Jury Deliberations In Retrial Of Pedro Hernandez Stretch Into Second Day
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Jury deliberations in the retrial for a man accused of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in New York City 37 years ago continued Thursday.
Jurors are considering the many confessions made by Pedro Hernandez over the years, starting in the summer of 1979.
Patz went missing a few months before while he walked alone to his school bus stop for the first time. Hernandez is accused of luring the boy into the basement of a SoHo deli before strangling him.
Witness Ramone Rodriguez, who met an 18-year-old Hernandez while on a church retreat, described his first confession to the court.
Rodriguez said he sensed the shy teen has something to hide. Eventually, Hernandez told him that he took a kid into the basement of the bodega where he worked by offering him a soda, then abused and killed the boy.
Variations on that theme were repeated over the years to friends and family before Hernandez confessed to law enforcement in 2012, WCBS 880's Irene Cornell reported.
Hernandez's attorneys insist he is mentally ill and say his confessions were false.
A previous trial for Hernandez ended in a hung jury after 18 days of deliberations in 2015.
