberating Wednesday.</span>
                        <span class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder">
            <span class="visually-hidden">Credit</span>
            Brian Harkin for The New York Times        </span>
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“He
 was sullen, observing, abusive and abused, and day after day, he saw 
this beautiful little boy alone,” Ms. Illuzzi-Orbon said. “One day he 
acted on his impulse and did something terrible to this little boy. And 
spent the rest of his life waiting to be discovered.”</div>
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Etan
 vanished on the morning of May 25, 1979, as he walked from his parents’
 loft on Prince Street to a school bus stop two blocks away. His 
disappearance shocked the city, forever changing what New York parents 
considered safe for their children, and eventually led to a national 
movement to raise awareness about child abductions.</div>
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Mr.
 Hernandez, 54, was arrested in May 2012 after a tip from his 
brother-in-law, who said Mr. Hernandez had talked to a prayer group in 
1979 about killing a child in New York City when he worked at a bodega.</div>
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After more than <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/nyregion/in-etan-patz-case-detective-says-lengthy-interview-preceded-a-confession.html?action=click&contentCollection=N.Y.%20%2F%20Region&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article" title="Times article">six hours of interrogation</a>,
 Mr. Hernandez, living in Maple Shade, N.J. at the time, broke down in 
tears and said he had lured Etan into the basement of the bodega in SoHo
 where he worked and strangled him. He said he had put the boy’s body in
 a plastic bag and a box, then left it in a subterranean passageway a 
block away. Later, he repeated the confession to a prosecutor three 
times.</div>
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Defense
 experts say Mr. Hernandez has an I.Q. of about 70 and schizotypal 
personality disorder, which not only leads him to confuse fact and 
fiction, but also sometimes causes him to hallucinate.</div>
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After testimony that lasted 10 weeks, Mr. Hernandez’s lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/nyregion/in-closing-argument-in-etan-patz-trial-defense-says-confession-was-imagined.html?ref=nyregion" title="Times article">argued on Monday</a>
 that Mr. Hernandez’s mind was so suggestible and weak that he came to 
believe he had committed the crime when the police used psychological 
ploys, like appealing to his deep religious faith and telling him the 
Patz family would thank him, to get him to talk. “He wanted to be part 
of the team,” Mr. Fishbein said.</div>
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Mr. Fishbein also presented evidence pointing to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/nyregion/defense-at-patz-trial-presents-jury-with-alternate-suspect-via-an-old-video.html" title="Times article">another possible culprit</a>: Jose A. Ramos, a convicted child molester who was a suspect in the case for years but was never charged.</div>
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