After 46 years, a family thought they had closure in the disappearance of their 6-year-old. Now, they’ll face another trial

By Ray Sanchez, CNN

(CNN) — After 6-year-old Etan Patz vanished on his way to a school bus stop one morning in 1979, his parents, their friends and neighbors frantically scoured the gritty industrial streets and back alleys of Lower Manhattan for miles.

“I remember running around that night going, ‘Did you see this little boy?’” recalled artist and chef Susan Meisel, a longtime SoHo resident. “We were looking in dumpsters. It was a horror.”

The neighborhood surrounding Prince Street in SoHo was a far cry from what it is today – a fashionable hub of high-end art galleries, posh boutiques and trendy restaurants. Back then, its largely vacant, cast-iron industrial buildings were starting to attract young artists. Rusting hulks of stolen cars littered narrow, cobblestone streets. Boarded-up storefronts and trash fires were common.

Etan went missing in SoHo on the morning of May 25, 1979. It was the first time the first grader’s mother let him walk by himself to a bus stop roughly a block away. His body was never found. The disappearance riveted the city and the nation. It was the beginning of an era in which young boys and girls would be supervised like never before and cases of missing children gained national prominence.

“It really hit the neighborhood hard. We were all very close at that point. I was sitting on the stoop the day before it happened. I had my arm around him,” Meisel said of Etan. “It was just very sad. And I don’t think anybody’s ever going to get answers.”

That search for answers continues.

On Tuesday, Manhattan prosecutors said they will put a man on trial for a third time after his conviction in the missing child case was overturned in July.

“After thorough review, the district attorney has determined that the available, admissible evidence supports prosecuting (the) defendant on the charges of murder in the second degree and kidnapping in the first degree,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Sarah Marquez wrote in a letter to a New York State Supreme Court justice.

A conference in the case against Pedro Hernandez, 64, who was convicted during his second trial in 2017 of murdering and kidnapping Etan, was scheduled for Monday. He worked at a bodega near Etan’s home when the boy disappeared.

A federal appeals court in July overturned his conviction, ruling that a trial judge was “clearly wrong” in a response to a 2017 jury question about Hernandez’s confessions, Associated Press reported.

“We are deeply disappointed in the decision … to retry Pedro Hernandez for a third time,” said defense attorney Harvey Fishbein in a statement, adding his client “is innocent of the charges.”

“But if this 46-year-old case is actually retried, we will be ready,” he said.

Etan’s parents, who moved to Honolulu in 2019, declined to comment to CNN.

“People would love to see the family finally get – I don’t think closure – but some sense of resolution,” Lisa R. Cohen, the author of “After Etan: The Missing Child Case that Held America Captive,” told CNN.

“And I think they thought they got that in 2017 and now it’s back.”

‘Start a whole ‘nother era of this case’

Hernandez was arrested in the case in 2012, more than three decades after Etan vanished. He confessed to detectives but his lawyer maintained the defendant under pressure made up his account of the crime. His attorney has said Hernandez is mentally challenged, severely mentally ill and unable to tell whether he committed the crime or not.

Hernandez told police in a taped statement that he lured Etan into a basement with the promise of a soda as the boy was on his way to school, according to prosecutors. He said he killed the boy and threw his body away in a plastic bag.

The former bodega clerk has been repeatedly diagnosed with schizophrenia and has an “IQ in the borderline-to-mild mental retardation range,” his attorney Fishbein has said. Hernandez was questioned by police for more than seven hours and confessed before his Miranda rights were read to him.

After his first trial in 2015 ended in a hung jury, Hernandez was convicted and sentenced in 2017 to 25 years to life in prison.

“Now I know what the face of evil looks like and he’s finally convicted,” Stanley Patz said at a news conference at the time. Patz and his wife thought they would never find out what happened to their child, he said.

Over the years the Patz family worked to keep the case alive and create awareness of missing children in the United States. The anniversary of Etan’s disappearance, May 25, is remembered as National Missing Children’s Day.

Etan’s was the first of several high-profile cases that pushed concern about missing children to the forefront of national consciousness. Photos of Etan and other missing children were later featured on milk cartons.

In another case, in 1981, 6-year-old Adam Walsh was abducted from a Florida shopping mall and killed.

In 1984, Congress passed the Missing Children’s Assistance Act, which helped lead to the creation of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Cohen said Etan’s disappearance dramatically changed the way Americans watched over their children.

“Before Etan, there was a different way that parents saw the issues of child safety and raised their kids,” she said. “Kids played in the street, kids came home when it got dark. There wasn’t this incredible tracking. After Etan, not necessarily the minute it happened, but little by little, this movement was sparked where parents then became much more concerned.”

Stanley Patz was a professional photographer and Etan was frequently the sit-in for lighting in the apartment that also served as a photo studio, Cohen said. The images of Etan’s smiling, cherubic face were widely distributed during the yearslong search for the blond, blue-eyed boy.

“His father immediately ran and got these contact sheets that he had of these pictures that he had taken of Etan and started making copies,” she said. “The community was immediately putting them up on posters. I think the pictures are a huge part of this … It speaks to the power of his visual image.”

Under federal court rulings, AP reported, jury selection for Hernandez’s retrial must begin by June 1, or he must be released from prison.

“There’s not like this incredible resolution,” Cohen said. “Certainly not now, because they’re now going to start a whole ‘nother era of this case.”

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