Pedro Hernandez Gets 25 Years to Life in Murder of Etan Patz
Source: New York Times
Pedro Hernandez Gets 25 Years to Life in Murder of Etan Patz
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. APRIL 18, 2017
Pedro Hernandez, a former store clerk who told the police that he murdered the 6-year-old Etan Patz as the boy headed to school in 1979, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison on Tuesday, bringing to a close a missing-child case that bedeviled investigators for decades and forever changed the way American parents protected their children.
It took two trials, both of which lasted five months, for prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office to persuade a jury to convict Mr. Hernandez of kidnapping and murder. His first trial ended two years ago in a hung jury after one juror held out for acquittal.
Etan vanished on May 25, 1979, while walking to a school bus stop near his parent’s loft in SoHo. It was the first time Etan’s parents had allowed him to go to the bus stop on his own. Etan, a first grader, was carrying a tote bag full of Matchbox cars and a dollar to buy a drink. He never made it to school.
The case sent a wave of fear through the city and reverberated with parents across the country who had to rethink where or whether to let their children venture out alone. New Yorkers from that era still remember the search: the police helicopters hovering over Lower Manhattan, volunteers shouting Etan’s name in the street, the ubiquitous posters with an image of the sandy-haired boy. ... As the years dragged on without an arrest, the Patz family worked with parents of other missing children in the United States to raise awareness about child abductions. (Etan was one of the first missing children to be pictured on a milk carton.)
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/nyregion/pedro-hernandez-etan-patz-sentencing.html
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