Pedro Hernandez Found Guilty of Kidnapping and Killing Etan Patz in 1979
Source: New York Times
By RICK ROJASFEB. 14, 2017
Pedro Hernandez, a former stock clerk in a Manhattan bodega who confessed to luring the 6-year-old Etan Patz into the store’s basement and attacking him, was found guilty on Tuesday of murder and kidnapping, a long-awaited step toward solving the nearly 40-year mystery that bedeviled investigators and forever changed the way parents watched over their children.
A jury in State Supreme Court found Mr. Hernandez guilty on the ninth day of deliberations and two lengthy trials that brought new attention to Etan’s disappearance on May 25, 1979, as he walked to his school bus stop alone for the first time.
At the time, the case shook New York City, as photographs of Etan, with his sandy hair and smirk of a smile, were printed on “missing” posters plastered around the city and splashed on the front pages of newspapers, on television newscasts and even — for the first time — on milk cartons. The alarm caused by his disappearance reverberated around the country, embodying the worst fears of parents and helping to change the way the authorities tracked child abductions.
But decades of looking into various suspects and fruitless searches failed to yield answers for Etan’s parents, Stanley and Julie Patz, who have remained in their loft on Prince Street as SoHo evolved into a place far different than the semi-industrial area it had been when Etan was a child. Investigators were led to Mr. Hernandez, who lived in a small New Jersey town outside Philadelphia, only after his brother-in-law called detectives in 2012 to share his suspicion that he could be responsible.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/nyregion/etan-patz-pedro-hernandez-guilty.html?emc=edit_na_20170214&nl=breaking-news&nlid=57435284&ref=headline
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