Sunday, October 20, 2019

Etan Patz: The Face On The Milk Carton

Etan Kalil Patz
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He was born on October 9th, 1972 in Manhattan, New York to Julie and Stanley Patz. 
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He was a six-year-old living with his parents in SoHo in 1979. Etan’s parents were cautious, they made sure always to accompany him when he left the apartment. One fateful day, that decided that he was old enough to go off alone..

On the morning of May 25th, 1979, Etan left his SoHo apartment at 113 Prince Street by himself for the very first time. He had planned on boarding the school bus at West Broadway and Spring Street, a mere two blocks away. He was wearing a black "Future Flight Captain" pilot cap, a blue corduroy jacket, blue jeans and blue sneakers with fluorescent stripes. He never made it on the bus.

It was Etan’s teacher who first noticed his absence later that morning. This is where i find conflicting stories. Either Etan's teacher reported his absence to the principal, who assumed that his parents had just forgotten to call in or she didn't tell the principle. Either way, Etan's parents were not informed by the school and a whole school day's worth of time was wasted.

When Etan did not return home after school, his mother immediately called the police. At first, detectives considered Etan's parents to be 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 canvassed the city and placed missing-child posters featuring Etan's portrait, but this resulted in few leads.


Etan’s father was a professional photographer. With the help of the police, Stanley printed Etan’s photos on countless posters and Etan soon became the first missing child to be shown on milk cartons.  They were also projected on screens in Times Square.

In 1985, a new State’s Attorney, Stuart R. GraBois, was given control of the case. GraBois came up with a suspect in Etan's disappearance. 
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Jose Antonio Ramos was a former better sitter of Etan's and just happened to be a convicted child sexual abuser. 

In 1982, multiple boys had accused Ramos of trying to lure them into a drain pipe in the area where he was living. When police searched the drain pipe, they found photographs of Ramos and young boys who resembled Etan. Ramos had been taken into custody in Pennsylvania before this incident, but had never been charged.

When first questioned, Ramos stated that he had indeed taken a young boy back to his apartment on the day of Etan’s disappearance. Unfortunately, he wasn’t positive that the boy was Etan Patz. He also stated that the boy was alive and he left him on the subway.

While incarcerated n 1991, Ramos bragged that he knew what happened to Etan. He also  drew a map of Etan’s school bus route and told them that he knew Etan’s was the third stop on the route. Police were not able to make a case against him and he was never charged. 

Etan was declared legally dead in 2001.

In attempts to get some kind of justice for Etan’s death, his parents filed a civil suit against Ramos in 2004. They won $2 million in damages. Every year, on Etan's birthday and the anniversary of his 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?" 

Ramos has denied that he killed Etan. He served a 20-year prison sentence in the State Correctional Institution in Dallas, Pennsylvania, for child molestation.


The investigation was reopened in 2010 and  by April 19, 2012, FBI and NYPD investigators had begun looking into the contents of a SoHo basement located at 127-B Prince street. The place belonged to a neighbor of the Patz family. It had been newly refurbished right after Etan’s disappearance. While the four day search turn up nothing, it received lots of media coverage and new tips about the case came pouring in. One of those tips led to a new confession..
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On May 24, 2012, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced that they had a man in custody who had implicated himself in Etan’s disappearance. Pedro Hernandez was an 18-year-old stockboy at the bodega beside Etan’s bus stop at the time of the kidnapping. Hernandez had admitted to previously killing a young boy while he was attending an open confessional at his church in 1982. When police questioned Hernandez’s family, his brother-in-law and wife confirmed the story.

Hernandez was interrogated in 2015, and eventually confessed to luring Etan into the bodega, strangling him, and dumping his body in the trash near the grocery store. The first trial was declared a mistrial after 11-1 verdict. But when Hernandez was retried the new jury found him guilty of kidnapping and murder. After an unsuccessful appeal attempt, Hernandez was sentenced on April 18, 2017 to 25 years to life in federal prison.

Etan's body has never been found.

On the fourth anniversary of Etan’s abduction, President Ronald Reagan declared May 25 to be National Missing Children’s Day. Etan’s case, along with that of Adam Walsh and several other children abducted across the United States, also led to the establishment of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in an attempt to raise awareness about child predators and prevent such tragedies.

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