Killer of Milk Carton Missing Boy Etan Patz Faces Third Trial | Crime Alert 9AM 11.28.25

A milk carton made a 6-year-old boy the most recognized missing children in American history, and now New York prosecutors say they will try his accused killer for a third time. A man with ties to Maine is missing in Iraq in 2022, and the FBI is seeking public help to locate him. Drew Nelson reports.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crime Alert hourly update, breaking crime news. Now I'm Drew Nilson.
A milk carton made a six year old boy the
most recognized missing child in American history, and now New
York prosecutors say they will try his accused killer for
a third time. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office announced
it his moving forward with a new trial against Pedro
Hernandez in the nineteen seventy nine kidnapping of Aton Pates.

(00:23):
After a federal appeals court overturned Hernandez's conviction this summer.
Prosecutors filed noticing court this week that they are prepared
to proceed on charges of second degree murder and first
degree kidnapping. Under federal court orders, jury selection for the
retrial must begin by June first, or Hernandez must be
released from prison. He remains in custody for now. A

(00:44):
case conference is scheduled for the first of next month. Hernandez,
now sixty four, was convicted in twenty seventeen and sentenced
to twenty five years to life. That conviction was overturned
in July when a three judge panel of the US
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the
judge gave flawed instructions to jurors about how they should
evaluate Hernandez's confessions. During questioning, police did not read him

(01:07):
as Miranda rights, and he confessed. He was later mirandized
and confessed on video. During deliberations in twenty seventeen, jurors
asked whether they could disregard Hernandez's later recorded confessions if
they believed his first unrecorded statements work or worst, The
judge simply replied no. The Appeals Court said the correct
answer required a fuller legal explanation and ruled the instruction

(01:30):
was quote clearly wrong and prejudicial. Defense attorneys Alice Fontier
and Harvey Fishbeine again objected to a retrial. This week,
we have a man sitting in jail now for thirteen
years that the Second Circuit said was innocent. Fishbeine says
they remained convinced that Hernandez is innocent and accused prosecutors
of pressing forward in a forty six year old case

(01:51):
built almost entirely on one confession. Aton Pates vanished on
the morning of May twenty fifth of nineteen seventy nine
in the Soho neighborhood, Manhattan. It was the first day,
his mother allowed him to walk the two blocks from
his home to his school bus stop alone. He never arrived.
When he did not return home from school that afternoon,
his parents reported him missing. More than one hundred officers

(02:13):
and bloodhounds searched the neighborhood. His body was never found.
For more than three decades, the case remained unresolved. Hernandez
did not become a suspect until twenty twelve, when a
relative told police that Hernandez had confessed years earlier during
a prayer group that he had killed a child in
New York. Investigators tracked him to Maple Shade, New Jersey,

(02:33):
where he was living at the time. As a teenager,
Hernandez worked at a bodea near Aton's bus stop in
nineteen seventy nine. During police interviews in twenty twelve, he
eventually told detectives that he offered Atona soda and lured
him into the store's basement. He said he strangled the
boy and told police he placed the body in a
plastic garbage bag, put it inside a box, and left

(02:54):
it with the trash outside. No physical evidence has ever
been recovered to confirm his account. Investigators questioned Hernandez for
more than six hours before reading him his rights. Prosecutors
relied heavily on the recorded confession at trial. The defense
has long argued that that confession was false. Hernandez has
been diagnosed with mental illness, has a very low IQ,

(03:16):
and was taking antipsychotic medication at the time of his interrogation.
His lawyers argued that he was suggestible and confessed under
psychological pressure to satisfied detectives seeking to close one of
New York's most infamous cold cases. We want one of
two things to bed to be another's trial. For more importantly,

(03:36):
we urged the District Attorney's office to make a decision
to not reretry for a third time Hernandez. His first
trial in twenty fifteen ended in a hung jury after
one juror refused to convict. That juror later said doubts
about the confession and Hernandez's mental health drove the deadlock.
Prosecutors tried the case again in twenty seventeen. After nine

(03:58):
days of deliberations, a Manhattan jury convicted Hernandez a felony
murder and first degree kidnapping, acquitting him of intentional murder.
Federal judges say the error in this case was serious
enough to overturn the verdict. More crime and Justice news
after this. A man with ties to Maine is missing

(04:23):
after vanishing in Iraq in twenty twenty two, and the
FBI is seeking public help to locate him. George Kevin
Mason disappeared in Baghdad on August thirtieth of twenty two.
He is also known as Hamad al Issawi. The FBI
is seeking information on his whereabouts. Investigators believe he had
traveled to Baghdad in the days before he went missing,
before leaving Iraq's Kurdistan region. He had recently relocated to

(04:46):
Erbiel from Maine. Mason also used the name Hamad Inad Hamad.
He was born on December thirty one of nineteen eighty
two in Kuwait. At the time of his disappearance, he
was thirty nine. The FBI has not released details of
out what he was doing in Baghdad. No circumstances of
the disappearance have been publicly described beyond his movements. His

(05:06):
case remains open. George Kevin Mason is white with brown
or gray hair and brown or hazel eyes. Shaved bald.
When he disappeared with no facial hair, but may have
grown a salt and pepper beard. He's about five one
one forty. Anyone with information about his whereabouts has urged
to contact the FBI at eight hundred call FBI, or
tips dot FBI dot gov. For the latest crime and

(05:29):
justice news, follow crime alerts hourly update on your favorite
podcast app with this crime alert. I'm Drew Nelson.