Latest news with #EtanPatz
New York Times
3 days ago
- New York Times
How Parenting Changed After Etan Patz
It was 1979, and Nils Johnson-Shelton had a lot in common with a classmate named Etan Patz. Both were 6-year-old boys with bowl cuts, the sons of artists living in lofts in SoHo. They rode the same bus to the same elementary school, where they both attended first grade. On the morning of May 25 that year, Etan went missing and was never found. His disappearance not only shocked New York City; it was later credited as the event that forever altered parenting, a word that had only recently entered the lexicon. From that terrible day, the notion that children in America should be left to their own devices — to run with their friends, climb trees, fall down, get up and keep running — changed. Parenting transformed, too, as mothers and fathers grew more intense, more fearful, more riddled with anxiety about threats, real and imagined, that children newly seemed to face. 'Etan's case is foundational,' said John E. Bischoff III, a vice president at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. 'It made parents more aware and concerned for their own children's safety.' The biggest change Mr. Johnson-Shelton recalls from his childhood was that he no longer rode the bus to school. Instead, he would clamber onto his father's bike and the two of them would rattle across the cobblestone streets of TriBeCa. 'I was so young that I didn't put the two together,' he said recently. It never occurred to him that the bike rides were a result of what had happened to Etan. 'I just thought it was an awesome thing to do with my dad.' Last week, after a federal appeals court reversed the conviction of Pedro Hernandez, a former bodega worker who was found guilty in 2017 of kidnapping and killing Etan, the case returned to the spotlight, inspiring a new round of conversations about how to raise children. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Fox News
4 days ago
- Fox News
Murder of Etan Patz, one of first missing children on milk cartons, raises confession questions after reversal
The man imprisoned for kidnapping and murdering a six-year-old boy in New York City nearly 45 years ago has had his conviction overturned. 64-year-old Pedro Hernandez has been serving 25 years to life in prison after being convicted in 2017 of killing Etan Patz in 1979. Patz vanished on the first day he was allowed to walk to the school bus stop by himself on May 25, 1979. He was one of the first missing children to be pictured on milk cartons in a case that drew national attention. President Ronald Reagan later declared May 25, 1983, the first National Missing Children's Day in memory of Patz. On the morning of May 25, 1979, the first-grader was granted permission from his parents to walk alone to the bus stop, located just a block and a half away from where the family lived. His mother took him downstairs and watched him walk into the distance – he was never seen again. At the time of Patz's disappearance, Hernandez was working at a convenience shop as a teenager in the child's downtown Manhattan neighborhood. He initially spoke with authorities as they were canvassing for the child, but he did not become a suspect until police received a 2012 tip revealing that Hernandez had previously made remarks about killing a child in New York, but had not mentioned Patz by name. Hernandez was arrested in 2012 and ultimately confessed to the crime after seven hours of questioning, telling investigators he had lured Patz into the store's basement with the promise of giving him a soda. Once inside, Hernandez said he had choked the child because "something just took over me," before putting Patz – who Hernandez said was still alive – inside a box and leaving it alongside a pile of trash. However, Hernandez's lawyers insisted the confession was the result of a mental illness that caused their client to misinterpret his imagination from reality. The attorneys also pointed to Hernandez's very low IQ. "Several factors likely contributed to his confession, including low IQ, mental illness, and heightened suggestibility," Jonathan Alpert, psychotherapist and author of "Therapy Nation," told Fox News Digital. "These make someone more prone to internalizing guilt or fabricating details to meet perceived expectations." Alpert has not treated any of the individuals involved in the case. Hernandez was initially tried in New York state court twice – with the first trial ending in a jury deadlock in 2015 – before an appeal transferred the case into federal court. At the time, prosecutors claimed that Hernandez was faking or exaggerating his illness, pointing to Hernandez reportedly admitting to the crimes before police read him his rights and began recording their interview in 2012. He went on to repeat his confession at least twice while being recorded. The confession ultimately led to questions from jurors during their nine days of deliberations, with their final inquiry revolving around whether they were required to rule out the two recorded confessions if they were to determine that the first one was invalid – with the judge telling them they were not. An appeals court later ruled the judge should have provided a better explanation to the jury regarding their options, which could have included not factoring in all