At the time of the disappearance, Hernandez was a teenager working at a nearby convenience store. Police questioned him but did not suspect his involvement.
Thirty years later, in 2012, a tip led investigators back to Hernandez after reports surfaced that he had once claimed to have killed a child in New York — though he hadn’t mentioned Etan’s name.
Etan Patz Case: Trials, Appeals, and Controversy
Hernandez’s first trial in 2015 ended in a hung jury. In 2017, after a retrial, he was convicted of kidnapping and murder and sentenced to 25 years to life. However, his conviction relied heavily on confessions — despite a lack of physical evidence.
Hernandez’s defense argued that he suffers from mental illness and a low IQ, which may have caused him to make a false confession. “We have a man sitting in jail now for 13 years that the 2nd Circuit said was innocent,” said defense attorney Harvey Fishbein after the latest hearing.
Earlier this year, a federal appeals court ruled that Hernandez’s conviction was wrongful due to a judicial error during his state trial, ordering either a retrial or release within a reasonable time frame.
