Etan Patz (Stanley Patz)
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He no longer believes his own confession — and he’ll take that to a jury.
Pedro Hernandez, the mentally troubled accused killer of iconic missing child Etan Patz (inset photo), was formally told of the murder and kidnapping indictment against him in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday (pictured), as his lawyer said his client now believes he is innocent and will aggressively fight the charges.
Hernandez, 51, will plead not guilty and will seek the dismissal of the case or, failing that, an acquittal at trial, said the lawyer, Harvey Fishbein.
“This is not a case of not guilty by insanity,” the lawyer said after a short proceeding in Manhattan Criminal Court. “That refers to, ‘I did it, but I did it as a result of my mental disease or defect,’ ” he said. “That is not the case here.”
Hernandez was an 18-year-old clerk at the SoHo bodega that Etan was to walk past on the day he disappeared in 1979. He was arrested in May on a family member’s “tip” that he’d admitted committing a crime against a child.
Hernandez immediately made four statements of confession, including a videotaped one in which, on his request, cops kneeled on the floor and prayed at his side, something Fishbein yesterday called potentially “manipulative.”
Since then, investigators have admitted privately that despite a full-throttle, six-month investigation, they’ve found no evidence beyond Hernandez’s own words and his proximity to the crime scene on the day of the disappearance.
Hernandez has no record of violence or sex crimes. And while he has passed the low bar of being mentally fit to proceed to trial, he has repeatedly been diagnosed as schizophrenic, according to his lawyer.
Still, investigators maintain, Hernandez’s confessions are detailed and compelling — even if ultimately unverifiable — and prosecutors believe that he unburdened himself truthfully.
“The DA’s office didn’t flip a coin and decide to go with this confession — you can assume it has been thoroughly vetted by experts in false confessions,” said a source close to the investigation.
Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Anthony Ferrara sent the case for arraignment to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley, before whom Hernandez will plead not guilty on Dec. 12.