Deceased/Not Found NY - Etan Patz, 6, New York, 25 May 1979 #3 *P. Hernandez guilty*

  • #121
But the issue is that there was no evidence this man was a perp. There was no physical evidence connecting the man to Etan Patz, only a confession by a man who was known to suffer hallucinations, and who only offered a videotaped confession to police after six hours of interrogation that did not get videotaped. He worked in the neighbourhood bodega, sure, but that in itself is not proof of anything.
BBM Yikes!! No video?? It was what 2012 or 2015?


This isn't the 70's
 
  • #122
Have any attorneys spoken about the likelihood of Pedro Hernandez being retried or freed in the local NY news or national news coverage on CNN or Court TV of his conviction being overturned by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals? I’m in the U.K. and haven’t seen any coverage of this significant development.

I can’t imagine what Etan’s parents and his siblings continue to go through. It is heartbreaking and extremely tragic.
The parents remained living in that same apartment until 2019 and never changed their phone number.
 
  • #123
But the issue is that there was no evidence this man was a perp. There was no physical evidence connecting the man to Etan Patz, only a confession by a man who was known to suffer hallucinations, and who only offered a videotaped confession to police after six hours of interrogation that did not get videotaped. He worked in the neighbourhood bodega, sure, but that in itself is not proof of anything.
IMO the police wanted to close this case, not solve it necessarily. As for Etan’s parents believing Hernandez did it, I believe they resigned to it because if not they’d still be stuck in limbo wondering what became of their little boy.

I definitely believe Etan was abducted and probably murdered but we will never truly know until his remains are recovered. I’ve read reports that the bodega was searched after Etan originally went missing in 1979. I feel they definitely would’ve found Etan’s book bag discarded in the basement.

Etan’s case doesn’t have a shred of physical evidence to prove anything, even the circumstantial evidence is weak. Hernandez claimed Patz was waiting for the bus at his stop when he spotted him but all witnesses said Patz never made it to the stop that morning. I think Hernandez’s conviction was a last attempt to close the case.
 
  • #124
IMO the police wanted to close this case, not solve it necessarily. As for Etan’s parents believing Hernandez did it, I believe they resigned to it because if not they’d still be stuck in limbo wondering what became of their little boy.

I definitely believe Etan was abducted and probably murdered but we will never truly know until his remains are recovered. I’ve read reports that the bodega was searched after Etan originally went missing in 1979. I feel they definitely would’ve found Etan’s book bag discarded in the basement.

Etan’s case doesn’t have a shred of physical evidence to prove anything, even the circumstantial evidence is weak. Hernandez claimed Patz was waiting for the bus at his stop when he spotted him but all witnesses said Patz never made it to the stop that morning. I think Hernandez’s conviction was a last attempt to close the case.
It feels to me like the sort of kindness that actually was not that at all. A vulnerable man who was plausibly innocent had his life disrupted, and the Patz family had their final resolution snatched away from them.

I should also, perhaps, that a lot of police forces including the NYPD make questionable choices.
 
  • #125
I recall this case all too well. Never thought they had the right guy, and with PH’s documented issues of mental illnesses and a low IQ, I can see that he possibly an easy target to blame. jmo

Etan Patz was one of the 1st children profiled on the milk carton campaign in the early 80’s.
 
  • #126
The parents remained living in that same apartment until 2019 and never changed their phone number.
Yes, it was so sad, they stayed there for decades. In 2019 they finally sold their loft and moved to Hawaii where their son lives with his family.

I have never gotten this image out of my mind of them looking out from the fire escape.

1753230884941.webp
 
  • #127
  • #128
This is very sad for his parents, brother, and other relatives for all they have been through and will go through with this.
 
  • #129
Yes, it was so sad, they stayed there for decades. In 2019 they finally sold their loft and moved to Hawaii where their son lives with his family.

I have never gotten this image out of my mind of them looking out from the fire escape.

View attachment 603378
I kept thinking of them never giving up hope and staying there when following another case where the mother left just days after her children went missing (Lily and Jack).
 
  • #130
JUL 23, 2025

Patz is among one of the first faces to be featured on a milk carton, later dubbed the “Milk Carton Kids,” and while that method was critiqued and didn’t quite result in a large turnaround of missing kids, per the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, it led to the development of other, more effective ways of searching for missing kids, including the AMBER Alert system, which was invented in 1996.

More at Etan Patz Was One of the First "Milk Carton Kids" — What Happened to Him?
 
