Disappearance of Etan Patz

Etan Kalil Patz was a six-year-old boy who disappeared on the morning of May 25, 1979, in the SoHo neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. That day he was permitted to walk the roughly two blocks from his family's apartment on Prince Street to his school bus stop by himself for the first time. He never reached the stop, never arrived at school, and was not seen again. A large police search began that evening and expanded over the following days, but no trace of him was found.

The case drew sustained national attention and reshaped how missing children were treated in the United States. Photographs of Etan, many taken by his father, a professional photographer, appeared on posters and were among the first to be printed on milk cartons. In 1983, May 25 — the anniversary of his disappearance — was designated National Missing Children's Day. Etan was declared legally dead in 2001, though his body has never been recovered.

For years the investigation considered several possibilities without producing charges in Etan's case. In 2010 the Manhattan District Attorney's office reopened the matter, and in 2012 investigators searched a basement near the family's former home. Shortly afterward, Pedro Hernandez, who had worked as a teenager at a convenience store in the neighborhood in 1979, was taken into custody. He confessed that he had lured Etan into the store's basement, killed him, and disposed of the body. His defense argued that the confession was false and unreliable, citing a documented mental illness and a low IQ.

Hernandez was charged with kidnapping and murder. His first trial, in 2015, ended in a mistrial when the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict. At a retrial, he was found guilty in February 2017 and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

The conviction was the subject of extended appeals. A state appellate court upheld it in 2020. In July 2025 a federal appeals court overturned the conviction, finding that the trial judge had given the jury an inadequate answer to a question about how to treat Hernandez's confessions. Prosecutors announced plans to try him again. Before a retrial took place, the U.S. Supreme Court intervened and, on June 22, 2026, reinstated the conviction in a 6-3 decision, holding that the federal appeals court had exceeded its authority. The 2017 guilty verdict and sentence therefore remain in place. Hernandez's attorneys continue to maintain that he is innocent. Etan Patz's remains have never been found.