Summary Becky Hernandez, 25, speaking publicly for the first time about the case against her father
NEW YORK: (AP) - The daughter of a man on trial for murder in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz testified Monday about her strict upbringing and the effect her father s arrest had on her.
Etan, who vanished on his way to school, helped galvanize the modern-day missing children s movement; his picture was one of the first to appear on a milk carton a practice that has since become common in the U.S.
Becky Hernandez, 25, speaking publicly for the first time about the case against her father, Pedro Hernandez, said she wasn t allowed out with friends as a youngster and her father held her hand crossing the street until she was 14.
Hernandez said stress over the case prevented her from getting a master s degree.
The defendant had no visible reaction as his daughter testified. He did turn around to wave and smile at his wife, who was sitting in the benches.
Pedro Hernandez confessed in 2012 to choking Etan in the basement of a convenience store where he worked. His attorneys say the confession is the fictional raving of a mentally ill man.
Over the years, the case bounced around between detectives and units and from local police to federal agents and back. Most of the historical documents in the file are not specific to Hernandez, because no one was focused on him.
There s been no physical evidence. During his confession, Hernandez told detectives that he tossed the boy s bag up onto a freezer in the basement of the convenience store.
"If the freezer is still there, the book bag should be there," Hernandez told detectives. But the shop was closed and cleared out in the early 1980s, its contents tossed, and it s not clear whether police were present at the time. The owners have died, and the bag never made it into evidence.
Nobody was ever found.
