Defense Rests in Trial of Pedro Hernandez, Accused in Etan Patz Disappearance

Wearing a hood to cover his face, Jack Colbert, an ex-criminal with a long record, delivered key testimony Monday for the defense team representing Pedro Hernandez, who confessed to police that he killed 6-year-old Etan Patz, before the defense rested its case. 

Colbert said he went undercover for the feds in 1991 to share a prison cell with convicted child molester Jose Ramos, who at the time was a prime suspect in the world-famous Patz disappearance from a Soho street corner.

Ramos told Colbert he'd once been inside Etan's apartment because Ramos' girlfriend was the Patz family babysitter.

Colbert said that Ramos, without admitting anything, also openly wondered: If there was no body, could he be prosecuted for a murder?

And according to defense attorney Harvey Fishbein: "They would have to exclude Ramos as being a possibility in order to convict Pedro Hernandez."

Fishbein had spent weeks painting a picture of defendant Pedro Hernandez as a simpleton with an IQ of 70 whose repeated confessions that he killed Etan were not to be believed. Hernandez's attorneys say the confession was a delusion and their client is mentally ill.

"There is no evidence against Pedro Hernandez other than his words — which are totally unreliable," said Fishbein.

Hernandez's lawyers suggest that convicted pedophile Jose Ramos, who was never charged in the Patz case, is the real killer.

Prosecutors, during sharp cross-examination of witness Colbert, painted Ramos as a deranged mind not to be trusted.

QUESTION: "He told you at one point Etan's parents must have killed him, right?"
WITNESS: "Yes."
PROSECUTOR: "He told you that a cop must have killed Etan, right?"
WITNESS: "Yes."
PROSECUTOR: "And he told you 10 times that Etan would one day turn up alive?"
WITNESS: "He did say that, yes."
PROSECUTOR: "He denied having anything to do with this, correct?"
WITNESS: "That's correct."

On Thursday, another former jailhouse informant, Jeffrey Rothschild, now 67, also took the stand for the defense representing Hernandez.

Rothschild said Ramos admitted molesting the boy while the men were roommates in prison. Ramos was never charged in Etan's disappearance, but he was considered the prime suspect for decades. Rothschild said Ramos recounted in horrifying detail how he molested Etan and many other boys.

"I've never been the same since that day," Rothschild said. "I thought my life was just a total wreck and a complete and total mess, but there are other people deeper or darker than me."

He said Ramos told him he "loved" Etan and "honored him every day." When Rothschild asked if the boy was dead, Ramos spat: "Of course he's dead. But there is no proof."

Ramos never admitted killing Etan.

Etan vanished on his way to school in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood in 1979. His disappearance helped galvanize the modern-day missing children's movement, with his picture one of the first to appear on a milk carton. His body was never found.

Hernandez was a teenage stock clerk at the convenience store where Etan was headed the morning of May 25, 1979. In hours of a videotaped confession, Hernandez calmly recounts choking the boy, putting his body in a bag and putting the bag in a box, then walking it down the street. Prosecutors point to admissions he made over decades where he told a prayer circle, his ex-wife and a friend that he'd killed a child in New York.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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