  • #131
“[Etan’s parents] Stanley Patz and Julie Patz certainly believe he murdered their child for a number of years,” Harvey Fishbein, a criminal defense attorney for Hernandez told The Post.

Ramos, now 82, was friendly with a woman who babysat Patz and had been in the family’s house on the day of the disappearance.

An itinerant, he lived in a drainpipe which he furnished with a bed, religious items and, curiously, children’s toys. A police search also found Ramos had several pictures of him with young boys in his makeshift home, taken in Times Square near an X rated cinema.

Ramos once told a federal prosecutor that he was “90 percent sure” he met Etan near Washington Square Park the day he disappeared.
 
  • #132
“[Etan’s parents] Stanley Patz and Julie Patz certainly believe he murdered their child for a number of years,” Harvey Fishbein, a criminal defense attorney for Hernandez told The Post.

Ramos, now 82, was friendly with a woman who babysat Patz and had been in the family’s house on the day of the disappearance.

An itinerant, he lived in a drainpipe which he furnished with a bed, religious items and, curiously, children’s toys. A police search also found Ramos had several pictures of him with young boys in his makeshift home, taken in Times Square near an X rated cinema.

Ramos once told a federal prosecutor that he was “90 percent sure” he met Etan near Washington Square Park the day he disappeared.
I definitely still think Ramos could be behind this but I still keep thinking about this blonde guy they released a sketch of. Etan’s abductor could be anyone, even someone the police have never suspected
 
  • #133
I saw this on YouTube and was shocked this case is in the news again!

I have to ask, if his conviction is overturned, are we basically back to square one again in this case?

😡😡
 
  • #134
I saw this on YouTube and was shocked this case is in the news again!

I have to ask, if his conviction is overturned, are we basically back to square one again in this case?

😡😡
It’s still been at square one even with the conviction. There was never solid evidence of Etan’s fate
 
  • #135
  • #136

I’ve always had my doubts about Pedro’s confessions and the validity of them. Especially after finding out he was interrogated for hours without any recording taking place.
 
  • #137

August 8, 2025

Manhattan prosecutors on Friday asked a federal court to delay proceedings in the Etan Patz case, saying they may ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review an order overturning a conviction in his killing.

A panel of three federal judges who serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled last month that the man convicted of murder and kidnapping in the boy’s 1979 killing, Pedro Hernandez, must get a new trial within a “reasonable period” or be released from his 25-year-to-life prison sentence.

In response, prosecutors wrote that they “should not be required to proceed to a retrial or accommodate petitioner’s release without first being provided the opportunity to consider whether to seek Supreme Court review to restore a conviction.”

They called the ruling “unprecedented.”

*****
At the core of the issues for the Supreme Court to consider, prosecutors said, is whether a federal court can compel a state judge to give legal instructions to a jury “when neither federal nor state law clearly requires the jury to decide the applicable issue.”

More in linked article.
 
  • #138
Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, and the prosecutors argued that the Second Circuit order “unsettles a nearly decade-old conviction that previously was upheld by every state and federal court.”

Mr. Hernandez’s lawyer, Edward B. Diskant, said in a statement that “every federal judge to review Pedro’s case has concluded that his state conviction was obtained in violation of federal law. We don’t believe there is any basis to ask the Supreme Court to revisit — let alone reverse — those findings.” The motion, Mr. Diskant said, “seeks to needlessly delay Pedro’s right to be immediately released or retried.”
 
  • #139

August 8, 2025

Manhattan prosecutors on Friday asked a federal court to delay proceedings in the Etan Patz case, saying they may ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review an order overturning a conviction in his killing.

A panel of three federal judges who serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled last month that the man convicted of murder and kidnapping in the boy’s 1979 killing, Pedro Hernandez, must get a new trial within a “reasonable period” or be released from his 25-year-to-life prison sentence.

In response, prosecutors wrote that they “should not be required to proceed to a retrial or accommodate petitioner’s release without first being provided the opportunity to consider whether to seek Supreme Court review to restore a conviction.”

They called the ruling “unprecedented.”

*****
At the core of the issues for the Supreme Court to consider, prosecutors said, is whether a federal court can compel a state judge to give legal instructions to a jury “when neither federal nor state law clearly requires the jury to decide the applicable issue.”

More in linked article.
Sounds like “I don’t want to admit I might’ve even wrong and don’t wanna be bothered with actually solving one of the most infamous missing children cases that’s captivated the nation for nearly five decades.”
 
  • #140

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