Disappearance of Etan Patz

Etan Patz
Etan Patz photographed on September 16, 1978
Born	Etan Kalil Patz (1972-10-09)October 9, 1972 Manhattan, New York, United States
Disappeared	May 25, 1979 (aged 6) SoHo, Manhattan, United States
Status	Declared dead in absentia 2001
Nationality	American
Known for	Missing child who was on a milk carton
Home town	Manhattan, New York, United States
Religion	Judaism[1][2]
Parent(s)	Stanley Patz Julie Patz

Etan Kalil Patz (/ˈeɪtɑːn ˈpeɪts/; born October 9, 1972; declared legally dead in 2001)^[3] was an American boy who was six years old when he disappeared in the SoHo neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City, on May 25, 1979.^[4][5] His disappearance helped create the missing children movement, including new legislation and new methods for tracking down missing children, such as the milk-carton campaigns of the early 1980s. He was the first missing child to be pictured on milk cartons.^[6] In 1983, President Ronald Reagan designated the anniversary of Etan's disappearance (May 25) as National Missing Children's Day in the United States.

In 2010, the case was reopened by the New York County District Attorney's office. In 2012, the FBI excavated a basement near the Patz residence, but discovered no new evidence.^[7] A confessed suspect, Pedro Hernandez, was charged and indicted later that year on charges of second-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping. In 2014, the case went through a series of hearings to determine if Hernandez's statements before receiving the Miranda warning were legally admissible at trial. His trial began in January 2015 and ended in a mistrial in May when one of the twelve jurors held out.^[8] A retrial began on October 19, 2016.

Disappearance

On the morning of May 25, 1979, Etan left his SoHo apartment by himself for the first time, planning to walk two blocks to catch the school bus at West Broadway and Spring Street.^[9] He was wearing a blue captain's hat, a blue shirt, blue jeans, and blue sneakers. He never reached the bus stop.^[10]

At school, Etan's teacher noticed his absence, but did not report it to the principal. When Etan did not come home at the end of the school day, his mother called the police. At first, detectives considered the Patzes as possible suspects, but quickly determined they had no involvement.

An intense search began that evening, using nearly 100 police officers and a team of bloodhounds. The search continued for weeks. Neighbors and police covered the city with missing-child posters featuring Etan's face, but this resulted in few leads.

Stan Patz, Etan's father, was a professional photographer and had a collection of photographs he had taken of his son. His photos of Etan were printed on countless missing-child posters and milk cartons. They were also projected on screens in Times Square.^[11]

Jose Ramos

After receiving the case in 1985, Assistant United States Attorney Stuart R. GraBois identified Jose Antonio Ramos, a convicted child sexual abuser who had been a friend of Etan's former babysitter, as the primary suspect. Some boys had accused Ramos of trying to lure them into a drain pipe in the area where Ramos was living in 1982. When police searched the drain pipe, they found photographs of Ramos and young boys who resembled Etan.

GraBois eventually found out that Ramos had been in custody in Pennsylvania in connection with an unrelated child molestation case. In 1990, GraBois was deputized as a deputy state attorney general in Pennsylvania to help prosecute a case against Ramos for sexually abusing children and to obtain further information about Etan's case.

When first questioned by GraBois, Ramos stated that, on the day when Etan disappeared, he had taken a young boy back to his apartment to rape him. Ramos said that he was "90 percent sure" it was the boy whom he later saw on television. However, Ramos did not use Etan's name. He also claimed he had "put the boy on a subway."

In 1991, while Ramos was incarcerated, a jailhouse informant told GraBois and FBI agent Mary Galligan that Ramos had told him he knew what had happened to Etan. Ramos even drew a map of Etan's school bus route, indicating that he knew that Etan's bus stop was the third one on the route.^[11]

In a special feature on missing children, the New York Post reported on October 21, 1999, that Ramos was the prime suspect in Etan's disappearance.^[12] Ramos had been known by the Patz family and was the prime suspect all along, but in the early 1980s authorities were not able to prosecute Ramos.

