AP Explains: Etan Patz, missing boy who fueled movement

Etan disappeared while walking to his Manhattan school bus stop alone for the first time on May 25, 1979, igniting an exhaustive search and helping to make missing children a national cause in the United States.

Frightened parents soon stopped letting children walk alone to school and play unsupervised in their neighborhoods.

Hernandez worked at a convenience store in Etan's neighborhood, and police noted meeting him among many people they encountered while searching.

In his recorded confessions to authorities, Hernandez, 55, tranquilly recounts offering soda to entice Etan into the convenience store basement, then choking him.

While prosecutors call Hernandez's confessions credible, his defense says his various admissions are the false imaginings of a man with mental illness and a very low IQ.

The defense also wants jurors to consider longtime suspect Jose Ramos, a convicted Pennsylvania child molester who dated a woman who sometimes walked Etan home from school.

[...] a former federal prosecutor and a prison informant testified at the first trial that Ramos made incriminating statements to them.