ICYMI: Manhattan Prosecutors Paid Nearly $537K To Witness In Etan Patz Case: Report

MANHATTAN, NY — Manhattan prosecutors paid $536,940 to a celebrity psychiatrist who testified during the case of Etan Patz, the six-year-old boy who disappeared in SoHo in 1979, the New York Daily news reported.

A jury found Pedro Hernandez guilty of kidnapping and killing Etan earlier this year, decades after the boy's 1979 disappearance. Public records obtained by the Daily News show that the Manhattan district attorney's office paid $536,940 to Dr. Michael Welner, who provided expert testimony in the case arguing that Hernandez was not mentally ill.

Hernandez, who was found guilty in a second trial this year after the first case ended in a mistrial, confessed to killing the boy, but offered different details and information about the crime in separate confessions. His lawyers argued that Hernandez was mentally ill, which made it difficult for him to distinguish reality from hallucinations.

"His words are not reliable," one of Hernandez's lawyers said during the trial. "His words are not supported by other evidence. He is not guilty."

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Welner said he spent 18 hours interviewing Hernandez and more than 1,000 hours in total working on the case, according to the Daily News.

"I don’t think he has any trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy," Welner said during the trial.

Welner himself is a controversial figure in the world of forensic pathology. His firm, the Forensic Panel, has frequently provided testimony in some of the nation's most high-profile criminal trials, including the trial of Brian David Mitchell, the man later convicted of kidnapping 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart in 2002.

Welner defended his payment in an email to the Daily News.

"The case would have had a different outcome were I not to have contributed the necessary effort to it," he told the Daily News.

"Ask the parents of any murdered kid whether too much money was spent prosecuting their child’s killer," a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney's office said in a statement to the Daily News. "In this enormously complicated case, after a murder committed nearly 40 years ago, a jury unanimously concluded Pedro Hernandez was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Dr. Welner is an independent medical professional and we were very satisfied with the expert analysis he provided over the five-year period this case was in court."

Lead image via Louis Lanzano / Associated Press.