- - - How one 6-year-old in 1979 transformed the way America searches for missing kids

Jeanine Santucci, USA TODAYJuly 22, 2025 at 7:15 PM

A boy who vanished near his New York City home more than four decades ago helped transform the way the country handles missing children.

The move this week to give his convicted killer a new trial or else release him from prison is a reminder of the impactful legacy of 6-year-old Etan Patz – and the drawn-out attempts to bring him justice.

Etan's 1979 disappearance remains a mystery, as neither he nor his remains were ever found. The case went unsolved for decades before Pedro Hernandez, a former store clerk in Etan's neighborhood, was named a suspect in 2012. Hernandez confessed to the crime, a confession his defense team argued at trial was false and borne from his mental illness. After his first murder trial ended in a hung jury, Hernandez was convicted at his second trial in 2017 and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

A copy photo of the original missing poster of Etan Patz is shown during a news conference near a New York City apartment building, where police and FBI agents searched a basement for clues in the boy's 1979 disappearance in New York, April 19, 2012.

Hernandez, now 64, could see a third trial, or else be released altogether, after a federal appeals court ruled jurors received instructions at trial that could have improperly swayed them toward conviction.

Etan was a "little boy whose name and face have become synonymous" with the nationwide issue of missing children, the FBI said. Since 1979, changes in law enforcement response because of Etan's case have resulted in reuniting other children with their families or offering families closure over what happened to them, according to the bureau.

What happened to Etan Patz?

Etan was 6 years old when he left his SoHo neighborhood home the morning of May 25, 1979. It was to be his first time walking the two blocks to catch his school bus on his own, but he never made it on the bus. When he didn't return home from school that afternoon, his parents reported him missing to police.

Police dispatched bloodhounds, helicopters and officers who, along with neighborhood residents, went door-to-door searching for clues about where Etan went. It was the largest and longest search for a missing child in the city in decades, The New York Times reported in 1979.

Etan was never found, and was declared legally dead in 2001.

In Hernandez's confession, he said he offered Etan a soda to lure him into his store basement, then strangled the boy, put him – still alive – in a box and left it with a pile of curbside trash.

Stanley Patz, father Etan Patz, speaks to the media at Manhattan State Supreme Court following the sentencing of Pedro Hernandez on April 18, 2017. R

“Pedro Hernandez, after all these years we finally know what dark secret you had locked in your heart,” Etan's father, Stanley Patz, said after the verdict, the reported. “The god you pray to will never forgive you."

The boy on the milk carton

Etan's case, along with that of 6-year-old Adam Walsh who went missing from a Hollywood, Florida, shopping mall in 1981 and whose partial remains were found two weeks later, are credited with drawing a wave of media attention to missing children and changing the way the FBI and other agencies across the country handle missing children cases.

At the time Etan and Adam went missing, there was no national system in place for authorities to coordinate when searching for a missing child, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Unlike with stolen cars or other items that had a national database, there was no crime database for children, the NCMEC said. There was also no AMBER Alert system.

"The missing children’s movement was born," reads a DOJ site about Etan.

It was former President Ronald Reagan who in 1983, on the fourth anniversary of Etan's disappearance, proclaimed that May 25 would be known as National Missing Children’s Day.

After Etan and Adam's cases, missing children began to be entered into a national database. The NCMEC was created to help get the word out about such kids. The mindset of police changed from a "wait and see" approach when a child went missing to an immediate report and distribution of their photographs, Ernie Allen, the former NCMEC president, told CBS News. Missing children's photos were displayed on billboards.

An undated file photo from the Des Moines Register, part of the USA TODAY Network, shows a milk carton with missing children featured on the side. Before Facebook, Amber Alerts and text messages, pictures on milk cartons were a way to distribute information about missing kids. Johnny Gosch, left, was among the very first children featured on a milk carton.

Etan was one of the first – and remains one of the most notorious – children featured as missing on the side of milk cartons. The containers in the 1980s often displayed posters with photos of missing children and a newly created hotline to call with any information on their whereabouts. The "Milk Carton Kids" movement didn't last long, and didn't result in very many success stories, but milk cartons are still linked with missing kids in the memories of many.

Along with that movement and Etan's disappearance came a wave of parents keeping closer eyes on their children as "stranger danger" fears took hold.

"It's a cautionary tale, a defining moment, a loss of innocence," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi said in an opening statement at Hernandez's trial, according to AP. "It is Etan who will forever symbolize the loss of that innocence."

Contributing: Kathryn Palmer, Greg Toppo and John Bacon, USA TODAY; Reuters

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Etan Patz's disappearance transformed missing children cases

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL AOL General News”