New York jury begins third day of deliberating 1979 Patz murder case

By Natasja Sheriff NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jurors began a third day of deliberations on Friday in the trial of a former New York deli worker accused of murdering 6-year-old Etan Patz, whose 1979 disappearance raised national awareness of missing and abducted children. The jury in state Supreme Court in Manhattan appear to have focused on the confession of Pedro Hernandez, 54, who told police in 2012 that he had choked the boy, stuffed him in a box and left him in a lower Manhattan alley. Jurors in the kidnapping and murder trial on Thursday asked the judge, Maxwell Wiley, to repeat his instructions about how they should weigh his confession, which Hernandez's defense lawyers say was coerced. The Patz case changed the way authorities respond to reports of missing and abducted children.

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