three of Hernandez's confessions. Referring to a jury note during the trial, the appeals court said the judge had provided a "clearly wrong" and "manifestly prejudicial" response to the question posed. The court's decision to overturn Hernandez's conviction and grant him a new trial raises questions regarding mental health and confessions in court cases, as Alpert points to the frequent susceptibility of individuals with mental health disorders to "have an intense need to gain approval from authority figures." "When interrogators suggest a narrative, these individuals can absorb and repeat it, not out of deceit, but out of compliance. Over time, they may even start to believe it themselves, especially when under stress or exhaustion." While a new trial could bring additional clarity for a case that has spanned decades, Alpert warns that it could also lead to misunderstandings regarding testimony and evidence years later. "A retrial has the potential to bring clarity, especially if new psychological insights or evidence are introduced," Alpert told Fox News Digital. "But it could just as easily create more confusion, particularly if the case continues to rely heavily on interpretation rather than hard facts." GET REAL-TIME UPDATES DIRECTLY ON THE TRUE CRIME HUB The case garnered national attention, with Patz's photo being one of the first to be circulated on milk cartons throughout the country. His parents spent decades in the same home and with the same phone number, in hopes of their son eventually returning to them. The child's family worked to help establish a national missing-children hotline and pioneered a new way for law enforcement agencies throughout the country to distribute information regarding such cases. "They waited and persevered for 35 years for justice for Etan, which today, sadly, may have been lost," former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. told The Associated Press after hearing about the reversal. The court ordered Hernandez's release unless he receives a new trial within "a reasonable time period." "For more than 13 years, Pedro Hernandez has been in prison for a crime he did not commit and based on a conviction that the Second Circuit has now made clear was obtained in clear violation of law," Hernandez's lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "We are grateful the Court has now given Pedro a chance to get his life back, and we call upon the Manhattan District Attorney's Office to drop these misguided charges and focus their efforts where they belong – on finding those actually responsible for the disappearance of Etan Patz." The Manhattan District Attorney's Office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. "This case highlights a broader issue in the legal system," Alpert said. "Confessions are not always reliable. Mental illness, coercion or desperation can all lead someone to admit guilt falsely. Without physical evidence to support a confession, courts must proceed with extreme caution. Understanding the psychology behind a confession is essential before treating it as fact."
The Guardian
5 days ago
- The Guardian
With a guilty verdict overturned, will Etan Patz's murderer ever be punished?
Decades after six-year-old Etan Patz disappeared while walking to school in New York City, stirring widespread public fear in the US about leaving children unattended, his family felt they got some justice when Pedro Hernandez was convicted of murder in 2017. Now that closure has also vanished. On 21 July, a federal appeals court overturned the guilty verdict. The court stated that the judge in the murder trial was 'clearly wrong' and 'manifestly prejudicial' in his response to a jury note concerning Hernandez's alleged confessions. Hernandez should either face a new trial or be released, the court ruled. And so, it is again an open question of whether there will ever be a resolution to Etan's case, which was a seminal event in US criminal history as it started a movement to help find missing children and caused many Americans parents to watch their kids more closely. 'This case has endured for so many decades, it's almost like there are generations of people that learn about it all over again,' said Lisa R Cohen, a journalist who wrote After Etan: The Missing Child Case That Held America Captive. 'It's going to have an effect on any young parent,' Cohen added. On 25 May 1979, Etan's mother, Julie, allowed him, for the first time, to walk to a bus stop just a couple of blocks away in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood. After he didn't come home at 3.30pm, Julie learned he never made it to school and reported him missing. Police spent weeks searching for him. His body has never been found. 'I'm not sitting around doing nothing but mourning and thinking of revenge,' Etan's father, Stan, said, according to an excerpt from Cohen's 2009 book. 'But I've also waited 30 years to get justice for Etan. I'll wait as long as it takes.' The stories of Etan and another child, Adam Walsh, inspired a movement to prevent the abduction and murder of adolescents, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In 1983, then president Ronald Reagan marked the anniversary of Etan's disappearance by declaring the date National Missing Children's Day. Etan's face also appeared on billboards and milk cartons. Before Etan's disappearance, 'kids played after school and came home for supper and no one was tracking every move', Cohen said. 