APNewsBreak: NY DA: Suspect in Patz Case Beat Wife The man charged with killing a 6-year-old New York City boy in one of the nation's most notorious missing-child cases has a disturbing history of beating his wife, molesting a relative and drug use, prosecutors said in court documents released Wednesday. Pedro Hernandez engaged "in a pattern of criminal behavior ... throughout his life, including sexual abuse of a family member, multiple incidents of domestic violence against his former and current wife," and cocaine use throughout his adult life, the Manhattan district attorney's office said in the court papers obtained by The Associated Press. The filing opens a new window on the New Jersey man who emerged as a surprise suspect just last year in the 1979 disappearance of Etan Patz, a case that spotlighted the problem of vanished children nationally. Filed to rebuff Hernandez's bid for release until trial, the papers strive to paint a different, more damning picture of a man whose lawyer and doctors have said he suffers from mental illness that prompted a false confession to luring Etan into a store basement and smothering him. Defense lawyer Harvey Fishbein said Wednesday that Hernandez's psychiatric problems spurred his cocaine use starting in the late 1980s, which in turn led to sometimes violent outbursts and conflict with his family. Hernandez has been clean about seven years and his past problems have "no bearing on what happened in 1979, and it has absolutely no bearing on the reliability of the confession in 2012," Fishbein said by phone. ..." Everyone has a bad period in their life, but that doesn't make him a killer. The new accusations appear to be based largely on a defense expert's interview with Hernandez's second wife, Rosemary, in 2012. The wife told the expert that every time Hernandez would grow frustrated or angry, "he would hit me in the head," the papers say. They add that he punched her and choked her with a vacuum cord in the 1990s, and purposely tried to wreck a car carrying the couple in 2003, telling his wife, "I'm going to kill us all. I hate my life. At one point, he violated a restraining order issued to protect her, the papers say. The couple's relationship improved after Hernandez stopped doing cocaine, Fishbein said. The two remain together, and Rosemary Hernandez's attorney, Robert Gottlieb, said Wednesday night she "continues to support him 1,000 percent" and believes "that it is ridiculous to have charged her husband with the murder." Gottlieb declined to comment on the marital episodes that prosecutors outlined, calling the information irrelevant to the murder case. The prosecutors' papers, filed last week, don't detail the sex abuse allegation. A footnote says that Pedro Hernandez "admits the behavior" and that a family member and neighbor confirm it, but the alleged victim denies it. Fishbein said Hernandez has told him the allegation arises from his childhood, when he and relatives were sleeping in the same room. Hernandez was never arrested before his arrest in this case, police have said. Etan was one of the first vanished youths to be pictured on a milk carton, and the anniversary of his disappearance, May 25, is now National Missing Children's Day.