Person implicated in Etan Patz death

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NEW YORK (AP) ? A law enforcement official says a man in custody who has implicated himself in the death of 6-year-old Etan Patz (AY'-tahn payts) was picked up late Wednesday in Camden, N.J., and has been tied to the case in the past.

The man was being questioned Thursday by the Manhattan District Attorney's office, which is heading the probe by the FBI and police.

A person familiar with the investigation says the man's emergence as a person of interest was not related to the search of a Manhattan basement in April.

Investigators are still trying to confirm details of the man's story.

Both the person familiar with the probe and the official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the ongoing probe into the boy's disappearance in 1979.

Etan vanished while walking to a Manhattan bus stop 33 years ago.

source

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Man confesses to strangling Etan Patz

The disappearance of Etan Patz burst into the public spotlight on Thursday after a man told investigators that he had strangled Etan, the 6-year-old boy who vanished in SoHo on his way to school in 1979. The man said he wrapped the body in a box and put in a box, a law enforcement official said.

The man, Pedro Hernandez, told investigators that he had left the box at a location in Manhattan, but when he returned several days later the box was no longer there, the official said. Investigators recently took Mr. Hernandez to that location. A second official also said Mr. Hernandez told the authorities he had strangled the boy and discarded his body.

Mr. Hernandez was part of the neighborhood where Etan lived, working at a bodega near where the boy disappeared, a law enforcement official said. Shortly after Etan vanished, Mr. Hernandez moved to the Camden area in southern New Jersey, where he has many relatives, the official said.

Investigators interviewed Mr. Hernandez, 51, for much of the day on Wednesday in the prosecutor?s office in Camden County.

http://www.nytimes.c...e-say.html?_r=1

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Kelly said 51-year-old Pedro Hernandez, of New Jersey, was working as a stock clerk at a bodega on 448 West Broadway and Prince St. in Manhattan when he spotted Patz and lured him into the store with the promise of a soda. Hernandez then allegedly led Patz down into the basement of the bodega, where he choked him and disposed of him by putting Patz's body into a trash bag outside. Kelly said the motive of the murder is still under investigation.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/05/24/suspect-in-custody-in-decades-old-cold-case-missing-boy-etan-patz-police-say/#ixzz1vpzaxkNJ