Etan Patz

On the morning of May 25, 1979, six-year-old Etan Kalil Patz left his family's loft apartment at 113 Prince Street in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan to walk the two blocks to his school bus stop alone for the first time. He never arrived at the bus stop and was never seen again.

The disappearance of Etan Patz transformed how America dealt with missing children. His photograph was one of the first to appear on milk cartons, a practice that became iconic in the 1980s. President Ronald Reagan declared May 25, the anniversary of Etan's disappearance, as National Missing Children's Day.

Etan's father, photographer Stan Patz, took one of the most famous and haunting photographs used in the search—a portrait of his son looking directly into the camera. The image became a symbol of the missing children's movement and led to the creation of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

For over three decades, the case remained unsolved. In 2012, Pedro Hernandez, a former bodega worker who had operated a store near Etan's bus stop, was arrested after confessing to killing Etan. Hernandez said he had lured the boy with a soda and then strangled him. His first trial ended in a hung jury, but in 2017 he was convicted of murder and kidnapping and sentenced to 25 years to life.