A New York City man who once confessed to killing a six-year-old boy in one of America’s most famous missing child cases pleaded not guilty on Wednesday.
Pedro Hernandez, 51, who appeared at a brief court hearing in Manhattan, answered “not guilty” when asked by the judge what plea he was entering in the case of Etan Patz.
The Patz saga is even more unsettling because there have been few clues as to how and why the boy disappeared more than 33 years ago.
Etan disappeared on May 25, 1979 while walking for the first time by himself to the school bus stop near his home in Manhattan’s SoHo district. Although authorities have declared him dead, his remains have never been found.
Officials said that Hernandez told police last May that he had lured the boy to the basement of the grocery story where he worked and strangled the child. Hernandez would have been 19 at the time of the murder.
His attorney Harvey Fishbein has said his client suffers from mental illness, including schizophrenia, as well as “borderline-to-mild mental retardation.”
The case, which became a national cause celebre, awakened millions of Americans to the dangers of child abduction, and led parents across the nation to increase their vigilance over their young ones.
The boy’s face became the first missing child to be featured on milk cartons, as authorities attempted to draw national attention to the issue of missing children.
Suspect in New York child killing pleads not guilty
