A Manhattan jury on Friday heard testimony for the first time in the retrial of the man charged with murdering Etan Patz. Etan's mother told the jury about that day he went missing. NY1's Vivian Lee filed the following report.

Julie Patz, the mother of Etan Patz, took the stand for nearly four hours Friday.

She kept her composure through most of it. But then, prosecutor Joan Illuzzi asked how she felt after learning her 6-year-old son was missing, that he never took the bus to school and was absent from class the entire day. 

Thirty-seven years after that day, Julie Patz's eyes again filled with tears and her voice broke.

"Total horror and panic," she testified. "My legs started giving out. I had difficulty breathing...At some point I started losing all track of time."

The prosecution asked Julie Patz to re-live her ordeal in an attempt to convict 55-year-old Pedro Hernandez in the murder and kidnapping of Etan.

Prosecutors contend Hernandez confessed four times to killing Etan, after luring him from his bus stop into the basement of a bodega, then dumping his body in a SoHo alley. 

Lawyers for Hernandez say his police confession was the result of seven hours of interrogation, plus his own mental illness and low intelligence.

Hernandez' first trial last year ended in a hung jury. Adam Sirois, the lone holdout of that jury, attended Friday's proceedings. He stood by his belief that the prosecution failed in the first trial.

"If you look at the facts in this case, there is nothing that corroborates the confession," Sirois said. "Nothing rises beyond reasonable doubt. And that's a very high threshold for me."

Four of the jurors from that trial who voted to convict also were in court Friday. 

"We are here to support the Patz family, Julie and Stan. We are here to show moral support for the prosecution and the retrial," said Jennifer O'Connor, a juror in the first Hernandez trial.

"This took over our lives for five months. We ate, drank, slept this trial. It really took over and it really got under our skin. And we want to see it through. We want justice," said C.J. Holm, a juror in the first Hernandez trial. 

Julie Patz has been seeking justice for 37 years for the son she described Friday as "a very happy, outgoing, loving person." 

The trial resumes Monday at 10 a.m.