'And then there is the time after Etan, when everything changed. It was a zeitgeist moment.' A suspect, Jose Antonio Ramos, emerged a few years after Etan went missing, but law enforcement officials initially declared that he was not connected to the crime. A federal prosecutor later treated him as a prime suspect and pursued him. A convicted pedophile, Ramos admitted that he tried to molest the child but said he did not kill him. He was never charged with Etan's disappearance, but his parents won a $2m wrongful death lawsuit against Ramos in 2004. Then, in 2012, Hernandez, who worked at a bodega near the Patz's home, confessed that he lured Etan to his store by promising him a soft drink and took him to the basement and strangled him. His parents became convinced that Hernandez, not Ramos, was the killer, A jury deadlocked on the Hernandez murder trial in 2015, but in a 2017 retrial, the jury found him guilty. 'The Patz family has waited a long time, but we've finally found some measure of justice for our wonderful little boy, Etan,' Stan Patz said at the time. 'I'm really grateful that this jury finally came back with which I have known for a long time that this man, Pedro Hernandez, is guilty of doing something really terrible so many years ago.' But during the investigation, Hernandez had initially confessed after seven hours of questioning from police, who did not read him his Miranda rights against self-incrimination, according to court documents. Only afterwards did police issue them, and he then repeated his confession. During the second trial, the jury asked the judge to explain whether, if the jury found that Hernandez's first confession was not voluntary, it must disregard the later confessions. The judge said no. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion The appeals court ruled that the directive was wrong. David Schwartz, a former prosecutor in New York, said the judge's answer 'was certainly not harmless error' and 'really is contrary to the law of confessions'. 'You certainly want justice to be done for this tragic case, but on the other hand, we have to uphold the integrity of the criminal justice system and fair trials,' he said. Etan's parents have not commented on the case since Hernandez's conviction, the New York Post reported, and it does not appear that they have responded publicly to the appeals court ruling. Louis K Meisel owned an art gallery on the block between the Patz's home and the bus stop and knew the family 'very well', he said. 'It's one of the biggest mysteries, and we're never going to know the end and the answers,' Meisel said. Cyrus Vance Jr, the former Manhattan district attorney who oversaw the two trials, told the New York Times after the ruling that he was 'surprised and saddened for the Patz family'. 'I was certainly convinced myself that Pedro Hernandez killed Etan Patz, and I think that today,' Vance said. Emily Tuttle, a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney said: 'We are reviewing the decision.' Schwartz, the former prosecutor, thinks the district attorney would have a difficult time retrying Hernandez. 'The confession was really at the heart of the case,' Schwartz said. 'Unless there is new evidence somehow, which is very unlikely, I'm not sure they are going to be able to retry.'
The Guardian
5 days ago
- The Guardian
With a guilty verdict overturned, will Etan Patz's murderer ever be punished?
Decades after six-year-old Etan Patz disappeared while walking to school in New York City, stirring widespread public fear in the US about leaving children unattended, his family felt they got some justice when Pedro Hernandez was convicted of murder in 2017. Now that closure has also vanished. On 21 July, a federal appeals court overturned the guilty verdict. The court stated that the judge in the murder trial was 'clearly wrong' and 'manifestly prejudicial' in his response to a jury note concerning Hernandez's alleged confessions. Hernandez should either face a new trial or be released, the court ruled. And so, it is again an open question of whether there will ever be a resolution to Etan's case, which was a seminal event in US criminal history as it started a movement to help find missing children and caused many Americans parents to watch their kids more closely. 'This case has endured for so many decades, it's almost like there are generations of people that learn about it all over again,' said Lisa R Cohen, a journalist who wrote After Etan: The Missing Child Case That Held America Captive. 'It's going to have an effect on any young parent,' Cohen added. On 25 May 1979, Etan's mother, Julie, allowed him, for the first time, to walk to a bus stop just a couple of blocks away in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood. After he didn't come home at 3.30pm, Julie learned he never made it to school and reported him missing. Police spent weeks searching for him. His body has never been found. 'I'm not sitting around doing nothing but mourning and thinking of revenge,' Etan's father, Stan, said, according to an excerpt from Cohen's 2009 book. 