NEW YORK, May 25 (UPI) — The man accused of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in New York nearly 40 years ago will be retried around Labor Day, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Pedro Hernandez was tried last year for the boy’s disappearance and murder but jurors were deadlocked and the case ended in a mistrial. Only one juror couldn’t be persuaded to vote for conviction.
The retrial was originally scheduled for March, but the Manhattan District Attorney’s office added a new lead prosecutor and new psychological experts for the case, which required a delay.
The judge who set the new schedule for the trial will rule on a series of evidentiary issues by mid-July. Jury selection for the retrial is expected on Sept. 6 or 7.
Patz disappeared in 1979 after leaving his family’s SoHo home to walk to a bus stop. His body was never found.
Police say Hernandez confessed to luring the boy into the store where he worked as a stock boy and strangling him in the basement of the store.
The Patz case received significant attention in 1979 and the boy was one of the first missing children to appear on milk cartons — a tactic authorities would use repeatedly in cases that followed.
A brother-in-law of Hernandez, who came to the United States from Puerto Rico in the 1970s, initially tipped off police that Hernandez may have been the killer.
Prior to his arrest in 2012, Hernandez had been arrested several time before, for molestation, domestic abuse and drug possession.
