BLACKWOOD — Pedro Hernandez confessed last week to the 1979 murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz in lower Manhattan. While the admission was the first by Hernandez, 51, confessed to authorities, it may not have been for members of St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church in Camden, to which he belonged, according to a report by the NY Times.

In the interview with the paper, members of the prayer group Hernandez belonged to at St. Anthony of Padua said Hernandez admitted during a group meeting in the 1980s that he had strangled a boy and placed the body in a Dumpster. Last week Hernandez made the same admission to police, telling them he abducted and strangled Patz in the stockroom of a lower Manhattan bodega where he worked while the youngster walked to his school bus stop. The confession bolstered a 33-year-old case.

Tomas Rivera, 76, of Blackwood, a leader of the prayer group, told the Times he did not feel it was his place to notify the police because the confession was not made to him exclusively.

“He confessed to the group,” Rivera told the paper.

Rivera also told the Times he was questioned by police last week and was instructed “not to say anything” he said.

Hernandez’s alleged confession to the group could prove crucial to the case as there is no DNA, physical or forensic evidence, nor was the body of the 6-year-old ever found.

Rivera’s son, the Rev. David Rivera, a Roman Catholic priest at a nearby parish, told the Times that public confessions — regardless of their nature — and like the one Hernandez is alleged to have made are common. Rivera said group members grow numb to the revelations.

Rivera also told the Times that if Hernandez did make this admission during a prayer group, as many as 50 might have been witness to it.

Related coverage:

• Pastor depicts man who confessed to killing Etan Patz as stoic, his family as grief-stricken

• Etan Patz case: N.J. man suspected of boy's murder is mentally ill, lawyer says

• How NYC police solved Etan Patz kidnapping and murder mystery after 33 years

• N.J. man charged with murder after he confesses to strangling Etan Patz

• Etan Patz suspect was living in Maple Shade, questioned at Camden County Prosecutor's Office