Neighbour confesses to missing boy’s murder, 33 years later
Etan Patz, 6, was the first child to be featured on the side of a milk carton
There has been a breakthrough in one of the highest- profile missing child cases in the United States, after a suspect confessed to strangling the boy 33 years ago.
Pedro Hernandez implicated himself in the disappearance of six- yearold Etan Patz, who went missing from a street near his home in Manhattan in 1979. The case sparked a national movement in the United States to find missing youngsters, and Etan became the first child to appear on the side of milk cartons.
In a videotaped confession, Hernandez told police and FBI agents that he lured the boy with candies, killed him, wrapped his body in a bag, and placed it in a box. He described dumping the box in Manhattan, but said when he returned to the spot several days later it had gone.
Raymond Kelly, the New York Police Commissioner, said: “An individual now in custody has made statements to NYPD detectives implicating himself in the disappearance and death of Etan Patz, 33 years ago.”
Unofficial briefings from the police department made clear it was treating Hernandez’s claims “cautiously” and with a “healthy dose of skepticism.” He had provided no information that was not already in the public domain. The confession also happened the day before the anniversary of Etan’s disappearance, when investigators traditionally receive a flood of false leads.
Hernandez was known to police and had been considered a possible suspect in the past, but was dismissed.
Etan went missing after leaving his family home to catch a school bus, the first time his parents had let him do so alone.
At the time, Hernandez lived near the Patz family, and worked in a local shop. In the 1990s he received jail sentences in Indiana for cocaine possession and assault. He later moved to Camden, N. J. Over the years he reportedly confessed to family members, and a spiritual adviser, that he had killed a child but did not mention the name of Etan Patz.
After publicity surrounding a police search of a cellar 100 metres from Etan’s home last month, a relation was said to have contacted police. Hernandez had no connection to the cellar, which was used in 1979 as a workshop by Othniel Miller, a handyman who paid Etan to help him with chores.
Miller, now 75, was not named as a suspect and denied any involvement. Police spent four days excavating the cellar, ripping up a concrete floor, but the search produced no clues.
In the past, the case has largely centred on Jose Antonio Ramos, who had been the boyfriend of the boy’s babysitter at the time he disappeared.
Ramos was later convicted of child molestation in a separate case in Pennsylvania involving an eight- yearold boy. He is serving a 20- year jail sentence and is due to be released later this year.
Etan’s father, Stan Patz, had his son declared legally dead in 2001 so he could sue Ramos. In 2004, a civil judge found him to be responsible for Etan’s death, but he has never been criminally charged in the case and denies harming the boy.
In the 1980s the search for Etan led to the date of his disappearance, May 25, being declared “National Missing Child Day” by President Ronald Reagan.
The Patz family, who still live in the same apartment in Manhattan, have undergone a series of false starts in the investigation before. Despite the child having been declared dead, the case was reopened by Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan district attorney, in 2010 and Hernandez was questioned at his office. Police also took him back to the spot where he claimed to have left the victim’s body. They are also interviewing relations of Hernandez, who lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter, a college student, to see if he told them any details about the crime over the past three decades.
Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, said: “As a father, I can’t imagine what Etan’s parents are going through.”