Patz murder keeps New York police busy
Police and prosecutors investigating the murder of six-year-old Etan Patz are now working on corroborating the confession of a 51-year-old family man of Maple Shade, New Jersey.
Following a mystery that puzzled investigators for more than three decades, a tip led them to Pedro Hernandez, their suspect, who is currently in New York's Bellevue Hospital pending psychiatric evaluation.
The suspect is said to have had psychiatric treatment in the past for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
He has not been charged with any crime.
It has been alleged Hernandez confessed to strangling Etan and dumping his body in a rubbish heap in 1979. Hernandez was still a teenager at the time.
After luring him into a store in which he was working, prosecutors say Hernandez gave Etan a drink before choking him to death and dumping the body a short distance away.
6-year-old Etan Patz vanished near his Manhattan home on May 25, 1979.
His disappearance gripped the nation and launched the campaign for missing children in which their faces were pictured on milk cartons.
In 2001 a lawsuit was filed by Etan's family against another man, Jose Antonio Ramos, a convicted child molester who had been acquainted with Etan's babysitter.
A judge found Ramos responsible for the boy's death and ordered him to pay the family $2 million.
Ramos was never been charged in the case.
Source: U.S. News.Net
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