The former SoHo bodega clerk who has confessed to killing Etan Patz pleaded not guilty in Manhattan today to murdering and kidnapping the iconic missing child.
Pedro Hernandez, 51, leaned forward and spoke the words "Not guilty" with clarity and enthusiasm before being led back to jail to await the disposition of the controversial case, which, as first reported in the Post, the defense lawyer confirmed today stands solely on a series of confessions by the defendant, who is mentally ill.
"That's my client's position," defense lawyer Harvey Fishbein said when asked if his client now believes his own confession to be a false one.
Hernandez -- whose lawyer has said is bipolar and suffers auditory and visual hallucinations -- was an 18-year-old clerk at the SoHo bodega that Patz was to walk past on his way to his bus stop on the1979 day that he disappeared.
In a motion filed today, asking that Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley release the grand jury minutes from Hernandez's indictment, the defense reveals details of that first statement from the Camden prosecutor's office for the first time.
"In that statement, which contains scant details, the defendant said that he was at work that morning," the defense motion said.
Hernandez continued to tell cops, "that he saw the boy at the bus stop, asked him if he would like a soda, led him to the basement of the bodega where he was employed, and for no apparent reason immediately choked the boy until the boy went limp.
"The defendant said he then placed the boy in a plastic bag, placed the bag in a cardboard box, and tossed the boy's book bag behind a freezer in the basement," the defense motion said.
"He then carried the box to the entranceway of a basement approximately one-and-a-half blocks away, where he placed the box on the ground just inside the open entranceway. According to the video-recorded statement by Mr. Hernandez, when he left the box, Etan Patz was alive."
In his second videotaped statement, Hernandez added that "Etan Patz might have died because of his actions," the defense motion states.
"We have seen no evidence of death," Fishbein said. "There is no crime scene here."
He has been held since May, when relatives became alarmed that he was claiming that he had harmed a child in the past, and summoned Camden County cops to his home in Maple Shade, NJ.
Sources tell The Post that Hernandez made self-incriminating statements both at his home and immediately afterward, when he was taken to the Camden County prosecutors's office for further questioning by NYPD missing persons cops hand-picked by Commissioner Kelly.
He was not read his rights until hours later, just prior to his making the first of two videotaped confessions, according to two sources with knowledge of the case. The second videotaped confession was made in the DA's office.
"In that statement, which contains scant details, the defendant said that he was at work that morning," the defense motion said.
Hernandez continued to tell cops, "that he saw the boy at the bus stop, asked him if he would like a soda, led him to the basement of the bodega where he was employed, and for no apparent reason immediately choked the boy until the boy went limp.
"The defendant said he then placed the boy in a plastic bag, placed the bag in a cardboard box, and tossed the boy's book bag behind a freezer in the basement," the defense motion said.
"He then carried the box to the entranceway of a basement approximately one-and-a-half blocks away, where he placed the box on the ground just inside the open entranceway. According to the video-recorded statement by Mr. Hernandez, when he left the box, Etan Patz was alive."
In his second videotaped statement, Hernandez added that "Etan Patz might have died because of his actions," the defense motion states.
Speaking to reporters after today's not guilty plea, Hernandez's lawyer said he will pursue a multi-pronged challenge to the prosecution, starting with questioning whether grand jurors had legally sufficient evidence to indict given that there is no forensic evidence establishing Patz has even been murdered.
"We have seen no evidence of death," Fishbein said. "There is no crime scene here."
The second prong, he said, will be to challenge Hernandez's confession as false and the product of improper questioning.
It was some seven to eight hours after he was taken into custody that Hernandez, who has an IQ of approximately 70, made his first video-recorded statement to cops.
Hernandez returns to court on Jan. 30 before Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley.
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