In Puerto Rico, Shock and Anger Over Patz Murder YABUCOA, P.R. - Here, on steep hills cultivated with bananas and yams, a few people had heard that a Puerto Rican man had been arrested in a 33-year-old murder of a child in New York. But when Gregorio Delgado-Hernández learned from a reporter last week that the man was Pedro Hernandez, whom he remembered as a small boy, Mr. Delgado-Hernandez was so shocked that he had to turn away for a moment of silence. "My God, my God, my God," Mr. Delgado-Hernandez, 71, said. I hope God forgives him. Luis Antonio Pagan, a first cousin of Pedro Hernandez's, flashed with anger at the thought that his family might have been responsible not only for the death of Etan Patz, 6, who disappeared while walking to a school bus stop in SoHo, but also for the decades of uncertainty that the Patz family has lived with since. "Our family honor has never been stained until now," he said. Mr. Pagan was incensed not only at his cousin, who the police say confessed last month to killing Etan in 1979, but at Mr. Hernandez's parents and siblings, at least some of whom, according to relatives and the police, heard Mr. Hernandez speak decades ago of having killed a child in New York. "The one who kills the cow is as guilty as the one who holds the cow's leg," Mr. Pagan, 49, said. If it is true that the family knew about this since the beginning, they are just as guilty. Mr. Pagan, who spent many years in the United States, said he thought he now understood why the family had seemed at times to shun Mr. Hernandez. He said he had most recently visited Mr. Hernandez and one of his sisters, Norma, in 2006, but would not have gone "if I had known he was a murderer." Pedro Hernandez's lawyer plans to challenge the confession on the grounds that he is mentally ill. Norma Hernandez has said that she approached the police shortly after hearing about Pedro's vague confession after a prayer service in the early 1980s, but that they never got back to her. But she says she does not remember exactly when she went to the police or whom she spoke to. In any event, Mr. Pagan said, even if Norma did take Mr. Hernandez's confession seriously, the rest of the family may have resisted because Norma was known as the rebellious one. Those details were lost on most people here on the outskirts of Yabucoa, a town on the humid coast of southeastern Puerto Rico that has struggled since the decline of the sugar cane industry in the 1950s. They were simply surprised that a boy from this region of subsistence farmers and moonshine makers had ended up at the center of a murder mystery in SoHo, a ramshackle artists" enclave at the time of the crime and now a glistening district of boutiques and art galleries. And relatives were baffled that someone from their rough-edged but hard-working and deeply religious family could be accused of such a crime. Mr. Hernandez's parents, Esteban and Agripina Hernandez, settled on an 18-acre plot in the Quedabrillas area, named for the small streams that rush down steep slopes crowded with banana plants. All of us in the neighborhood, we were poor. But Esteban's family was the poorest of us all," recalled Mr. Delgado-Hernandez. It was hard to keep track of all the children, said another neighbor, adding that "Don Esteban made one every nine months." They lived in a flimsy house of zinc panels and wood far from any road, and grew yams for food but survived off the money that Esteban made as a moonshiner. "I remember him passing by my house with the horse carrying many moonshine bottles in baskets, making deliveries I think," said Bienvenido Gómez-Ortiz, 65, whose parents were the godparents of the Hernandez children; he remembered caroling at their house one Christmas. While Pedro Hernandez told the police that he was often beaten as a child, neighbors disputed that; there were no records of Esteban committing any crimes, though he was known for minor scrapes with the law over moonshining and alcoholism. "I always remember godfather Esteban riding horses or at my house drinking pitorro," the local moonshine, recalled a godson of Esteban Hernandez's, Modesto Gómez-Ortíz, 51. Mr. Pagan, who has grown children and several grandchildren, found himself thinking about another family, the Patzes. "I put myself in the shoes of Mr. Patz, and it's very hard," he said. That's the most horrible thing that could happen to me as a dad. "I am not a very religious man," he added, "but I have been praying for that little kid since I knew what happened."