35 years after boy Etan Patz vanished, murder trial to open
JENNIFER PELTZ
NEW YORK — A prosecutor says the little boy named Etan Patz was a "tiny man with a big heart" who couldn't wait to walk to the school bus stop by himself.
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon says Etan's life was snuffed out the very day he achieved that childhood freedom in 1979.
Opening statements began Friday in the trial against Pedro Hernandez, a mentally ill man who worked in a nearby shop at the time.
Hernandez confessed to killing Patz in a videotaped confession in 2012. Prosecutors say Hernandez also made incriminating remarks to friends and relatives in the 1980s.
But his lawyers call his confession false, and he has pleaded not guilty.
Etan vanished in May 1979, becoming one of the first missing children pictured on milk cartons in the United States.