The murder case surrounding the 1979 disappearance of six-year-old Etan Patz is on track for a third trial, after a judge declined Friday to dismiss charges against the onetime New York shop clerk charged with abducting and killing the boy on his way to school, reported The Associated Press.
The man, Pedro Hernandez, 65, has been behind bars since his 2012 arrest. He is due back in court in June for a status update. A trial date has not yet been set.
Patz vanished on a two-block walk to his school bus stop on the first day his mom let him go unaccompanied. He was among the first vanished kids to be pictured on milk cartons, and the May 25 anniversary of his disappearance became National Missing Children’s Day.
New York Judge Michele Rodney turned away Hernandez’s lawyers’ arguments that prosecutors waited too long to charge Hernandez and that he can’t get a fair trial now, after decades of media coverage.
Hernandez’s lawyers declined to comment afterward. Prosecutors had no immediate comment.
Hernandez, now 64, worked at a nearby corner store at the time. He did not become a suspect until decades later, when authorities learned he had made inconsistent statements over the years about killing a child. In 2012, he told police he strangled Etan after offering him a soda and luring him into the store basement. “Something just took over me," Hernandez said on video.
With no physical evidence, the confession was central. His lawyers argued it was false, coerced, and the product of mental illness. Hernandez, who has a very low IQ and was on antipsychotic medication, was questioned for seven hours before police read him his rights or began recording.
His first trial ended in a hung jury. He was convicted in 2017 and sentenced to 25 years to life. Last July, a federal appeals court ruled the conviction was tainted by a judge’s “clearly wrong" response to a jury question about Hernandez’s confessions.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office pledged to retry the case but also asked the US Supreme Court to restore Hernandez’s conviction. The high court isn’t obliged to hear the case and hasn’t yet said whether it will.
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)