Disappearance of Etan Patz

Etan Kalil Patz (/ˈeɪtɑːn ˈpeɪts/; October 9, 1972 – May 25, 1979) was a six-year-old American boy who disappeared on May 25, 1979, on his way to his school bus stop in the SoHo neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. His disappearance helped launch the missing children movement, which included new legislation and new methods for tracking down missing children. Several years after he disappeared, Patz was one of the first children to be profiled on the "photo on a milk carton" campaigns of the early 1980s. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan designated May 25—the anniversary of Etan's disappearance—as National Missing Children's Day in the United States.

Decades later, it was determined that Patz had been abducted and murdered the same day that he went missing. The case was reopened in 2010 by the Manhattan District Attorney's office. In 2012, the FBI excavated the basement of the alleged crime scene near the Patz residence but discovered no new evidence. Pedro Hernandez—a suspect who confessed—was charged and indicted later that year on charges of second-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping. In 2014, the case went through a series of hearings to determine whether or not Hernandez's statements before he received his Miranda warning were legally admissible at trial. His trial began in January 2015 and it ended with a mistrial that May, when 1 of the 12 jurors held out. The retrial began on October 19, 2016, and it was concluded on February 14, 2017, after nine days of deliberations, when the jury found Hernandez guilty of murder and kidnapping. Hernandez was sentenced to 25-years-to-life in prison on April 18, 2017.