Showing results by author "Joe Sexton" in All Categories

Early on a May morning in 1979, six-year-old Etan Patz set off for school on his own for the first time. He vanished, and for three decades his case both frustrated and exhausted police, the FBI and a public heartbroken by the tragedy. Then, suddenly, the police in 2012 announced that a former bodega clerk from the Manhattan neighborhood where Etan lived had confessed to killing the boy. Detectives were convinced they had the boy’s murderer, and prosecutors soon indicted the man, Pedro Hernandez.

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2023 “A meticulously researched and briskly written account that deftly weaves the influences of racial injustice, economic disparity, incendiary social media, and guns.” —Associated Press From the award-winning journalist Bob Woodward calls “one of the truly...