On May 25, 1979, 6-year-old Etan Patz headed out of his New York City home to his bus stop only two blocks away. Etan’s first walk to the bus stop alone tragically ended up being the last walk of his life.
Etan’s story changed things & caused parents to clutch their kids by the hand, unwilling to allow them to walk ahead on their own. It also was a catalyst for the missing-child panic & the “stranger danger” scare that erupted in the late 1970s & early 1980s & in response to his disappearance as well as the 1981 murder of Adam Walsh, Ronald Reagan formed a task force on missing & exploited children.
During this time, media stories often exaggerated the risk of “stranger danger” by highlighting rare & isolated incidents despite the fact that the vast majority of physical & sexual abuse of children is perpetrated by their own family or adults they are familiar with rather than strangers in vans handing out candy. The Reagan administration wanted to increase criminal penalties on those who harm children & this was where mass incarceration began to drastically rise. Statistics indicate that when Raegan began his presidency in 1980, the total prison population was 329,000 & when he left office eight years later, that number had nearly doubled to 627,000. The United States incarcerates more people than any other nation in the world & is the leader in prison population rate since 2002 with roughly 1.8 million incarcerated at the end of 2023.
The idea was for children to be safe in their home with their parents & away from strangers. On nightly news broadcasts & in print media, terrified parents, concerned politicians, law enforcement officials & others claimed that up to 50,000 children fell victim to stranger kidnapping annually in the U.S. This number was grossly inflated & the actual number of stranger kidnappings was & remains around 100 annually, Americans believed that their children were facing a grave & growing threat. Many parents go with the classic teaching of “stranger danger” to protect their children, but the vast majority of abductions involve a relative or someone the child knows. Approximately 840,000 children are reported missing each year, but less than 1% are reported as having been abducted by a stranger.
In the 1980s, parents listened to the news reports in terror, imagining evil strangers lurking around the corner, waiting to snatch their children from the street. Most everyone recalls the kidnapping & murder of Adam Walsh which happened in Hollywood, Florida on July 27, 1981 when he was taken from a busy shopping mall in the middle of the day after his mom had left him alone for less than ten minutes. Two weeks after Adam vanished, his head was found by a fisherman over 100 miles away. We covered this case in episode 35.
Because of what happened to Etan Patz, Reagan made May 25 National Missing Children’s Day in honor of the little boy. Three years after Etan’s disappearance, in 1984, photos of missing children began appearing on milk cartons when the National Child Safety Council began its Missing Children Milk Carton Program & Etan’s photo was among the first to appear.
The morning that Etan headed out for school, on May 25, 1979, was a hectic one in the Patz household. It was the last day before Memorial Day weekend. Etan’s mom Julie was running a daycare out of their SoHo loft & she was tending to two 2-year-olds; her younger son & another child who had stayed the night. Etan’s older sister was moving slowly that morning & didn’t want to get out of bed.
Etan, on the other hand, bound out of bed, excited to be getting more independence that morning. He approached his mom & asked if she would allow him to walk to school alone & told her, “It’s fine, I can do it” as he pleaded with her to allow him. Finally, with some reluctance, Julie agreed. Etan packed his own backpack that morning, the one he had been given by a friend’s mother which was decorated with little elephants. He put his favorite toy cars into his bag & placed his favorite Eastern Airlines hat on his head. Etan carried $1 with him so he could stop at a store for a soda on his way. In addition to his “Future Flight Captain” pilot hat, Etan wore a blue corduroy jacket, blue jeans & blue sneakers with fluorescent stripes. As Etan walked away that morning, it was the last time Julie saw her son.
Julie & Stanley Patz didn’t realize that their son was missing until later that day when he didn’t return from the Independence Plaza School. After they started calling around, they realized that Etan hadn’t made it to his first grade class that day nor had he made it to the bus stop according to his friends who were there that morning. Julie & Stan reported Etan missing at that point.
When the realization that her son was missing hit her, Julie indicated that she fell into shock, “My legs started giving out.” Before long, the family’s home was transformed into a command center where police, investigators, volunteers & journalists gathered. Etan’s image was soon splashed across the front pages of newspapers, shown in TV newscasts & missing posters were plastered around the city. Stan was a professional photographer & had taken many pictures of his son which went on to capture the public’s heart as well as Etan’s spirit.
Julie described Etan as a boy who bubbled over with life & always saw the positive side when other people saw the negative; just an incredible person. Stan described Etan as a loving & trusting child who could have been convinced by an adult to come with them. The detectives involved in the case were immediately immersed & took Etan’s disappearance very personally since they had children of their own around Etan’s age. Detective Bill Butler, a father of six, said he felt as if he was searching for his own son. Sadly, he went on to take his own life in 1986 & there was speculation that his frustration with the case may have been a contributing factor.
