Pedro Hernandez, the confessed killer of Etan Patz, was taken to a New York City hospital early this morning and placed on suicide watch just hours before he was to be arraigned for the little boy's 1979 murder.
Hernandez, 51, was arrested Thursday after several hours of questioning by police. He was transferred from a jail cell to Bellevue Hospital under guard around 5:30 a.m.
Hernandez, who has been in police custody since Wednesday, may not have been taking his prescribed medication and appeared suicidal, sources said.
Hernandez was charged with second degree murder by the police on Thursday, but has yet to be arraigned in court by prosecutors. Hernandez is set to be arraigned today in Manhattan.
His arraignment will on the 33rd anniversary of Patz's disappearance and murder in the SoHo section of Manhattan while walking for the first time by himself to his school bus stop.
Today also marks Missing Persons Day, a holiday founded in the wake of Patz's disappearance and a testament to how his case rocked his city and unsettled the nation. The search for Patz was one of the largest, longest-lasting and most heart-wrenching hunts for a missing child in the country's recent history. His photo was among the first of a missing child to appear on a milk carton.
Etan Patz Mystery: New Focus on Basement Stain
Watch Video Hernandez confessed to police that as a 19-year-old bodega stock clerk he lured the boy into his shop's basement with the promise of a soda. There, Hernandez told police, he strangled Patz and stuffed his body in a plastic bag that was thrown into trash elsewhere in the neighborhood. The body was never found.
Hernandez had admitted to family members and friends as early as 1981 that he "done a bad thing and killed a child in New York."
Investigators reopened the long-dormant case in 2010 an in April excavated a basement apartment steps away from Patz's home and the bodega where Hernandez says he killed the boy.
The new focus on the case led one of Hernadez's family members or a friend to alert police that they suspected Hernandez's involvement.
When confronted, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Hernandez quickly confessed, even expressing "remorse" and "relief."
Hernandez was taken into custody at his home in Maple Shade, N.J., on Wednesday morning where he lives with his wife and daughter. The apartment is rented by his wife, Rosemary Hernandez, who let her husband move in after he told her that he was dying of cancer.
"We never had a problem with him," Hernandez's brother-in-law, Jose Lopez, told KYW, a CBS station in Philadelphia. "There was never a problem. He was a normal person. Never gave any sign that he did something like that."
Police have named other suspects in the past, but none had ever been arrested or charged.
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