Supreme Court Reinstates Pedro Hernandez Murder Conviction in Etan Patz Case

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By a 6-3 vote on Monday, the Supreme Court put back in place the murder conviction of Pedro Hernandez for the 1979 kidnapping and killing of 6-year-old Etan Patz, reversing a lower appeals court ruling that had granted Hernandez a new trial. Etan's story became one of the most haunting missing-child cases in American history. On May 25, 1979, the first-grader left his SoHo apartment to walk alone to his school bus stop for the first time, and vanished. His body was never found. The case went unsolved for decades, becoming a cultural touchstone that helped spur the creation of the milk-carton missing-child campaigns and the designation of May 25 as National Missing Children's Day. Hernandez, now 64, was finally convicted in 2017 after confessing to choking the boy in the basement of a corner store where he worked and disposing of the body in the trash. An appeals court ruled last July that Hernandez had been wrongly convicted and was entitled to a new trial, a decision New York prosecutors immediately challenged. The Supreme Court's reversal on Monday means the 2017 conviction stands, closing what has been a 45-year legal odyssey for the Patz family.