Etan was declared legally dead in 2001. Ramos was declared to be responsible for Patz's death in 2004 in a New York civil case but he has never been prosecuted criminally for it. Every year, on the anniversaries of Etan's birthday and disappearance, Stan Patz sent Ramos a copy of his son's missing-child poster. On the back, he typed the same message: "What did you do to my little boy?"^[3][6][11]

Ramos has denied that he killed Etan.^[11] He served a 20-year prison sentence in the State Correctional Institution in Dallas, Pennsylvania, for child molestation.^[6] He was released from prison on November 7, 2012. Soon after his release he was arrested on a Megan's Law violation.^[13]

Civil case

Etan's parents, Stanley and Julie Patz, pursued a civil case against Ramos.^[14] They were awarded a symbolic sum of $2 million, which they have never collected.^[15] They had the 2004 judgment dismissed after the 2015 trial of Pedro Hernandez convinced them that Ramos was probably not responsible.^[16]

Case reopening in 2010

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. officially reopened the case on May 25, 2010.^[17] On April 19, 2012, FBI and NYPD investigators began excavating the SoHo basement of 127-B Prince Street, near the Patz home. This residence had been newly refurbished shortly after Etan's disappearance in 1979. The basement had been the workshop and storage space of a handyman.^[18] After a four-day search, investigators announced that there was "nothing conclusive found."^[7]

Pedro Hernandez

On May 24, 2012, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced that a man was in custody who had implicated himself in Etan's disappearance.^[19] According to The New York Times, a law enforcement official identified the man as Pedro Hernandez of Maple Shade, New Jersey, age 51, and said that he had confessed to strangling Etan.^[20] According to a 2009 book about the case, After Etan, Etan had a dollar and had told his parents he planned to buy a soda to drink with his lunch.^[19] Hernandez was an 18-year-old convenience store worker in a neighborhood bodega at the time of Etan's disappearance.^[21] Hernandez said that he later threw Etan's remains into the garbage.^[22] Hernandez was charged with second-degree murder. According to a New York Times report from May 25, 2012, the police at that time had no physical evidence to corroborate his confession.^[23]

Statements in May 2012 by Hernandez's sister, Nina Hernandez, and Tomas Rivera, leader of a Charismatic Christianity group at St. Anthony of Padua, a Roman Catholic church in Camden, New Jersey, indicated that Hernandez may have publicly confessed to murdering Etan in the presence of fellow parishioners in the early 1980s. According to Hernandez's sister, it was an "open family secret that he had confessed in the church."^[24] A New York grand jury indicted Hernandez on November 14, 2012, on charges of second-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping.^[25] His lawyer has stated that Hernandez was diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, which includes hallucinations.^[25][26] The lawyer has also said his client has a low IQ of around 70, "at the border of intellectual disability."^[27]

On December 12, 2012, Hernandez pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one count of kidnapping in a New York court.^[28] In April 2013, Harvey Fishbein, a defense lawyer for Pedro Hernandez, filed a motion to dismiss the case, citing that Hernandez's "confession in one of the nation's most notorious child disappearances was false, peppered with questionable claims and made after almost seven hours of police questioning".^[29] The next month, however, Manhattan State Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley ruled that the evidence was "legally sufficient to support the charges" and that the case could move forward. He also ordered a hearing to determine whether the defendant's statements could be used at trial.^[30]

Hernandez had a hearing in September 2014 about whether his statements made prior to police giving him his Miranda warning were legally admissible at trial. This would be influenced by whether he felt free to leave during the time before he was informed of his Miranda rights. The hearing was also to determine whether he understood the significance of the Miranda rights and was competent to waive them when he did so. This was significant because it would decide whether any statements made after that point by Hernandez were legally admissible at trial. The actual truth or falsehood of the statements was not the focus of the hearing;^[27] rather, the question of the statements' truthfulness was to be discussed in the trial, which began on January 5, 2015.^[31]

The case resulted in a mistrial in May 2015 after the jurors deadlocked 11-1 for conviction.^[8] A retrial began on October 19, 2016, in a New York City court.^[32]

Aftermath

The anniversary of Etan Patz's disappearance, May 25, was designated National Missing Children's Day in the United States in 1983.^[5][33][34] In 2001, the tribute spread worldwide.^[35][36] The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) coordinates the "Help Bring Them Home" campaign in 22 countries in conjunction with International Missing Children's Day.^{[37][38][39][40][41]}

The extensive media attention given to Etan's disappearance has been credited with creating greater attention to missing children, resulting in changes such as less willingness to allow children to walk to school, photos of missing children being printed on milk cartons, and promotion of the concept of "stranger danger", the idea that all adults not known to the child must be regarded as potential sources of danger.^[42]

References

Bibliography

• After Etan: The Missing Child Case That Held America Captive, by Lisa R. Cohen

External links

• "The Original Milk Carton Kid," The Daily Beast
• Etan Patz at Findagrave.com
• Help Us Find Them - National Missing Children's Day 2015
• Etan Patz at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children