Lawyer: Confession in Etan Patz case false

A Burlington County man's confession in one of the nation's most notorious child disappearances was false, peppered with questionable claims, and made after almost seven hours of police questioning, his lawyer said Wednesday in court papers asking a Manhattan judge to dismiss the murder case.

"No evidence or witnesses have been found corroborating any of the few facts" in Pedro Hernandez's statements about the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz, defense lawyer Harvey Fishbein wrote, arguing that there was not enough proof to support the case.

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office, which has said there was sufficient evidence to sustain the charges, declined to comment. A judge is not expected to rule until next month.

Etan vanished May 25, 1979, on the first day his parents allowed him to walk to his school bus stop alone.

Hernandez, of Maple Shade, was arrested last year after police got a tip that he had told people years before that he had killed a child in New York City.

Hernandez then told authorities he had seen Patz at the bus stop, lured him to a corner store where he worked with the promise of a soda, and choked him in the basement.

Hernandez said he tossed the boy's book bag behind a freezer in the basement, put the boy's limp body in a box, and left it with some trash about a block away.