Patz Confession Deemed Unreliable by Expert

By LOVASHNI KHALIKAPRASAD & DESIREE JACKSON

A psychological expert testified in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday that the man accused of killing Etan Patz 35 years ago was not competent fully to understand his right to remain silent when interviewed by investigators.

“Although he’s able to make an intelligent use of the right to counsel he’s unable to make an intelligent use of right to silence,” defense witness Bruce Frumkin, a PhD. in psychology, told Justice Maxwell Wiley who must decide the admissibility in any subsequent trial of the confession made by the defendant Pedro Hernandez, when he informed detectives and prosecutors that he lured the 6-year-old boy into a SoHo basement and strangled him in 1979.

Frumkin, a Miami psychologist who often gives expert testimony,  gave  Hernandez a series of tests last year, including an I.Q and verbal test where he scored in the low 2 percentile range of people within his age range.

“Making 98 percent of people in his age range smarter than him,” said Frumkin.

On cross-examination Assistant DA Joan Illuzi-Orbon tried to undermine Frumkin’s analysis by highlighting the defendant’s life skills, including holding the job of auto mechanic. She asked the psychologist whether the defendant was merely “an adept liar?”

But Frumkin was steadfast in his opinion.

“Hernandez comes across as very unreliable of what he’s saying,” Frumkin said.

Hernandez, who was arrested in 2012 after a family member tipped off authorities, confessed repeatedly to the murder when he was a teenage stock boy in a local store.

“I wanted to let go but I just couldn’t let go” he says in a video confession “I felt like something just took over me.”

The disappearance of Patz has remained a potent symbol of missing children nationwide as the boy’s face was plastered on milk cartons. His body was never found.