What happened to Etan Patz?
On May 25, 1979, Julie Patz let her 6-year-old son Etan make the two-block walk from their home on Prince Street to a school bus stop, located at the corner of Prince and West Broadway, on his own for the first time.
The mother of three testified when Hernandez was retried for murder in 2016, according to the New York Times, that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the decision, but that Etan insisted, “‘It’s fine, Mom,'” and “‘I can do it.'”
Julie told the court during Hernandez’s 2015 trial that she gave Etan a dollar to buy a soda on his way. He was “totally outgoing and trusting of everyone,” she testified, per the Times. “Totally nonjudgmental about people. Everyone who he had met once was his friend and was a nice person.”
She testified that, when Etan didn’t come home that afternoon, she called the mother of one of his close friends and found out that her son never made it to school, nor was he on the bus that morning.