The devastated daughter of Pedro Hernandez has been shattered by the revelation that her estranged father is apparently a confessed murderer, her mother-in-law told The Post.
Pedro Hernandez’ 27-year-old daughter, Nathalie, hasn’t had any contact with her father in years but has been stunned by the news of his admission that he lured a then-6-year-old Etan Patz into a Soho bodega by offering him a soda, then killed the child and dumped his body back in 1979.
“Nathalie wasn’t even alive when this happened. She didn’t know her father was a killer. She hardly knew him at all,” a woman who identified herself as Nathalie’s mother-in-law told The Post. “Nathalie’s a wonderful wife and mother, she is in there crying. She’s a mess. She can hardly speak.”
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Nathalie and her older brother Peter are Hernandez’ children from his marriage to first wife, Daisy, who has refused to comment on the arrest. His current wife, Rosemary, and their 23-year-old daughter Becky, have also declined comment.
Nathalie’s mother-in-law, who refused to give her name, said Pedro and Daisy divorced years ago and the family was not close.
“She just found out yesterday that her father was a cold blooded killer, so she wants even less to do with him,” the mother-in-law said.
A tipster ratted out Camden, N.J. resident Pedro Hernandez, 51, who is schizophrenic and bipolar and was being held at Bellevue Hospital after threatening suicide, sources said.
He was working in the Prince Street bodega when Patz went missing, and left the downtown neighborhood for New Jersey in the weeks after the child’s disappearance.
The fate of Etan Patz is a mystery that has gripped New York City for 33 years, with investigators recently digging up the basement of a Soho building in an ultimately fruitless search for evidence that may have helped flush out Hernandez as a suspect.
A weeping Hernandez repeatedly apologized when cops finally confronted him this week, sources said, and claimed to have put Etan’s body in a bag, then into a box which was left out with the trash.
“I’ll tell you everything you need to know about Etan Patz,” he told them, according to sources.
Hernandez didn’t enter a plea in his arraignment yesterday and was ordered held without bond. Justice Matthew Sciarrino also ordered a psychiatric evaluation for the suspect.