Prosecutors launch second bid for conviction in Etan Patz death

NEW YORK -- Revisiting a crime that shattered a bygone era's sense of safety, prosecutors Wednesday launched their second bid for a conviction in one of the nation's most influential missing-child cases, the 1979 disappearance of Etan Patz.

After a jury deadlock last year, suspect Pedro Hernandez is back on trial in a case that eluded investigators for decades, ratcheted up Americans' consciousness of missing children and centers on whether a chilling confession was true.

"It's a cautionary tale, a defining moment, a loss of innocence," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi said as opening statements began. "It is Etan who will forever symbolize the loss of that innocence."

With his father and Hernandez's wife and daughter looking on, the trial began as an echo of the story that unfolded over four months last year -- so haunting about eight of the prior jurors and alternates were in the audience Wednesday to watch.

Prosecutors say Hernandez, 55, hid a secret for more than 30 years. His lawyers say he's mentally ill and falsely confessed to waylaying and killing Etan as he walked to his school bus stop May 25, 1979. It was the first day his mother granted her 6-year-old's big-boy wish to make the two-block walk by himself.

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"Pedro Hernandez is an innocent man -- an odd, limited and vulnerable person" whose only connection to this case is having worked at a convenience store by the bus stop, defense lawyer Harvey Fishbein told jurors.

"This trial," Fishbein said, "will not answer the question of what happened to Etan."

Etan's case did much to slam a door on a time when American parents, even some in New York City, felt comfortable letting children roam their neighborhoods unaccompanied.

The upbeat, trusting boy's body never was found, but his face became one of the first missing-children's portraits Americans saw on milk cartons.

The anniversary of his disappearance became National Missing Children's Day, and his parents helped push for a law that modernized how law enforcement handles missing-child cases.

Hernandez, 55, of Maple Shade, New Jersey, wasn't a suspect until police got a 2012 tip from his brother-in-law. He was among several relatives and acquaintances who later testified Hernandez said years ago he'd killed a child in New York.

Hernandez told authorities, on video, he'd choked Etan after offering him a soda to lure him into the basement of the convenience store.

"Something just took over me," Hernandez said. "I'm being honest. I feel bad what I did."

Prosecutors suggest the motive was sexual and depict Hernandez as a cunning criminal.

But the defense said the confession is fiction, imagined by a man with a history of hallucinations and an IQ in the lowest 2 percent of the population and fueled by more than six hours of police questioning off-camera.