Pedro Hernandez, a former bodega stock clerk, had confessed years after the 1979 crime to luring Etan Patz, 6, into a basement in SoHo. The case shook New York City.
His face was everywhere.
Etan Patz, who disappeared in 1979 at the age of 6, gazed at American households across their breakfast tables every morning, his grinning photo prominently featured on milk cartons as police in Manhattan pursued thousands of tips in their futile efforts to find him.
It would take more than three decades before a man, Pedro Hernandez, was arrested and eventually convicted in Etan’s killing.
But on Monday, Mr. Hernandez’s conviction was overturned by a federal appeals court, reopening a case that had finally appeared resolved. A three-judge panel found that the trial judge had improperly instructed the jurors, who had asked about the several confessions that Mr. Hernandez had made, including one that he offered without being read his Miranda rights.
The judges ordered that Mr. Hernandez be released or a new trial be held within a “reasonable period,” a timeline to be determined by a federal judge.
Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, will decide whether to pursue such a trial in a case originally brought by his predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Emily Tuttle, said the office is “reviewing the decision.”
Etan’s abrupt disappearance decades ago — and the killing of 6-year-old Adam Walsh two years later — ushered in an era in which children who formerly had been left to their own devices were more closely watched for fear of abduction.
