Pedro Hernandez Found Guilty of Kidnapping and Killing Etan Patz in 1979 -
Pedro Hernandez, a former bodega stock clerk who confessed to luring 6-year-old Etan Patz into a basement and attacking him, was found guilty on Tuesday of murder and kidnapping, a long-awaited step toward closure in a case
that bedeviled investigators for decades and changed forever the way parents watched over their children.
“I’m really grateful — I’m really grateful — this jury finally came back with what I’ve known for a long time,”
he added, “that this man, Pedro Hernandez, is guilty of doing something really terrible so many years ago.”
The outcome was a victory for the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr.,
who chose to prosecute Mr. Hernandez a second time after the earlier mistrial.
“The Patz family has waited a long time, but we finally found some measure of justice for our wonderful little boy Etan,” said
Mr. Patz, who sat through every day of the trial, carrying his own cushion to use on the courtroom’s hard wooden benches.
To support that argument, the prosecution called witnesses who testified about admissions Mr.
Hernandez made over the years, with varying details, about killing a child in New York City.
Prosecutors said that soon after Etan disappeared, possibly within days, Mr. Hernandez
returned to New Jersey, at some point taking a job at a dress factory.
He said he planned to appeal, saying the grounds to do so were “too lengthy to start to list right here.”
“We’re confident we’ll be back here some day,” Mr. Fishbein said.