Amongst their grief, Julie & Stan were forced to carry on as they were protecting Etan’s older sister & younger brother. They had to try & live normal lives, but felt it was utterly impossible since Etan’s belongings remained throughout their home & the emptiness without his presence, served as daily reminders. They couldn’t bring themselves to put any of Etan’s things away as time went on because it was only signifying to themselves & their children that Etan was truly gone. They felt that if they remained patient, they would get him back.
Neighbors in Lower Manhattan recall police going door-to-door with officers showing Etan’s picture with his bowl cut & toothy grin, officers walking through apartments room-by-room, hoping someone had seen or heard something in regards to Etan’s disappearance. They worked all day & all of that night. People remember the sound of loudspeakers & bloodhounds, walking through the streets of the city as they bellowed, “Has anyone seen this little boy? He is 3 feet 4 inches tall, and was carrying a cloth bag with imprints of elephants.” Schools began teaching children about stranger danger.
Stan Patz, Etan’s father, indicated that both he & his wife were holding out hope that Etan was still alive & being cared for by someone who just wanted an adorable boy like Etan.
Despite all the efforts to find Etan, no answers came. There were many theories as to what could have happened to Etan & many suspects emerged. This included Jose Ramos, whom authorities pursued for years. He was a convicted child molester & was linked to Etan by a relationship with a woman who had been hired at one point to walk Eaton home from school.
In 1998, 9 years after Etan’s disappearance, a new detective was leading the Missing Persons Squad & Phil Mahoney was drawn to the case after he read the poem titled, “The Missing Boy” by Sharon Olds – it was written in 1986 for Etan Patz about a mother & son looking at Etan’s missing poster. He began to sort through nearly two decades worth of work as well as some bizarre tips that had come in. One tip involved a cult in Westchester that indicated that Etan was killed by the cult & dumped. Mahoney also noted the name Jose Ramos, who was a man that police had been very interested in.
When Ramos was interviewed in 1982 after he was arrested on suspicion of trying to lure two boys into a drain pipe, which sometimes served as his home. Ramos also had disturbing photos of kids that looked like Etan & when he was questioned about the photos, he was asked if he had ever heard of a boy named Etan Patz. He said he did because he was in the papers in 1979. He mentioned that a woman he used to date, Susan Harrington, would walk Etan to school during a bus strike shortly before his disappearance. He said he knew where the boy lived because it was posted in the papers, but investigators, who suspected he was a pedophile, could have ties to Etan.
Ramos had spoken with a special agent with the FBI & indicated that on the day that Etan disappeared, he had gone to Washington Square Park & “saw a little boy playing handball against the wall.” Etan was known to frequently play in Washington Square Park. Ramos had said several times that he was in that very park on May 25, 1979 when a young, sevenish blond kid came up to him & began talking to him. He took the boy, which he called Jimmy, back to his apartment, where he told the special agent, “the old Ramos did to the little boy what the old Ramos did to little boys.” He would refer to himself as “the old Ramos” or “the bad Ramos” when discussing his wrongdoing.
He went on to say that he had taken the boy to a subway station, bought him a token & put him on a train headed to Washington Heights, where the boy said his aunt lived. He claimed that he was “90 percent sure” that Etan was the boy he encountered that day. Investigators learned that Ramos had sexually molested children all around the country. He traveled around the U.S. in a converted school bus & handed out Matchbox cars, toys & baseball cards to children in order to lure the young boys onto the bus.
Because Ramos had told his story to Federal Prosecutor Stuart GraBois, who had been working the case since 1985, he wanted to prosecute Ramos even if not for Etan Patz. He went on to succeed in Pennsylvania when in 1990 Ramos pleaded guilty to molesting an 8-year-old boy & was sentenced to 10-20 years in prison. Because investigators didn’t have corroborated evidence of Ramos’ story in relation to Etan’s disappearance, indicating they had seen him in the park with Etan the day he went missing, they couldn’t charge him & needed more evidence.
In 2000, detective Phil Mahoney ordered a search of an apartment building where Ramos previously lived. Ramos allegedly told a fellow inmate that this was the very location he had disposed of Etan’s body after he had put him in the furnace of the basement & burned it up, but nothing came of it.
Brian O’Dwyer, who was a prominent New York attorney who was representing Stan & Julie Patz & was also friends with Stuart GraBois, approached GraBois with an idea of taking a civil case against Ramos. He hoped the wrongful death suit could bring a criminal case. However, before this could happen, Stan & Julie would have to officially give up hope & ask a court to declare their son dead. On June 19, 2001, 22 years after Etan disappeared, a judge declared that Etan Patz was officially dead.
Stan Patz said he used to have fantasies of Etan pulling up in a taxi cab & stepping out of it, but these fantasies were a long time ago & were no longer entertained. O’Dwyer went to the Pennsylvania prison where Ramos was being held in order to interview him & he said that he picked up a boy named Jimmy on the day that Etan went missing. This time, Ramos did not say Etan’s name despite the fact that O’Dwyer was convinced that Ramos was the man responsible in Etan’s case.
