A judge has ruled that the murder case stemming from the 1979 disappearance of six-year-old Etan Patz will proceed to a third trial, rejecting a request to dismiss the charges against Pedro Hernandez. Hernandez, a former New York shop clerk, has been jailed since his 2012 arrest and is scheduled to return to court in June for a status update. A new trial date has not yet been set.

Patz vanished while walking two blocks to his school bus stop for the first time alone. His disappearance became one of the most well-known child abduction cases in the United States and led to the creation of National Missing Children's Day.

Hernandez became a suspect decades later after making inconsistent statements about killing a child. In 2012, he confessed to strangling Etan after luring him into a store basement, but there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime. His lawyers argued the confession was coerced and influenced by his mental health issues and low intelligence.

After a first trial ended with a deadlocked jury, Hernandez was convicted in 2017 and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. A federal appeals court overturned that conviction last year, citing an improper judicial response to a jury question about his confession, prompting prosecutors to pursue a new trial while also seeking to reinstate the conviction.