NEW YORK (AP) – Trying a man for murder in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz has come with obstacles created by the passage of time: Many witnesses, including the lead detective, have died. Memories of those still alive have faded.
And the piles of investigative records from the case include untold missing documents – some of them in three boxes discovered in a police storage room in just the past few days, even as the trial is well underway.
“The historical file is incomplete,” defense attorney Harvey Fishbein said after news of the boxes surfaced this week. “It shows the fact that no one knows what happened in 1979, and the investigation’s been massive and the fact that there are so many questions about this case is a real problem.”
Defense attorneys say that paper trail is another reason to doubt the case against 54-year-old Pedro Hernandez, who gave a stunning confession to investigators three years ago, saying he lured Etan to the basement of the convenience store where he worked, choked him and dumped his body a few blocks away. Hernandez’s attorneys say the videotaped admissions were made up by man with a history of mental illness.
Etan vanished on his way to school on May 25, 1979; his disappearance helped galvanize the modern-day missing children’s movement. Over the years, the case bounced around between detectives and units and from local police to federal agents and back. Most of the historical documents in the file are not specific to Hernandez, because no one was focused on him. But prosecutor argue it doesn’t matter, because over the years in New Jersey, Hernandez told a prayer circle, his ex-wife and a neighbor that he’d harmed a child in New York.