Judge Orders New Trial or Release
Jewish Child’s Killer Could Walk Free: Etan Patz Case Faces Stunning Twist
A federal appeals court has overturned the murder conviction of Etan Patz's confessed killer, Pedro Hernandez, and a judge has now mandated a new trial or his release by next summer.
Nearly half a century after the disappearance of six-year-old Etan Patz, a federal judge in Manhattan has ruled that the confessed killer, Pedro Hernandez, must either be retried or released from custody. The ruling has revived outrage in New York and brought the tragic, generations-spanning case back to the forefront of national attention.
Etan Patz vanished on the morning of May 25, 1979, in an incident that fundamentally changed the conversation around missing children in America. It was the first time his parents had allowed him to walk alone the two blocks from their SoHo apartment to his school bus stop. He never arrived.
Driven by grief, Etan’s father, Stanley Patz, spearheaded a campaign to spread his son’s photo nationwide, making Etan the first child ever featured on a milk carton. This effort became a cultural touchstone that led to the creation of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Furthermore, in 1983, President Ronald Reagan officially designated the anniversary of Etan’s disappearance as National Missing Children’s Day.
The Confession and the Overturned Verdict
For decades, the case remained unsolved, with investigators at one point focusing on Jose Ramos, a convicted child molester who made incriminating statements in the 1990s but was never charged.
The true break in the case came in 2012, more than thirty years after the boy’s disappearance, when Pedro Hernandez, a former bodega clerk from New Jersey, confessed to the murder. Hernandez told police he lured the boy into the basement of the store where he worked by offering him a soda on his way to school. He claimed he then choked Etan until the boy went limp, placed his body in a plastic garbage bag, stuffed it into a cardboard box, and left it out with the trash. No physical evidence or remains were ever recovered.
In 2017, Hernandez was convicted of kidnapping and murder and sentenced to 25 years to life. At trial, prosecutors argued that details in Hernandez’s confession were known only to the killer, while the defense maintained that Hernandez was mentally impaired and susceptible to police coercion.
However, in July 2025, a federal appeals court overturned the conviction. The court ruled that the trial judge's instructions to the jurors on how to evaluate the credibility of the confession were "clearly wrong" and "manifestly prejudicial."
Upholding the appeal, Judge Colleen McMahon on Friday issued a mandate, ordering that Hernandez, now 64, must face a new trial by June 1st or be released from custody. Prosecutors are now reviewing whether to proceed with a complex new trial or seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court, as the prospect of the confessed killer’s freedom looms large over the city.