The 6-year-old who became the poster boy for missing children nationwide following his disappearance in 1979 was a “very tiny big man with a very big heart” – while his accused murderer is a “controlling” man who lured him to his violent death, Manhattan prosecutors said Wednesday.
Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi painted for jurors a scene of an idyllic SoHo neighborhood 37 years ago in her opening arguments in the second trial for Pedro Hernandez, who is charged with kidnapping and fatally strangling little Etan.
“This is Etan’s story and it’s a cautionary tale – a defining moment of a loss of innocence in this city and every city where it was discussed or written about. It was Etan who will forever symbolize the loss of that innocence,” said Illuzzi, who was the lead prosecutor in Hernandez’s first trial, which ended in a hung jury, last year.
Twelve jurors and five alternates watched as photos of the adorable blond boy flashed on TV screens in Manhattan Supreme Court, as Illuzzi recalled Etan as “a protector of all who dared to cross the street without their mommies.”
“Etan — a very tiny big man with a very big heart,” she said.
Etan disappeared on May 25, 1979 as he walked alone for the first time to the bus stop less than two blocks from his family’s Prince Street apartment.
Prosecutors allege that Hernandez lured the boy into the basement of the bodega he worked at by offering him a soda. Inside, he choked the boy to death and threw his backpack behind a walk-in refrigerator, they say.
Illuzzi described Hernandez as “a quiet, observant person who didn’t have many friends.”
In 2012, Hernandez, of Maple Shade, NJ, confessed to killing the boy to police on videotape.
“You will find a man with very good memory — controlling and very aware of what he was going to say and what he wasn’t going to say. At the end of the day, this confession was cathartic for him and extremely relieving,” Illuzzi said.
Stanley Patz, Etan’s father, who was in the courtroom Wednesday for openings, looked down at his clasped hands as Illuzzi recalled Hernandez’s “chilling” admission.
“What the defendant tells police is he immediately started to choke Etan,” she said. “You will see him demonstrate how he wrapped his hands around Etan’s little neck and began to choke him. He will tell you in this video that once he started, he couldn’t stop.”
She urged the jury panel to “pay attention to how the defendant demonstrates how he ended Etan’s life.”
Meanwhile, seven jurors and two alternates – including the lone holdout — from the first trial were among those seated in the packed courtroom for opening statements.Some of the jurors who wanted to convict Hernandez sat next Stanley Patz, while holdout Adam Sirois sat on the opposite side of the courtroom and in the last row.
The defense, which will deliver openings later Wednesday afternoon, contend that Hernandez’s confession is not reliable because he suffers from mental illness and has a low IQ.
Etan’s body was never found.