NEW YORK — The murder trial of a man accused in the 1979 disappearance of first-grader Etan Patz ended Friday in a jury deadlock, leaving one of the nation’s most wrenching missing-children cases still unresolved after nearly two generations.
After 18 days of deliberating, jurors said for a third time that they were hopelessly divided in the case against Pedro Hernandez, and the judge declared a mistrial as Hernandez sat impassively.
The Maple Shade, New Jersey, man was a teenage stock clerk at a Manhattan convenience store near where 6-year-old Etan vanished May 25, 1979. He would become one of the first missing children ever pictured on milk cartons.
Prosecutors immediately asked to set a new trial date in the case, which frustrated authorities for decades before a tip led them to Hernandez — never before a suspect — and he confessed in 2012. His lawyers said the confession was false and concocted by mental illness, and they said another longtime suspect was the more likely killer.
The mistrial left Etan’s parents, who became national advocates for the cause of missing children, to await another trial.
“We are frustrated and very disappointed the jury has been unable to make a decision. The long ordeal is not over,” said his father, Stanley Patz. But, he added, “I think we have closure already.”
He tried for years to bring the earlier suspect to account for Etan’s death, but after the trial, he said, “I am so convinced Pedro Hernandez kidnapped and killed my son. … His story is simple, and it makes sense.”
Hernandez will remain in jail to await another trial; the first took over three months. Jurors announced they were deadlocked twice before Friday, on April 29 and on Tuesday. Both times, the judge told them to keep trying to reach a verdict.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said in a statement he believed there was “clear and corroborated evidence” of Hernandez’s guilt.
“The challenges in this case were exacerbated by the passage of time, but they should not, and did not, deter us,” Vance said.
One of Hernandez’s lawyers, Harvey Fishbein, said he recognized the Patzes and even New Yorkers at large were yearning to resolve the case.
“I would say there’s only a resolution if the correct man is held responsible, and we firmly believe Pedro Hernandez is not the right man,” he said.
After Etan’s disappearance, his parents helped shepherd in an era of law enforcement advances that make it easier to track missing children and communicate among agencies. The Patzes were at the White House when President Ronald Reagan named May 25 National Missing Children’s Day.
While New York City detectives frantically searched for the sandy-haired boy, Hernandez moved back to New Jersey and slipped off the radar. His name appears in police files only once, as someone officers encountered while canvassing the neighborhood, before his 2012 confession to choking the boy in the basement of the shop, then putting the body in a bag, putting the bag in a banana box, walking it about two blocks away and dumping it.
But Etan’s body was never found. Nor was any trace of clothing or his belongings.
Several members of a prayer circle, an ex-wife and a friend testified that Hernandez had told them at different points during the past three decades that he’d harmed a boy in New York. The jury watched hours of his confession and heard from Julie Patz, Etan’s mother, who recounted in clear, sad detail the last time she saw her son.
But no physical evidence tied Hernandez to the crime; the corner store closed in the early 1980s. No DNA was found. Hernandez’s ex-wife testified that she once saw part of Etan’s missing-child poster in a box belonging to Hernandez, but authorities turned up nothing.
“As I told you in the very beginning, Pedro Hernandez is the only witness against himself,” Fishbein said during closing arguments. “Yet he is inconsistent and unreliable.”
Hernandez’s defense said all his admissions were imaginary; Hernandez, defense doctors testified, has trouble telling reality from illusion. His lawyers also pointed to Jose Ramos, a convicted pedophile who admitted to a federal prosecutor that he had been with Etan the day the boy vanished, according to testimony. Ramos, now jailed in Pennsylvania, has since said he doesn’t have anything to do with Etan’s disappearance.
A former jailhouse informant gave a stomach-turning account of conversations he had with Ramos that included details on molesting Etan. Manhattan prosecutors never felt there was enough evidence to charge Ramos with the crime.
Police were brought to Hernandez’s door after his brother-in-law called in a tip. He’d seen news reports of an FBI excavation in the SoHo neighborhood linked to the case, after it had been dormant for years. He testified he had long suspected his brother-in-law had been involved in the death of the child.
The Patzes, meanwhile, never moved or changed their phone number, for years wondering whether there was a chance their missing boy might call.
“Etan was a beautiful , outgoing, curious little kid,” his father said Friday. “He would have made a great adult.”
