Retrial set to open in 1979 missing-child case of Etan Patz

Opening statements are set for Wednesday in a case that eluded investigators for decades, racheted up Americans' consciousness of missing children and now centers on whether a chilling confession was true.

Etan's 6-year-old face became one of the first missing children's portraits that Americans saw on milk cartons, and the anniversary of his disappearance became National Missing Children's Day.

The defense aims to persuade jurors the confession is fiction, imagined by a man with a history of hallucinations and an IQ in the lowest 2 percent of the population, and fueled by more than six hours of police questioning off-camera.

Defense psychological experts said Hernandez had given them dreamlike accounts of the killing, at points saying as many as 15 mysterious people were on hand, some wearing hospital gowns and pearls.