The murder of Etan Patz
New York, New York County, New York · 1979
Overview
Etan Patz, 6, vanished on the morning of May 25, 1979, the first day he was allowed to walk the two blocks from his family's apartment on Prince Street in SoHo to his school bus stop alone. No trace of him was ever found. His face went on milk cartons, the anniversary became National Missing Children's Day, and he was declared dead in 2001. For two decades the investigation circled a convicted child molester who had dated his babysitter, but no prosecutor charged him. In April 2012, two years after the Manhattan district attorney reopened the case, the FBI dug up a basement on Prince Street and found nothing. The coverage prompted a New Jersey man to call police about his brother-in-law, Pedro Hernandez, who had been a teenage stock clerk at the bodega beside the bus stop in 1979 and had told a church group, a neighbor and his first wife that he had killed a child in New York. On May 23, 2012, after about seven hours of unwarned questioning, Hernandez confessed and then repeated it on video: he said he had lured Etan into the store's basement with a soda, choked him and left him in a box with the trash. There was no physical evidence. A 2015 jury hung 11 to 1; a second jury convicted him of kidnapping and felony murder on February 14, 2017, and he was sentenced to 25 years to life. The Second Circuit overturned the conviction in July 2025 over the judge's answer to a jury note; the Supreme Court reinstated it, 6 to 3, on June 22, 2026.
How it was solved
The case was reopened by publicity, broken by a family tip and closed by a confession. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced in 2010 that he was renewing the investigation. In April 2012 the FBI, acting on a cadaver dog's alert and a re-interview of a carpenter who had kept a basement workshop between the Patz apartment and the bus stop, spent four days excavating the cellar at 127 Prince Street. No remains were found and the carpenter was never charged. But the dig led the news, and in New Jersey a man watching it called detectives about his brother-in-law, Pedro Hernandez. Hernandez had been a stock clerk at the bodega at 448 West Broadway, next to the bus stop, in 1979; police had interviewed him with the other employees that July, never treated him as a suspect, and he had moved to New Jersey soon afterward. Over the following decades, according to testimony later summarized by the Second Circuit, he told members of a church retreat, a neighbor and his first wife, in varying versions, that he had killed a child in New York. Nobody reported it. On May 23, 2012, NYPD missing-persons detectives took him from his home in Maple Shade to the Camden County Prosecutor's Office. After roughly seven hours of questioning without a Miranda warning he said he had lured Etan into the basement with a soda, choked him, put him in a bag and a box and left the box with the curbside trash. Detectives then read him his rights, recorded him repeating the account, and drove him to Manhattan, where he repeated it to an assistant district attorney. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the specificity of the statement persuaded detectives, while acknowledging there was no physical evidence and no motive. Hernandez also took officers to the spot where he said he had left the box. His lawyer said he was bipolar and schizophrenic with a history of hallucinations; intelligence tests had put his IQ between 67 and 76. The prosecution's case at both trials rested on the recorded confessions and the earlier admissions to relatives and acquaintances. The first jury hung 11 to 1; the second convicted him of felony murder and kidnapping while acquitting him of intentional murder. The conviction was affirmed in 2020, reversed by the Second Circuit in 2025 over the trial judge's one-word answer to a jury question about the confessions, and reinstated by the Supreme Court in June 2026.
Sources
- Etan Patz Arrest: NYPD cite confession, arrest Pedro Hernandez for 1979 murder of 6-year-old boy (May 24, 2012)
“Hernandez, who had worked at a convenience store near Etan's home, confessed after hours of police questioning, Kelly said. Kelly said Hernandez told police he lured the boy to the convenience store with the promise of a soda, then took him into the basement and choked him.”
- Confessed Killer of Etan Patz Charged with Second Degree Murder (May 24, 2012)
“There is no physical evidence or motive linking Hernandez to the crime, police said. He has no criminal record.”
- FBI, NYPD Resume Search for Etan Patz, Missing Since '79 (April 19, 2012)
“As many as 50 NYPD officers and FBI agents using jackhammers and saws began digging in a Soho basement Friday where a cadaver dog detected human remains in recent weeks, hoping to find evidence linked to the infamous 1979 disappearance of schoolboy Etan Patz.”
- New Details Emerge About Etan Patz Murder Suspect's Confession (June 1, 2012)
“The brother-in-law's interest was piqued during the basement dig in SoHo in April at the location where Patz was allegedly strangled and dismembered. The mass media coverage made the brother-in-law think the killing was "the big dark family secret," as Miller put it.”
- Mistrial declared in Etan Patz murder case (May 8, 2015)
“Jurors said for a third time that they were hopelessly deadlocked in the case against Pedro Hernandez, and the judge declared a mistrial.”
- Etan Patz case: Pedro Hernandez, former clerk, convicted of killing N.Y. boy 38 years ago (February 14, 2017)
“This time, the jury deliberated over nine days before finding Hernandez, 56, guilty of murder during a kidnapping, resolving a case that shaped both parenting and law enforcement practices in the United States.”
- Jury finds Pedro Hernandez guilty in 1979 murder, kidnapping of Etan Patz (February 14, 2017)
“Etan disappeared May 25, 1979, the first day he was allowed to walk the two blocks to his bus stop alone. Hernandez was then a teenage stock clerk at a nearby corner store.”
- Pedro Hernandez gets 25 years to life in Etan Patz murder (April 18, 2017)
“No trace of him has ever been found, and a civil court declared him dead in 2001.”
- People v Hernandez, 2020 NY Slip Op 02100, Appellate Division, First Department (March 26, 2020)
“Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Maxwell Wiley, J.), rendered April 18, 2017, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of murder in the second degree and kidnapping in the first degree, and sentencing him to concurrent terms of 25 years to life, unanimously affirmed.”
- Hernandez v. McIntosh, No. 24-1816, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (July 21, 2025)
“In 1979, Hernandez, who was eighteen years old at the time, worked at the bodega next to Patz's school bus stop. In July 1979, police interviewed Hernandez, along with other employees of the bodega, about Patz's disappearance. At the time, however, Hernandez was not identified or treated as a suspect.”
- Murder conviction in Etan Patz killing overturned, new trial ordered for Pedro Hernandez (July 21, 2025)
“After Hernandez's first trial ended in a mistrial in 2015 when a single holdout refused to convict, Manhattan prosecutors retried the case, leading to his 2017 conviction for felony murder and kidnapping for preying upon little Etan as the child walked alone to his school bus stop for the first time on May 25, 1979.”
- McCarthy v. Hernandez, No. 25-748, per curiam, Supreme Court of the United States (June 22, 2026)
“The jury found Hernandez guilty of kidnapping and felony murder, and the trial court sentenced him to imprisonment for 25-years-to-life.”
- Supreme Court reinstates murder conviction in case of Etan Patz, missing New York City boy (June 22, 2026)
“The justices, by a 6-3 vote, granted an appeal from New York prosecutors who had urged them to undo a federal appeals court decision that overturned the verdict. The three liberal justices dissented.”
- Disappearance of Etan Patz
“Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. officially reopened the case on May 25, 2010.”