The murder trial of a man accused in the 1979 disappearance of first-grader Etan Patz ended Friday in a hung jury, leaving one of the nation’s most wrenching missing-children cases still unresolved after nearly two generations.
After 18 days of deliberating, jurors said for a third time that they were hopelessly deadlocked — 11-1, in favor of conviction — in the case against Pedro Hernandez. The judge declared a mistrial as Hernandez sat impassively.
The Maple Shade, New Jersey, man was a teenage stock clerk at a Manhattan convenience store near where 6-year-old Etan vanished May 25, 1979. He would become one of the first missing children ever pictured on milk cartons.
Prosecutors immediately asked to set a new trial date in the case, which frustrated authorities for decades before a tip led them to Hernandez — never before a suspect — and he confessed in 2012. His lawyers said the confession was false and concocted by mental illness, and they said another longtime suspect was the more likely killer.
The mistrial left Etan’s parents, who became national advocates for the cause of missing children, to await another trial.
“We are frustrated and very disappointed the jury has been unable to make a decision. The long ordeal is not over,” said his father, Stanley Patz. But, he added, “I think we have closure already.”
He tried for years to bring the earlier suspect to account for Etan’s death, but after the trial, he said: “I am so convinced Pedro Hernandez kidnapped and killed my son. … His story is simple, and it makes sense.”
Hernandez will remain in jail to await another trial; the first took more than three months. He has a June 10 court date for a status update.
Several jurors said they found Hernandez’s confession compellingly detailed and buttressed by admissions he’d made to friends and relatives years before, and those jurors said they felt his mental problems were the result of a guilty conscience.
“Pedro Hernandez, you know what you did,” said forewoman Alia Dahhan, who works in the arts.
The lone holdout said he felt Hernandez’s mental health history was “a huge part of this case” and couldn’t stop wondering about the roughly seven hours police questioned him before administering his Miranda rights and turning on a video camera.
“Ultimately, I couldn’t find enough evidence that wasn’t circumstantial to convict. I couldn’t get there,” said the juror, Adam Sirois, a health care consultant.
Jurors announced they were deadlocked twice before Friday, on April 29 and on Tuesday. Both times, the judge told them to keep trying to reach a verdict.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said in a statement he believed there was “clear and corroborated evidence” of Hernandez’s guilt.
“The challenges in this case were exacerbated by the passage of time, but they should not, and did not, deter us,” Vance said.
One of Hernandez’s lawyers, Harvey Fishbein, said he recognized the Patzes and even New Yorkers at large were yearning to resolve the case.
“I would say there’s only a resolution if the correct man is held responsible, and we firmly believe Pedro Hernandez is not the right man,” he said.
After Etan’s disappearance, his parents helped shepherd in an era of law enforcement advances that make it easier to track missing children and communicate among agencies. The Patzes were at the White House when President Ronald Reagan named May 25 National Missing Children’s Day.
While New York City detectives frantically searched for the sandy-haired boy, Hernandez moved back to New Jersey and slipped off the radar. His name appears in police files only once, as someone officers encountered while canvassing the neighborhood, before his 2012 confession to choking the boy in the basement of the shop, then putting the body in a bag, putting the bag in a banana box, walking it about two blocks away and dumping it.
But Etan’s body was never found. Nor was any trace of clothing or his belongings.
Several members of a prayer circle, an ex-wife and a friend testified that Hernandez had told them at different points during the past three decades that he’d harmed a boy in New York. The jury watched hours of his confession and heard from Julie Patz, Etan’s mother, who recounted in clear, sad detail the last time she saw her son.
But no physical evidence tied Hernandez to the crime; the corner store closed in the early 1980s. No DNA was found. Hernandez’s ex-wife testified that she once saw part of Etan’s missing-child poster in a box belonging to Hernandez, but authorities turned up nothing.
“As I told you in the very beginning, Pedro Hernandez is the only witness against himself,” Fishbein said during closing arguments. “Yet he is inconsistent and unreliable.”
Hernandez’s defense said all his admissions were imaginary; Hernandez, defense doctors testified, has trouble telling reality from illusion.
His lawyers also pointed to Jose Ramos, a convicted pedophile who admitted to a federal prosecutor that he had been with Etan the day the boy vanished, according to testimony. Ramos, now jailed in Pennsylvania, has since said he doesn’t have anything to do with Etan’s disappearance and prosecutors never felt there was enough evidence to charge him with the crime.
The Patzes, meanwhile, never moved or changed their phone number, for years wondering whether there was a chance their missing boy might call.
“Etan was a beautiful, outgoing, curious little kid,” his father said Friday. “He would have made a great adult.”
(AP)
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One Response
There is surely a doubt as to whether the accused committed this murder.
The scattered off hand comments he made indicating culpability are not sufficient to establish guilt. This is particularly true if they were made while he was either in an actual drugged state or even if he was habituated to the effects of the drugs. If he is in fact a shotah, none of his comments can be take seriously. The scary expressions on his face are not proof of guilt either. The confession is of no value because it was not freely given, it was obtained under suspicious conditions, and was immediately repudiated. That he was among the last people to see the victim alive is also not proof of guilt.
Based on instinct, reasonable people may disagree. If one believes that Hernandez is in fact a murderer or even suspects him of it, it would be appropriate to distance themselves from him, advise others to do so also, and keep him under observation. If one believes the Hernandez was falsely accused they are free to conduct themselves towards him as they normally do. However they should respect the opinions of those that disagree, provided they do not become a vehicle for persecution and harassment.
An analysis of the confession as well as the conduct of police, prosecutor, and judge would be lengthy. Suffice it to say that if falls into the category of tensions between the community and the criminal justice system.