Etan Patz jurors watch suspect Pedro Hernandez' confession video
NEW YORK (WABC) -- Jurors are watching the videotaped confession of a man who claimed to have choked 6-year-old Etan Patz in a New York store basement in 1979.
Pedro Hernandez is on trial for murder and has pleaded not guilty to killing Etan. His attorney Harvey Fishbein says the confession is fiction, dreamed up by a mentally ill man.
Hernandez admitted in hours of video to dumping the boy and putting his body in a plastic bag. He said he put the bag in a box, then dumped it with curbside trash a few blocks away.
Jurors watched intently Tuesday, and their expressions were neutral.
The video also was played in September during a hearing on whether the confession could be used at trial. Some personal details about Hernandez's life were removed.
Hernandez's attorney maintains that the confession is fiction, dreamed up by a mentally ill man.
"You have the right to remain silent do you understand?" an investigator said.
"Yes," said Hernandez, in a recording made back in 2012.
In a calm, clear voice, with no obvious emotion, Hernandez spent hours detailing the 1979 killing of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
"I ask him if he want something to drink -- soda or something -- and he said, 'Yeah'. So I told him to go down to the basement with me," Hernandez said.
Hernandez, claimed he'd never seen Etan before the little boy turned up in front of the SoHo bodega where he worked and waited alone for a bus.
"The sodas were on this side and he went in front of me. So when he went in front of me, I grabbed him by the neck and I started to choke him," Hernandez said. "I was nervous, my legs were jumping, I wanted to let go, but I just couldn't let go. I felt like something just took over me, and I don't know something just took over me, and I just choked him."
At his murder trial three and a half decades later, a jury hung on every word. Etan's family was in the gallery.
But Hernandez's own defense attorney claimed his client made the whole story up.
"This is the end product. This is the video that occurs after 20 hours of being in police custody and, um, we don't see the unrecorded seven hours of interrogation by police officers the prior day," his attorney said.
More than 30 years after Etan's disappearance, detectives arrested Hernandez after a family member turned him in.
The defense team says he has a low IQ and a history of mental problems, and that specific details, like the color of the little boy's bag, don't matchup.
"When I choked, I wanted to let him go but I just couldn't let him go," Hernandez said.
"Even though he was still alive I put him in the plastic bag, I closed the plastic bag, and then I took a box, cardboard box, and I put him in the box. I, you know, pushed him in the box and I closed the box," Hernandez said. "He didn't say nothing to me, even when I was choking him he didn't kick, he didn't scream or nothing, just kind of stood there, and I just feel bad for what I did. I shouldn't have done what I did."
The clip shown Tuesday is one of three confession videos made after Hernandez was arrested following a tip in May 2012.
The other videos were expected to be played.
