NYC judge declares mistrial in 1979 Etan Patz murder case- The missing boy

A judge declared a mistrial after the panel of jurors had been unable to successfully reach a verdict for the third time.

New York has been bewildered for more than three long decades about the missing child case and the prosecutors’ effort to finally close the case had collapsed on Friday as jurors had been unable to reach a verdict, that too for the third time.

Pedro Hernandez, 54, a factory worker in New Jersey have confessed the killing of 6-year-old Etan Patz, 33 years after the disappearance of the boy in 1979 and a judge therefore declared a mistrial in the case.

According to Hernandez’s defense, everything that he admitted had been imaginary, and doctors testified for the defense that Hernandez has trouble telling the reality apart from his illusions. His lawyers also pointed to Jose Ramos, a convicted pedophile who admitted to a federal prosecutor that he had been with Etan the day of the boy’s disappearance, according to the testimony. Ramos, who is now jailed in Pennsylvania, has since said he has nothing to do with Etan’s disappearance and prosecutors never felt they did not have enough evidence to charge him.

It is time for prosecutors to make a decision whether to attempt a new trial against Hernandez or let him go free. District Attorney Cyrus Vance said in a statement without any indication of his plans or retrying Hernandez, “We believe there is clear and corroborated evidence of the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The Patz’s family meanwhile never moved nor did they change their phone number, for years wondering and hoping whether there was a chance their missing boy might call them. The family expressed outrage that the jury failed to reach a verdict. Stanley Patz, Etan’s father, told reporters on Friday that, “This man did it. He said it. How many times does a man have to confess before you believe him and it’s not a hallucination?”