(NEW YORK) — Pedro Hernandez, the man convicted of abducting and murdering Etan Patz, must be re-tried by June 2026 or he will be released from custody, a federal judge in New York ruled on Friday.
This is the latest twist in what Judge Colleen McMahon called “the nearly half-century long saga of the disappearance and presumptive murder” of Patz.
Six-year-old Patz went missing while walking to his school bus stop alone in SoHo in 1979. He became the first missing child whose face appeared on a milk carton and changed the way the country responds to missing children cases.
Hernandez’s first trial ended in a hung jury. In 2017, after Hernandez’s second trial, he was convicted of kidnapping and murder and sentenced to 25 years to life. Because of a lack of physical evidence, the trial hinged entirely on purported confessions from Hernandez, who has a documented history of mental illnesses and a low IQ.
A federal appeals court ruled earlier this year that Hernandez was wrongfully convicted because of an error by the state court judge who oversaw his trial. The appellate court ordered Hernandez released or retried within a “reasonable” period of time.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office will be asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and, in the meantime, said it has not decided whether to put Hernandez on trial again.
McMahon said it was not her job “to read the tea leaves and make predictions,” though she expressed some sympathy for the “unusual, even extraordinary, difficulties” the district attorney’s office faces. All but one member of the original trial team no longer works there and dozens of long-scattered witnesses need to be found.
McMahon gave the district attorney’s office until June 1 to retry Hernandez. “If jury selection does not commence by June 1, 2026, Hernandez must be released,” McMahon said.
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