Supreme Court Reinstates Murder Conviction in Notorious NYC Missing Kid Case

(Mark Lennihan/Louis Lanzano/AP photos)

The Supreme Court has reinstated a murder conviction in the case of Etan Patz, a 6-year-old New York City boy who vanished without a trace in 1979 while walking to the school bus.

The 6-3 ruling came down on Monday ahead of a third murder trial for 64-year-old Pedro Hernandez, the man who confessed to killing the boy.

Hernandez’s first murder trial in 2015 resulted in a mistrial due to a deadlocked jury. In the second trial two years later, he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

But the conviction was overturned last year after an appeals court found that the judge in the case gave jurors “manifestly inaccurate” information when they asked a question during deliberations.

After the murder conviction was overturned on Monday, Hernandez’s lawyers, Harvey Fishbein and Alice Fontier, told the Associated Press that they were “terribly disappointed” by the ruling, adding, “We firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit.”

Patz vanished without a trace on May 25, 1979, after leaving his family’s SoHo apartment to walk to his school bus stop.

Patz was later the first face to appear on a milk carton, and May 25, the date that Patz disappeared, was established as National Missing Children’s Day by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.

The case remained one of the Big Apple’s most puzzling mysteries until 2012, when Hernandez, who worked at a convenience store close to where Patz disappeared, confessed to strangling Patz and throwing the child’s body out with the trash.

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