NEW YORK —For decades, the father of Etan Patz thought he knew who had killed his 6-year-old son on the way to school in 1979, and it wasn’t the man whose trial he just endured.
After hearing every word of nearly three months of testimony, Stan Patz is sure that Pedro Hernandez kidnapped and killed Etan — even if the jury wasn’t.
“The family of Etan Patz has waited 36 years for an explanation as to what happened to our sweet little boy,” his father said after a hung jury spurred a mistrial Friday. After hearing the prosecutors’ case against the former corner store clerk who gave what his defense called a false confession in 2012, Patz said, “I’m convinced. … It makes sense, from beginning to end.”
As the trial ended unresolved, even Patz’s new certainty marked another twist in his family’s painful trajectory in trying to get answers and justice.
The investigation stretched across decades and continents. For years, Patz and others blamed Jose Ramos, a convicted pedophile acquainted with a woman who sometimes walked Etan home from school. Patz was so sure, he mailed a copy of Etan’s missing poster to Ramos in prison each year, asking: “What did you do to my little boy?”
Prosecutors have asked the judge to set a new court date next month but haven’t specifically said whether they will again try the case, which made Etan’s face one of the first missing-children appeals to appear on milk cartons. Its impact echoes every May 25 — National Missing Children’s Day, the anniversary of his disappearance.
Patz said he found Hernandez’s confessions chillingly powerful. And he viewed the defense’s false-confession argument — which centered on mental illness and a very low IQ — as “psychobabble.”
“He is a guilty man who has been conscience-stricken, due to his deeds, and haunted by demons ever since that day,” he said.
But Hernandez’s defense portrayed him as a suggestible man confused about what was real and imaginary, haunted by hallucinations and worn down by six hours of police questioning.
“Nothing that occurs in the course of this trial,” defense lawyer Harvey Fishbein said when Hernandez was indicted, “will answer what actually happened to Etan Patz.”
Eleven jurors ultimately felt it did, voting to convict Hernandez. The lone dissenter cited Hernandez’s mental health and evidence that was too circumstantial.
