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By Eric Sagara and Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger

A sister of the New Jersey man who confessed last week to killing Etan Patz said she told Camden police more than 25 years ago she suspected her younger brother had slain a child, raising new questions about a missed opportunity in the iconic case.

Norma Hernandez, interviewed today at her home in Camden, acknowledged she had little information to provide when she contacted police in the mid-1980s. At the time, she said, she didn’t know the name of the alleged victim and had no hard evidence a murder had even occurred.

Hernandez said she knew only what many other relatives knew: that her brother Pedro, a sullen loner and something of a puzzle to his 11 siblings, had spoken of taking a child’s life.

"I reported it," she said. "Nobody did anything about it."

Pedro Hernandez, 51, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of 6-year-old Etan, who vanished on May 25, 1979, as he walked to his school bus stop in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood.

Hernandez, a stock clerk at a bodega near the Patz home at the time, told police in an emotional confession last week that he lured Etan into the store’s basement with a soda, then strangled him and discarded his body in the trash.

The boy’s disappearance resonated with New Yorkers — and later with others across the country — in a way few missing children cases ever had. It led to changes in the way parents raised their kids and in the manner in which law enforcement agencies investigated abductions.

Thirty-three years later, authorities said a tip led them to Hernandez, who lived in Maple Shade with his second wife and an adult daughter.

Norma Hernandez, 54, said she did not recall the year she reached out to police, but she said she believed it was shortly after investigators began focusing on a suspect in the Patz case. That man, convicted child molester Jose Ramos, was named in numerous published reports in 1985.

At the time, the sister said, she didn’t connect Etan’s disappearance with her family’s suspicions about her younger brother. But she said she was angered by what her brother may have done.

"I was pissed," she said.

Norma Hernandez’s claim could not be immediately corroborated.

Camden Police Chief Scott Thomson, reached by cell phone in Texas at a meeting of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said he was unaware of the sister’s contact with police.

"This is the first we are learning of Ms. Hernandez’s comments," Thomson said, adding it was too soon to say if his department would open an internal investigation.

That decision, he said, will be in consultation with the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the New York City Police Department. The latter two agencies have led the investigation into Etan’s disappearance.

An NYPD spokesman declined comment.

In general, an officer should generate a report any time someone claims to know of a homicide, said John Williamson, president of Camden’s police union, the Fraternal Order of Police.

"Obviously if somebody calls up and reports a homicide or somebody gives information on a homicide, the information is taken down, reported and all relative leads are followed up on," Williamson said. A decision to notify the prosecutor’s office depends on the validity of the claims, said Williamson, who did not join the Camden force until 1996 and who had no direct knowledge of the situation.

In the days since Pedro Hernandez’s arrest, The Star-Ledger and other publications have reported many of his relatives suspected his involvement in a child killing, based on self-incriminating comments he made as far back as 1980.

But Norma Hernandez’s statements today suggest she was the first among relatives to go to the police.

Speaking in a modest and well-kept home, she said Pedro Hernandez had always been "like a stranger" to his four brothers and seven sisters, who grew up in Camden. He had no hobbies, rarely smiled and spoke little, the sister said.

"He was close with nobody in the family," Norma Hernandez said. "He was a loner."

As a teenager, she said, her brother moved to New York City, where he found work in the SoHo bodega, now an eyeglass boutique. He returned to Camden shortly after Etan vanished. Norma Hernandez said he suddenly seemed different.

"He was always nervous," she said. "He was always looking through a window as if someone was going to come."

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It would be another few years before the sister heard from her siblings that Pedro Hernandez had confessed to killing a child. Norma Hernandez said she never confronted her brother directly. At times, she said, she felt he wanted to say something important, but he would go silent.

"Many times I felt like maybe he wanted to talk, but when it got to that point, I think he got scared," she said.

Pedro Hernandez apparently wasn't so restrained all the time. The New York Times reported today he blurted out a confession during a prayer meeting at St. Anthony of Padua church in Camden in the early 1980s, saying he had killed a child and thrown the body in a Dumpster. A leader of the prayer group told the newspaper he felt it wasn't his place to go to the police.

Pedro Hernandez remains under observation at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan.

Star-Ledger staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.

Related coverage:

• N.J. man charged with killing Etan Patz confessed crime to prayer group 30 years ago, report says

• 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