Family finds answers in missing-boy case

This May 28, 2012, file photo shows a newspaper with a photograph of Etan Patz at a makeshift memorial in the SoHo neighborhood of New York where Patz lived before his disappearance on May 25, 1979. The murder trial of Pedro Hernandez, the man accused in the child’s disappearance, ended Friday, May 8, 2015 with the jury hopelessly deadlocked after 18 days of deliberations, leaving unresolved a case that has haunted New York City for 36 years. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File) FILE - This May 28, 2012, file photo shows a newspaper with a photograph of Etan Patz at a makeshift memorial in the SoHo neighborhood of New York where Patz lived before his disappearance on May 25, 1979. The murder trial of Pedro Hernandez, the man accused in the child’s disappearance, ended Friday, May 8, 2015 with the jury hopelessly deadlocked after 18 days of deliberations, leaving unresolved a case that has haunted New York City for 36 years. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

The father of Etan Patz believed for decades he knew who killed his 6-year-old son on the way to school in 1979, and it wasn’t the man whose trial he was about to endure. But after hearing every word of nearly three months of testimony, Stan Patz became sure that Pedro Hernandez kidnapped and killed Etan — even if the trial ended in a hung jury. The result left one of the nation’s most wrenching missing-children cases still unresolved. The judge declared a mistrial after jurors said for a third time that they were hopelessly deadlocked — 11-1 in favour of conviction.

Hernandez was a teenage stock clerk at a Manhattan convenience store near where Etan vanished on May 25, 1979. Etan would become one of the first missing children ever pictured on milk cartons in hope of generating clues to their disappearance. The case’s impact is reflected every May 25 — National Missing Children’s Day, the anniversary of his disappearance.