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Etan Patz, 6, disappeared on May 25, 1979, while walking alone for the first time to his school bus stop in SoHo, Manhattan. His body was never found. Pedro Hernandez, a former stock boy at a nearby corner store, was convicted of kidnapping and murdering him in 2017. After a federal appeals court overturned that conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it on June 22, 2026, leaving Hernandez serving 25 years to life.

Etan had asked to make the short walk himself. That Friday, the last school day before Memorial Day weekend, his mother, Julie Patz, agreed. He left the family's apartment at 113 Prince Street with a book bag and a dollar to buy a soda. The bus stop was a block and a half away, at West Broadway and Prince Street.

He never boarded the bus or reached school. When he did not return home, his mother called the school, learned he had been absent and called police. Detectives established a command center in the family apartment. Nearly 100 officers and bloodhounds joined a search that continued for weeks.

Photographs taken by Etan's father, Stan Patz, a professional photographer, appeared on missing-child posters and milk cartons. Etan became one of the first missing children pictured on milk cartons. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan designated May 25 as National Missing Children's Day.

For years, investigators focused on Jose Ramos, a convicted child molester whose girlfriend, Susan Harrington, had walked Etan to school during a bus strike shortly before his disappearance. Ramos was never charged in Etan's case. After Etan was declared legally dead in 2001, his parents pursued a wrongful-death suit against Ramos and obtained a $2 million judgment in 2004.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. reopened the criminal investigation in 2010. After investigators searched a SoHo basement in April 2012, Jose Lopez contacted police about his brother-in-law, Hernandez, who had told people he had done something terrible to a child in New York.

Hernandez was 18 and working at the corner store when Etan disappeared. He soon left the job and moved back to New Jersey. On May 23, 2012, he agreed to questioning at the Camden County prosecutor's office. After about six hours without a lawyer or a recording, investigators turned on a camera. Hernandez said he had lured Etan into the store basement with a soda and choked him.

He received Miranda warnings after about seven hours of questioning and confessed again on video. He later led detectives through the SoHo route, saying he had put the body in a box and left it on the curb. He was arrested and indicted on murder and kidnapping charges. He pleaded not guilty.

At trial, the defense argued that Hernandez's mental illness and low intellect had led him to invent the confession, and pointed to Ramos as the killer. Prosecutors relied on Hernandez's confessions and experts who found him not mentally ill. The first trial ended in May 2015 with jurors deadlocked 11 to 1 for conviction.

A second jury convicted Hernandez of kidnapping and felony murder on Feb. 14, 2017. He received concurrent sentences of 25 years to life. The Second Circuit overturned the conviction in July 2025 over the trial judge's response to a jury question about the later confessions. The Supreme Court reinstated it by a 6-3 vote, holding that the appeals court had exceeded its authority under the federal law governing review of state convictions.