NY prosecutors to retry suspect in 1979 disappearance of Jewish boy Etan Patz

Suspect due in court after murder and kidnapping conviction was overturned on grounds that jury received improper instructions

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office announced Tuesday that it will retry a suspect in the case of Etan Patz, a 6-year-old Jewish boy who was kidnapped and murdered in 1979.

The suspect, Pedro Hernandez, was convicted in 2017, but his conviction was overturned earlier this year when a court of appeals said the jury had received improper instructions.

The conviction was Hernandez’s second trial in the case.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office had been given a December 1 deadline to make a determination about retrying Hernandez.

The district attorney’s office said in a letter to the court: “The District Attorney has determined that the available, admissible evidence supports prosecuting defendant on the charges of Murder in the Second Degree and Kidnapping in the First Degree in this matter, and the People are prepared to proceed.”

Patz went missing in May 1979 on the first day that he was allowed by his mother to walk alone to his school bus stop in New York City. He was one of the first missing children whose picture was placed on milk cartons to enlist the public’s help in finding him. Despite extensive searches, he was never found.

Another man who was declared responsible for Patz’s disappearance in a civil court had the judgment dismissed in 2012 after Hernandez was charged with Patz’s murder.

Hernandez’s lawyers said they were deeply disappointed by prosecutors’ decision.

“We remain convinced that Mr. Hernandez is an innocent man. But we will be prepared for trial and will present an even stronger defense,” attorneys Harvey Fishbein and Alice Fontier said in a statement.

Hernandez is due in court Monday for a discussion of next steps. Under federal court rulings, jury selection for his retrial must begin by June 1, or he must be released from prison.

Etan’s father, Stan Patz, declined to comment when reached by phone Tuesday. He had hailed Hernandez’s now-overturned conviction as “some measure of justice for our wonderful little boy, Etan.”

Hernandez, now 64, worked at a nearby corner store when Etan disappeared on May 25, 1979. It was the first day his mother let him make the roughly block-long trip to the bus stop by himself. The first-grader’s body was never found, but he was legally declared dead in 2001, at his family’s request.

The case affected parenting, as well as policing, contributing to a cultural shift toward tighter supervision of American kids.

Hernandez didn’t become a suspect until decades later, when authorities learned that he had made various, somewhat inconsistent statements to confidants over the years about having killed a child or person in New York.

Hernandez then told police in 2012 he had strangled Etan after offering him a soda and enticing him into the store basement. “Something just took over me,” Hernandez told authorities on video.

With no physical evidence, the confession was crucial. His lawyers said it was delusional, false and made under pressure from police bent on closing a decades-old case.

Hernandez had been diagnosed with a mental disorder, has a very low IQ and was on antipsychotic medication. Police questioned him for about seven hours without reading him his rights or recording the interaction — those steps were taken only after, according to police, he implicated himself for the first time.