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In Etan Patz case, defense focuses on the other suspect

FILE - In this combination of two file photos, convicted child molester Jose Antonio Ramos, left, and Pedro Hernandez, right, who is accused of abducting and killing six-year-old Etan Patz in 1979 are shown. Hernandez could not have murdered Patz, his defense has said. He is mentally ill, and that's why he falsely confessed to choking the boy in the basement of the convenience store where he worked. And another man long suspected in the crime is the true killer - there was just not enough evidence to try him, the defense argues. Testimony about Ramos, whose shadow has loomed large over the ongoing trial, is expected this week. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - In this combination of two file photos, convicted child molester Jose Antonio Ramos, left, and Pedro Hernandez, right, who is accused of abducting and killing six-year-old Etan Patz in 1979 are shown. Hernandez could not have murdered Patz, his defense has said. He is mentally ill, and that's why he falsely confessed to choking the boy in the basement of the convenience store where he worked. And another man long suspected in the crime is the true killer - there was just not enough evidence to try him, the defense argues. Testimony about Ramos, whose shadow has loomed large over the ongoing trial, is expected this week. (AP Photo/File)

By Associated Press 4 min read

NEW YORK (AP) – An enigmatic figure looms over the trial of a man who confessed to killing Etan Patz: the former suspect who some still believe is behind the disappearance of the 6-year-old on May 25, 1979.

Jose Antonio Ramos was never charged in the case that helped galvanize the national missing children’s movement. But for decades, the convicted pedophile was considered the prime suspect, until the bombshell confession in 2012 by Pedro Hernandez, a former stock clerk who worked at a convenience store where Etan was headed when he vanished.

Hernandez’s attorneys have been allowed to present to jurors evidence against Ramos at the trial – in essence mounting a mini-prosecution pointing to the former suspect in the hope of invalidating the confession given by the 54-year-old Hernandez.

An unlikely parade of high-profile witnesses have testified for the defense. They included a former Bronx assistant district attorney who first made a possible connection between Ramos and the Patz family in the 1980s, former U.S. Attorney Stuart GraBois and Mary Galligan, the FBI agent who had the case for a decade before she went on to head the investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

While most defense attorneys would be eager to pin a suspected crime on someone else, legal experts say the strategy is rarely allowed because it could confuse the jury and increase the burden for prosecutors. Judge Maxwell Wiley found good enough reason to allow testimony about Ramos.