The Etan Patz Case
On May 25, 1979 — now observed as National Missing Children's Day in the United States — six-year-old Etan Patz walked alone for the first time to his school bus stop two blocks from his home in lower Manhattan and vanished. Despite one of the largest missing child searches in New York City history and decades of investigation, the case remained officially unsolved for over thirty years. His disappearance helped catalyze the modern missing children's movement in the United States. Etan's face became one of the first to appear on milk cartons as part of the emerging missing children awareness campaign. His parents, Stan and Julie Patz, remained in their SoHo loft for decades, unable to leave the last place their son had known. The FBI and NYPD investigated hundreds of leads. For years, primary suspicion centered on convicted child molester José Ramos, who had been linked to Etan through a loose connection to the Patz family's babysitter. Ramos was never charged with Etan's murder. A break came in 2012 when a man named Pedro Hernandez confessed to killing Etan. Hernandez said he had lured the boy into a store where he worked, strangled him, and disposed of the body. His confession was detailed but produced no physical evidence, and his defense argued he had a history of false confessions linked to mental illness. The first trial in 2015 ended in a hung jury after a single juror refused to convict. A retrial in 2017 resulted in a conviction for murder, kidnapping, and other charges, and Hernandez was sentenced to 25 years to life. Etan Patz's case profoundly changed how America thinks about child safety. It led directly to President Reagan designating May 25 as National Missing Children's Day, to the establishment of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and to the widespread use of photos of missing children in public awareness campaigns. His body was never found. The Patz family has continued to live in the same apartment where they waited for Etan to come home.