The man indicted in the killing of Etan Patz in 1979 loudly pleaded “not guilty†Wednesday to murdering the 6-year-old boy.
Pool photo by Louis Lanzano Pedro Hernandez in court last month.Those two words are the only ones the man, Pedro Hernandez, 51, has uttered in court since his arrest in May. He entered the courtroom wearing a sweatshirt and sweat pants with his hands cu ffed behind his back. He glanced at his wife and daughter in the audience before sitting down.
The police have said Mr. Hernandez made a videotaped confession during which he said he had choked Etan moments after luring him to the basement of a bodega where he was working.
After Mr. Hernandez's appearance in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to enter his formal plea, his lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, said his client had distanced himself from the confession and no longer believed what he had told the police.
Mr. Fishbein said Mr. Hernandez was susceptible to making a false confession because of his long history of mental illness, including hallucinations, his low intelligence and his detention by the police for six or seven hours on the day he confessed.
“There has to be more than the statement and we believe there is no further evidence,†Mr. Fishbein said. He said he intended to file a motion to have the indictment dismis sed because it is based on nothing more than an untrue confession.
The office of Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, contends the confession is credible and persuasive and not the product of Mr. Hernandez's mental illness.
Prosecutors filed with the court a record of 16 times and locations when Mr. Hernandez made statements about the killing to law enforcement authorities over the span of more than 30 hours in May.
The statements began at Mr. Hernandez's home in Maple Shade, N.J., at 7:25 a.m. on May 23. He made a videotaped and written statements at the Camden County, N.J., prosecutor's office just before 3 p.m.
At 10:30 that evening, he was with the police near the bodega and Etan's apartment in SoHo. Just after 2 a.m. on May 24, Mr. Hernandez was at the office of the Manhattan district attorney speaking to a prosecutor. He made videotaped statements in that office at 2:17 a.m. and again at 6:30 a.m.
Mr. Hernandez is due back in court on Jan. 30.
