Share and Follow
NEW YORK (AP) — The long-running legal saga involving the 1979 vanishing of young Etan Patz is poised to continue with a potential third trial. This development comes after a judge refused to drop charges against Pedro Hernandez, a former shop clerk accused of kidnapping and murdering the child during his walk to school.
Pedro Hernandez, who is now 65, has remained incarcerated since his arrest in 2012. He is scheduled to appear in court again in June for an update on the case, though a trial date has yet to be determined.
Etan’s disappearance, which occurred as he embarked on a short walk to the bus stop alone for the first time, quickly became one of the most infamous child abduction cases in the United States. His face was one of the first to appear on milk cartons, and his case spurred the establishment of National Missing Children’s Day on May 25. The advocacy work of his parents played a crucial role in improving the way law enforcement handles missing child cases.
Despite Judge Michele Rodney’s recent decision, a trial date remains pending. Hernandez is expected back in court for a status review in June.
Back in 1979, Hernandez was a 19-year-old working at a local corner store in Etan’s neighborhood. Although he was among the individuals interviewed by police after Etan’s disappearance, he was not initially considered a suspect.
More than three decades of frustrating, inconclusive investigation followed. For years, authorities eyed another man who was never charged. Then, in 2012, investigators got a tip that Hernandez had told various people in his life years ago that he’d killed a child or young man in New York.
Hernandez then told police — after seven hours of questioning and before being told he had a right to remain silent — that he had strangled Etan in the shop basement after enticing him there with the offer of a soda. Hernandez later was read his rights and recapped his statement on video, telling authorities: “Something just took over me.”
Defense lawyers said all of Hernandez’ admissions amounted to the imaginings of a mentally ill and intellectually limited man, haunted and confused by a highly publicized tragedy that had happened near his workplace.
“The delusion, now squarely implanted with the image of Etan Patz, is, to him, an event as seemingly real as any of our most vivid memories,” defense lawyers Harvey Fishbein and Alice Fontier wrote in court papers recently.
His 2015 trial ended in a jury deadlock, a 2017 retrial yielded a conviction, and then a federal appeals court overturned the verdict. The court said the 2017 trial judge mishandled a jury question about determining the validity of Hernandez’ confessions.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office pledged to retry the case but also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to restore Hernandez’ conviction. The high court isn’t obliged to hear the case and hasn’t yet said whether it will.
Meanwhile, Hernandez’ lawyers asked Rodney to toss out the charges. The defense contended that prosecutors waited too long to charge Hernandez and that he can’t get a fair trial now that some witnesses have died, others’ memories have faded and prospective jurors have been steeped in decades of publicity about the case, plus coverage of the two prior trials.
Prosecutors called the arguments baseless. Once police got “a direct, reliable tip,” they arrested Hernandez two weeks later, and witnesses’ patchy memories are “simply the nature of a criminal trial,” Assistant District Attorney Sarah Marquez wrote in court papers.