Sister says family rumor was that brother had killed boy

Norma Hernandez said she heard the same rumor separately from two sisters years ago that their brother, Pedro Hernandez, had confessed to a prayer group in South Jersey in the 1980s to killing a boy in New York.

She said she didn't say anything to her brother. "We're not that close," she said Tuesday.

"I decided it was better for me to go to the [Camden] police for police first to check it out before confronting him," the Camden resident said.

Last week, authorities in New York said, Pedro Hernandez, 51, had admitted to strangling 6-year-old Etan Patz and putting his body in the trash 33 years ago.

Norma Hernandez's account, however, drew a quizzical reaction from one of the sisters she said told her of their brother's alleged prayer-group confession.

"Only Jesus knows the truth," said Maria Lopez, adding, "Put that really big 'Jesus,' " widening her eyes. "If it's true, I am keeping the Patz family in my prayers."

As Pedro Hernandez remained in Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for evaluation of his mental state, facing murder charges in a crime with little or no physical evidence, the focus intensified on who knew what - and when - of his alleged killing of Patz as the youngster walked to a school-bus stop.

In a brief interview, Lopez seemed to take issue with her sister Norma's assertion that she had come to know of the prayer-group confession.

"If that's what my sister said, she's going to hear from me very soon. I'm going to be very mad at her," Lopez said, coming briefly to the door of her red-paneled home in Camden's Cramer Hill neighborhood. "I don't know. I don't know why she said that."

Norma Hernandez said she was "kind of disappointed that the police didn't do anything," and despite her sister's conflicting response, stood by her account.

Camden Police Chief Scott Thomson, who was out of town, did not return a text message asking him whether police had a record of her report.

The Camden County Prosecutor's Office is not involved in any part of the investigation, a spokesman said.

"If she said she talked to the police department, that's where it lies right now," said Jason Laughlin. "Their responsibility would have been to notify the New York City authorities if that information did indeed come to them."

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office declined comment on Tuesday.

Norma Hernandez, 53, said she doesn't remember exactly in which year she reported the rumor to the Camden police and didn't know the alleged victim's name. She said she remembers speaking to a person in uniform at a window in the lobby of the police headquarters. She said it was her "duty as a human being, as a Christian."

She said she gave the officer details, including that her brother had allegedly strangled a boy in New York and put his body in the trash. At that time, she said, he was living in New York with another of their sisters.

She didn't know where Lopez and the other sister heard of their brother's alleged confession to the prayer group, which was linked to St. Anthony of Padua in Camden.

Norma Hernandez, retired from a series of jobs, including welding, said she was not part of the group, but yet another sister and that sister's husband were.

Lopez said the revelations are fracturing the family. "Everybody is getting into arguments because of this."

According to news reports, the prayer group's former leader, Tomas Rivera, said he told members of Pedro Hernandez's family to turn him in to authorities.

"I told the family what happened. If they didn't do it, that's not my responsibility," the New York Daily News reported him as saying.

Rivera did not return phone messages from The Inquirer on Tuesday.

Norma Hernandez patiently repeated her story to a series of reporters inside her Cramer Hill home. She spoke to some at a dining room table, with a pile of neatly folded clothes on it; she met others in her grandson's room.

By late afternoon, she said she was tiring of the repetition. She said she had put off cooking peas and rice and barbecue chicken for dinner.

She had no pictures of her brother, she said. "He was kind of distant from everybody. He's been like that since he was a little boy."

Pedro Hernandez's attorney, Harvey Fishbein has been cited in news reports as saying his client has a history of mental illness.

Norma Hernandez said she and her 11 siblings came with their parents to North Camden from Puerto Rico in the 1970s. Her father was disabled. Her mother cleaned a doctor's office. Pedro Hernandez, the seventh child, attended Woodrow Wilson High.

In his late teens, he moved to New York. A sister, Luz Santana, lived there and her husband got him a job at the bodega where Patz was allegedly killed.

Shortly after Patz disappeared in 1979, Hernandez unexpectedly returned to Camden, Norma Hernandez said. "I went to my mom's house and I saw him there."

He seemed different. "He always seemed nervous. Sometimes he used to open the curtains like somebody's coming after him," she said.

After he returned from New York, Pedro Hernandez married his first wife, Daisy. They have two adult children, Norma Hernandez said.

The marriage lasted two to four years, and Pedro Hernandez relocated to New York again before returning.

"They're strangers," Norma Hernandez said of her brother and his former wife.

On Tuesday, a man standing on the porch of Hernandez's ex-wife's small two-story home in Cramer Hill said she wasn't home. "She knows nothing," he added.

Reporters and photographers had staked out the home all day, leaving business cards at her door.

A white Chrysler with the license plate "Daisexy" was parked outside all day.

Pedro Hernandez met his second wife, Rosemary, at his brother Emeterio's wedding, according to Norma Hernandez. Rosemary's sister was the bride that day.

Pedro Hernandez was living in Maple Shade with Rosemary and their daughter, Becky, a college student, when authorities picked him up last week.

"As a family member, you have this compassion because he's my brother," Norma Hernandez said. "But as a regular human being, if he did it, let him pay for what he did."

Contact Darran Simon at 856-779-3829 or at dsimon@phillynews.com, or follow on Twitter @darransimon.