'But I've also waited 30 years to get justice for Etan. I'll wait as long as it takes.' The stories of Etan and another child, Adam Walsh, inspired a movement to prevent the abduction and murder of adolescents, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In 1983, then president Ronald Reagan marked the anniversary of Etan's disappearance by declaring the date National Missing Children's Day. Etan's face also appeared on billboards and milk cartons. Before Etan's disappearance, 'kids played after school and came home for supper and no one was tracking every move', Cohen said. 'And then there is the time after Etan, when everything changed. It was a zeitgeist moment.' A suspect, Jose Antonio Ramos, emerged a few years after Etan went missing, but law enforcement officials initially declared that he was not connected to the crime. A federal prosecutor later treated him as a prime suspect and pursued him. A convicted pedophile, Ramos admitted that he tried to molest the child but said he did not kill him. He was never charged with Etan's disappearance, but his parents won a $2m wrongful death lawsuit against Ramos in 2004. Then, in 2012, Hernandez, who worked at a bodega near the Patz's home, confessed that he lured Etan to his store by promising him a soft drink and took him to the basement and strangled him. His parents became convinced that Hernandez, not Ramos, was the killer, A jury deadlocked on the Hernandez murder trial in 2015, but in a 2017 retrial, the jury found him guilty. 'The Patz family has waited a long time, but we've finally found some measure of justice for our wonderful little boy, Etan,' Stan Patz said at the time. 'I'm really grateful that this jury finally came back with which I have known for a long time that this man, Pedro Hernandez, is guilty of doing something really terrible so many years ago.' But during the investigation, Hernandez had initially confessed after seven hours of questioning from police, who did not read him his Miranda rights against self-incrimination, according to court documents. Only afterwards did police issue them, and he then repeated his confession. During the second trial, the jury asked the judge to explain whether, if the jury found that Hernandez's first confession was not voluntary, it must disregard the later confessions. The judge said no. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion The appeals court ruled that the directive was wrong. David Schwartz, a former prosecutor in New York, said the judge's answer 'was certainly not harmless error' and 'really is contrary to the law of confessions'. 'You certainly want justice to be done for this tragic case, but on the other hand, we have to uphold the integrity of the criminal justice system and fair trials,' he said. Etan's parents have not commented on the case since Hernandez's conviction, the New York Post reported, and it does not appear that they have responded publicly to the appeals court ruling. Louis K Meisel owned an art gallery on the block between the Patz's home and the bus stop and knew the family 'very well', he said. 'It's one of the biggest mysteries, and we're never going to know the end and the answers,' Meisel said. Cyrus Vance Jr, the former Manhattan district attorney who oversaw the two trials, told the New York Times after the ruling that he was 'surprised and saddened for the Patz family'. 'I was certainly convinced myself that Pedro Hernandez killed Etan Patz, and I think that today,' Vance said. Emily Tuttle, a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney said: 'We are reviewing the decision.' Schwartz, the former prosecutor, thinks the district attorney would have a difficult time retrying Hernandez. 'The confession was really at the heart of the case,' Schwartz said. 'Unless there is new evidence somehow, which is very unlikely, I'm not sure they are going to be able to retry.'
New York Times
5 days ago
- New York Times
A Judge Gave a One-Word Answer. It Torpedoed the Etan Patz Case.
The 12 jurors considering the fate of a man charged with killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in a SoHo basement wanted guidance. The defendant, Pedro Hernandez, had told investigators over and over that he had killed the boy in 1979. But his first confession came before the police had told him of his right to remain silent. Investigators quickly read him his rights and got him to repeat his words for a video camera. Now, in 2017, the jury asked the judge whether, if they found that Mr. Hernandez's first confession was not voluntary, they should then disregard the later recorded version. The judge, Maxwell Wiley, responded, 'The answer is, 'no.'' On Monday, a federal appeals court said that Justice Wiley's one-word answer had failed to explain a Supreme Court precedent that governs such serial confessions. The three judges ordered that Mr. Hernandez be released from his 25-years-to-life sentence or get a new trial. The stunning ruling revived a seemingly settled case that has frustrated law enforcement officials in New York City for the greater part of 45 years. The investigation into Etan's vanishing — his body has never been found — has been filled with sensational turns, tornadoes of tips and alternative suspects. For Justice Wiley, the decision was the coda to a two-decade career on the bench that ended in April. Reached by phone, Justice Wiley said he had 'happily retired.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
