The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday restored the murder conviction of Pedro Hernandez, the man found guilty in the decades-old killing of six-year-old Etan Patz, whose disappearance in 1979 became one of the most infamous missing-child cases in American history.

Hernandez, now 64, was serving a sentence of 25 years to life after being convicted in 2017 for the murder of the young boy, according to Fox 5.

The high court ruled 6-3 in favor of Manhattan prosecutors, reversing a lower federal court decision that had thrown out the conviction.

The article said, “In a 6-3 decision, the justices granted an appeal from Manhattan prosecutors, undoing a lower federal court’s ruling that had previously overturned the verdict against Pedro Hernandez. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.”

Etan Patz vanished on May 25, 1979, while walking alone for the first time to a school bus stop in Manhattan. His disappearance captivated the nation and left a lasting mark on New York City.

The case transformed the way missing-child investigations are handled across the United States and became a symbol of the growing effort to locate missing children.

The case also “fundamentally changed how America responds to missing children, and made Etan one of the first children to have his face printed on a milk carton. Today, the anniversary of his disappearance is recognized as National Missing Children’s Day,” the Fox article stated.

At the time of Etan’s disappearance, Hernandez worked at a neighborhood convenience store near the location where the child was last seen. He was not identified as a suspect until 2012, when he confessed to the crime. His attorneys later argued that the admissions were unreliable and stemmed from his mental illness.

According to the Associated Press, defense lawyers focused heavily on the circumstances surrounding Hernandez’s confessions.

“They emphasized that the admission came after police queried him for about seven hours before reading him his rights and recording the interview. Hernandez then repeated his confession on tape, at least twice,” the Associated Press reported:

“During deliberations, the 2017 jurors asked a complicated question: If they decided Hernandez didn’t confess voluntarily when he hadn’t been read his rights yet, must they disregard his other confessions? The then-judge responded simply, “the answer is no.” The jury went on to convict.

“In overturning that verdict, the appeals court said the jury’s question should have gotten a more fulsome answer, including the possibility of discounting all the confessions.”

Video shown by 48 Hours included footage of the convenience store where Hernandez had worked near the bus stop Etan used. During police questioning, Hernandez told investigators he lured the child by offering him a soda and bringing him into the store’s basement.

“And then I choked him,” Hernandez said.

Investigators said Hernandez later led them to the location where the basement had once stood and described placing Etan’s body into a box. According to his account, he carried the box through the neighborhood and eventually left it in an area where authorities believe it was later collected with garbage.

Despite decades of investigation and one of the most closely watched child-abduction cases in the nation’s history, Etan Patz’s body was never recovered, according to ABC 7.

{Matzav.com}