A judge has ordered the 12-person jury in the Etan Patz murder trial back to the deliberation room after the jurors, deliberating for their fifteenth day, sent him a note for the second time saying they could not agree on whether 54-year-old Pedro Hernandez killed the 6-year-old child in 1979.

The jury of five men and women said Tuesday they were unable to reach a unanimous decision in the SoHo case, which helped galvanize the national missing-children's movement, after re-hearing trial summations last week. Hernandez faces both murder and kidnapping charges.

The second deadlocked note comes less than a week after jurors told state Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley they were hung and were ordered to keep trying to reach a unanimous verdict. It also follows about nine hours of deliberations with only one note -- the longest stretch of time they've weighed the case without reaching out to the court more than a few times. 

The defense moved for an immediate mistrial, as it did the first time the jurors said they were deadlocked, and again Wiley ordered the jurors to continue deliberating. 

Wiley said he wanted jurors to "at least give it one more try." 

"I don't detect any rancor among jurors," Wiley said.

The jurors appeared weary as the judge issued his decision, and resumed discussions Tuesday afternoon. The panel has labored over their deliberations for more than two weeks, asking for reviews of exhibits and hours of testimony from key witnesses. 

Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzi-Orbon said she would prefer a second trial, which would be prosecutors' option should the judge call a mistrial, to a "verdict for verdict's sake." After the jury was deadlocked last week, she had said her office was confident they would reach a verdict.

Jurors heard from 56 witnesses -- just nine of those for the defense -- during the 10-week trial, but a key issue has been statements from the alleged killer himself.

Hernandez confessed to the crime in 2012 in a case that has confounded law enforcement for decades. Pat'z body was never found, nor was any trace of clothing or his belongings. The defense said the admissions were the fictional ravings of a mentally ill man with a low IQ.

Hernandez was a teenage stock clerk in the neighborhood at the time Etan disappeared but had never been considered a suspect. His name appears in law enforcement paperwork only one time during their lengthy probe. The Maple Shade, New Jersey, man made the stunning admissions after police received a tip from a relative that he may have been involved in the case.

"I grabbed him by the neck and started choking him," Hernandez told authorities. "I was nervous. My legs were jumping. I wanted to let go, but I just couldn't let go. I felt like something just took over me."

Defense attorney Harvey Fishbein said during closing arguments that Hernandez was "the only witness against himself."

"The stories he told over the years, including in 2012, and since, are the only evidence. Yet he is inconsistent and unreliable," Fishbein told jurors. "We did not hear, nor can they prove, that he's a child killer, that he murdered a child — because there's no evidence to support it."

The trial began in late January, and jurors heard from dozens of witnesses. Members of a prayer circle testified that Hernandez made tearful admissions during a retreat in the summer of 1979 that matched some of what he told authorities on video 33 years later: He gave a child a soda, took him to the store basement and choked him. One said Hernandez also admitted abusing the boy. When talking to police, Hernandez denied molesting Patz.

In closing arguments for the prosecution, Illuzi-Orbon said Hernandez lured Patz to the basement of the shop because he saw the boy had a dollar. He then choked the child to shut him up after whatever happened in the cellar, she said, and added that the motive was sexual.

Illuzzi-Orbon also argued that Hernandez's first confession -- the one to the prayer group shortly after Patz disappeared -- was the most accurate. He was confessing to God, and he was trying to unburden himself, the prosecutor said.

Neighbors and former acquaintances testified about other admissions from Hernandez. 

Mark Pike, Hernandez's former neighbor in Camden, New Jersey, testified that during a 1980 front-porch chat, Hernandez described how a boy in New York threw a ball at him, and "he lost it" and strangled the child.

"I just said, 'Why?'" Pike recalled. Hernandez gave no answer, he said.

About two years later, Hernandez told 16-year-old girlfriend Daisy Rivera he wanted to come clean about "something terrible" — he had strangled a "gringo muchacho," or white guy, who offended him while in New York.

The defense suggested that another man, a convicted pedophile in jail in Pennsylvania, is the real killer. It called to the stand a former federal prosecutor and FBI agent who worked on the probe into Jose Ramos for years. A former jailhouse informant involved in the investigation testified that Ramos admitted molesting the boy while the men were roommates in prison. Jeffrey Rothschild said Ramos recounted in horrifying detail how he molested Patz and many other boys.

In closing arguments, the defense honed in on Ramos.

"We did find out why Etan disappeared — but it was not because of Pedro Hernandez," Fishbein said. "It was because of Jose Ramos."

Patz's photo was one of the first on milk cartons. The day he went missing, May 25, was later named National Missing Children's Day.