Man charged in Etan Patz killing has mental health issues - latimes.com

 

NEW YORK — A man who claims to have abducted and strangled Etan Patz, who vanished 33 years ago Friday, has suffered from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and hallucinations, his attorney said as the man had his first court appearance since making his surprise confession a day earlier. Pedro Hernandez, 51, did not enter a plea to a second-degree murder charge filed earlier Friday. He also did not speak during a hearing that lasted just a few minutes. As his court-appointed attorney, Harvey Fishbein, outlined what he called Hernandez's "long psychiatric history," Hernandez sat slumped in a chair, clad in an orange jumpsuit, his hands manacled behind his back. Hernandez has been held at New York's Bellevue Hospital because of his apparent mental instability, and he and Fishbein appeared via a video linkup to a Manhattan courtroom shortly after Manhattan Dist. Atty. Cyrus Vance Jr. announced the charges. "This is the beginning of the legal process, not the end," Vance said in a statement that reflected the challenges of prosecuting a case in which there is no body, no physical evidence linking Hernandez to the crime, and a defendant with an apparent history of mental illness. "There is much investigative and other work ahead." Even though Hernandez says he committed the murder, his motive remains unclear. Patz's parents and at least one investigator became convinced years ago that a convicted pedophile serving time on an unrelated charge was the culprit. In 2004, a civil court ruled the man, Jose Ramos, responsible for Etan's death. Ramos denied involvement. Hernandez was not asked to enter a plea, and Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr. ordered a psychiatric examination for him. Assistant Dist. Atty. Armand Durastanti also said no bail should be considered, and none was requested. "It has been 33 years and justice has not yet been done in this case," Durastanti said, noting the haste with which Etan's life was ended on May 25, 1979, as he made the short walk from his Manhattan apartment to his school bus stop. "This is approximately 110 yards. He has not been seen or heard from since." The hearing coincided withNational Missing Children's Day, which President Reagan proclaimed in 1983 in honor of Etan. He was the first child to have his picture appear on a milk carton, part of the nationwide awareness movement that ensured his face would be familiar to anyone buying milk. His disappearance — on the first day his parents, Stan and Julie Patz, had let him walk to the school bus alone — also is seen as marking the end of an era when it was not unusual for young children to walk to school or go out to play without parents by their sides. For decades, the case haunted the street in the now-trendy SoHo neighborhood where Etan's parents, Stan and Julie Patz, still live. Neither parent has spoken out about Hernandez's sudden confession, which came a month after the FBI and New York police dug up the basement of a nearby building in search of Etan's remains. None was found. But the renewed publicity about the case from that dig apparently nudged someone close to Hernandez to tip police that he might be involved in Etan's disappearance. At the time the boy vanished, Hernandez was an 18-year-old stock clerk at a corner grocery store near the Patz home. He moved to New Jersey shortly after Etan vanished, and he had told some people over the years that he had "done a bad thing and killed a child in New York," New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in announcing Hernandez's arrest on Thursday. Kelly said Hernandez was brought in for questioning on Wednesday and told police he had lured Etan into the store with promises of a soda, taken him into the basement, strangled him, and put the body into an alley with the trash. The body never was found, and Kelly said he didn't expect to find any physical evidence to corroborate Hernandez's confession. But he said Hernandez was able to provide enough details of the crime to convince police he was telling the truth. Neither the Patz family nor Hernandez's appeared at the Friday court hearing, and Hernandez's wife has not commented on her husband's arrest. According to the Associated Press, the Rev. George Bowen Jr., the pastor at Hernandez's church, said that Hernandez's wife and daughter visited him Thursday after he was in custody. "They were just crying their eyes out," AP quoted Bowen as saying. "They were broken up. They were wrecked. It was horrible. They didn't know what they were going to do."