Ruling expected in 1979 NYC child-killing case

[May 15, 2013]  NEW YORK (AP) -- A man charged with murder decades after one of the nation's most infamous child disappearances is due to learn whether a judge believes there's enough evidence to bring the case to trial.

Pedro Hernandez of Maple Shade, N.J., was awaiting a ruling due Wednesday in the case surrounding 6-year-old Etan Patz, last seen walking to his Manhattan school bus stop in 1979.

Authorities say they have finally found the culprit in Hernandez, who confessed after his arrest last year and had made incriminating remarks years before. But his lawyer has said that Hernandez is schizophrenic and bipolar, and that his admission was false, peppered with questionable claims and made after almost seven hours of police questioning.

"No evidence or witnesses have been found corroborating any of the few facts" in Hernandez's confession, defense lawyer Harvey Fishbein wrote last month in papers arguing that the case should be dismissed.

The Manhattan district attorney's office has previously said there's enough proof to sustain the case, Hernandez willingly talked with investigators and prosecutors don't believe his confession is a mentally ill man's imaginings. Under New York law, a person can be convicted based only on a confession, if there's additional evidence that a crime was committed.

"The evidence before the grand jury (that indicted Hernandez) amply supports the offenses charged," prosecutors wrote in a filing this winter.

Etan vanished on May 25, 1979. The anniversary later was named National Missing Children's Day in his memory. He became one of the first vanished children pictured on a milk carton.

Hernandez, 52, was arrested last May after police got a tip that he'd told people years before that he had killed a child in New York City.

Hernandez then told authorities he'd seen Etan at the bus stop, offered the boy a soda to entice him to a corner store where Hernandez worked and choked the boy in the basement. Hernandez said he tossed Etan's book bag behind a basement freezer, put his limp body in a box and left it with some trash about a block away.

[Associated Press; By JENNIFER PELTZ]

Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.