Etan Patz Suspect Indicted

Police say Pedro Hernandez has already confessed
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Nov 14, 2012 12:55 PM CST
Etan Patz Suspect Indicted
Etan Patz, who vanished in New York on May 25, 1979, inspiring one of the most extensive missing-child searches ever.   (AP Photo/Stanley K. Patz)

Pedro Hernandez, the 51-year-old suspect in the 1979 disappearance of a 6-year-old New York City boy that led to a national missing-children movement has been indicted on charges of murder and kidnapping, his lawyer said today. Hernandez was arrested earlier this year, and investigators say he confessed to luring Etan Patz into the convenience store where he worked as a clerk with the promise of a soda. He allegedly said he led the child to the basement, choked him and left his body in a bag of trash about a block away.

Hernandez's lawyer has described him as bipolar and schizophrenic, with a history of hallucinations. The diagnosis could become the basis of a psychiatric defense claiming that Hernandez agreed to speak to police without understanding his rights, and that the purported confession was a sick fantasy. (More Etan Patz stories.)

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