Evidence of second suspect admissible in Etan Patz murder trial in New York

[December 23, 2014]  By Natasja Sheriff
 
 NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York judge on Monday ruled that evidence pointing to an additional suspect in the 1979 abduction and murder of Etan Patz can be presented in the trial against Pedro Hernandez, who confessed to killing the 6-year-old.

Hernandez, 53, is set to stand trial next month for the murder of Patz, whose disappearance on May 25, 1979, as he walked unaccompanied for the first time to a school bus stop in Manhattan, drew national attention.

After telling police during an interview in 2012 that he lured Patz into the basement of the deli where he worked as a store clerk and strangled him, Hernandez recanted his confession.

On Monday, his defense won the ability to include evidence that implicates Jose Ramos, once the key suspect in Patz's disappearance, in an effort to cast doubt on the confession.

Ramos, a convicted child molester who has been incarcerated in Pennsylvania for more than 20 years, is expected to invoke his right to remain silent if called to testify in the trial, but other evidence can still be admitted at trial.

The evidence includes a 1988 statement by Ramos in which he told investigators that he picked up a boy who matched Patz's description on the day of the disappearance.

When the boy resisted his sexual advances, he said he put the boy on a train uptown.

“This is a critical statement,” said lead defense attorney Harvey Fishbein. “It shows contact with Etan Patz and, if true, he couldn’t have been with my client that morning.”

Also admissible are the testimonies of witnesses, taken 20 years after Patz went missing, who said they saw Ramos with or near the boy the day of his abduction.

Additional evidence is being reviewed for possible admission.

Patz's face was the first to appear on the side of milk cartons in the appeal for the return of missing children.

His body was never found but he was declared legally dead in 2001.

Hernandez's trial is set to begin on Jan. 5. He faces two counts of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree kidnapping.

(Reporting by Natasja Sherriff; Editing by Laila Kearney and Eric Beech)

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