During a charismatic Christian gathering in Camden, New Jersey, some 30 years ago, Pedro Hernandez confessed to a room full of people of having strangled a young boy and leaving his body in a dumpster. Going by Hernandez’s own recent admission to police, the boy in question was 6-year-old Etan Patz, whose 1979 disappearance traumatized his Soho neighborhood and much of the city. Speaking to the New York Times, Tomas Rivera, the church group leader, said he never approached police with what he knew because Hernandez “confessed to the group … he did not confess to me [directly].” In a case with no body — and so no DNA or physical evidence — this new information should go a long way toward easing investigators’ initial worries about Hernandez’s motive for coming forward and mental state.