Ramos would never answer more questions or testify in court & Stan & Julie won the civil case against him. In 2001, O’Dwyer told reporters, “Once & for all we have a final declaration by a court of law that Jose Antonio Ramos caused the death of Etan Patz.
Their ultimate objective was to get a criminal prosecution & O’Dwyer felt there was enough against Ramos to prosecute him but the Manhattan D.A. disagreed & would not charge Jose Ramos because he didn’t believe he could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
As time continued to pass, for Stan & Julie Patz, Etan remained frozen in time as a 6-year-old & they remained convinced that Ramos was responsible for their son’s death. Twice a year, Stan would send Ramos a poster where he wrote on the back, “What did you do to my little boy?”
In 2010, the new Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr, agreed to a fresh look at Etan’s case which included another look at Ramos as well as another suspect.
In April 2012, authorities dug up the workshop of a handyman who had worked for the Patz’s & had known Etan & only the day before his disappearance, had given him the $1 bill he carried that morning for a chore Etan had done for him. Shortly after Etan disappeared, Othneil Miller indicated that work had been done beneath the floor. He was not initially a suspect because he had an alibi & wasn’t in SoHo on the morning of May 25, 1979 & it’s unclear why the basement floor hadn’t been dug up soon after Etan vanished. The old case files showed that the floor had looked uneven or wasn’t all the same color.
The dig went on for five days & cadaver dogs were taken to the site & alerted investigators to the potential presence of cadaverine which is the foul-smelling gas produced by decomposition. The city’s chief medical examiner didn’t read too much into the dog’s reaction since it would be very unlikely that after the passage of 33 years that the gas would still be detectable. However, it was possible that the concrete could have preserved it. Dr Baden, the medical examiner, explained that there would probably be bone remaining in the soil had Etan been buried under the concrete. Permanent teeth, rather than baby teeth, can last for decades & even longer. DNA could still be extracted from both bone & teeth by this time. Hair could also still be present & investigators would also be looking for signs of insect activity. If insects were present, they could carry the body’s DNA which could then be compared to Etan’s parents. Etan was last seen wearing white sneakers & his airline’s hat & by this time, there would likely be no remnants of clothing remaining depending on the composition as plastic can last a long time. The search did find bone fragments which were later proved to belong to pets. The search did not turn up Etan’s remains. Miller had been questioned repeatedly throughout this time while Etan’s parents still lived a half block away.
A few weeks later, a man from New Jersey, Jose Lopez, who watched news coverage of the dig, contacted investigators with the fact that he believed that his brother-in-law, Pedro Hernandez, could have been responsible for Etan’s disappearance. This was the first time investigators had heard this name. When Etan went missing, Hernandez was an 18-year-old high school dropout who had recently moved to the city from Camden, NJ & worked as a stock clerk at a bodega at West Broadway & Prince Street, near Etan’s bus stop.
Within days of Etan’s disappearance Hernandez returned to New Jersey where he got a job in a dress factory. He then started telling people that he had killed an unnamed child in New York. This included an elder from his church group during a religious retreat, he also confessed to a prayer group as he fell to his knees in tears as well as his former wife before they were married. However, there were inconsistencies in his confessions & one of his childhood friends was told he murdered a black child while his ex-wife heard “muchacho” which meant a teenage boy. Over the years he had gotten divorced, remarried & had children. He went on to work at random, menial jobs & had no criminal record.
Detective’s notes from 1979 indicated that police were aware of the fact that Hernandez worked at the store, but it’s not clear if he was ever questioned. There was no clarity as to why he had never been a suspect at the time. Two weeks after they learned about Hernandez, he was questioned on May 23, 2012 after police went to his New Jersey home. When he was told that they were there to investigate an old missing persons case from New York City, investigators noticed that all of the color drained from his face.
55-year-old Hernandez was interviewed by police & after several hours of conversation, he began to sob & confess. He spoke for six hours without a lawyer or a recording & during that time, he was shown a missing poster of Etan Patz. Detectives indicated that he easily got talking & said that Etan was waiting for the school bus when he approached him & offered him a soda.
He said that with the offer of the soda, he was able to lure him down the stairs to the basement where he began to choke Etan. At one point, he even imitated the sounds that he remembers the boy making as he was being strangled. He put his body in a plastic garbage bag & then placed the bag inside a box. He indicated that he believed that the child was still alive, “I know he was. I didn’t actually kill him.” He then put the box on his shoulder & carried the box a block away where he discarded it amongst garbage. He gave no reason for what may have motivated him to do such a thing & denied sexually assaulting Etan or any other child. When he was shown a picture of Etan, he confirmed that it had been the boy in the photo & specifically named him. He said, “I just couldn’t let go. I felt like something just took over me.” He indicated that he just happened to see Etan on the street that morning while he was working & had never seen him before.
Hernandez said he initially tried to hide Etan’s school bag in the store’s basement & threw it behind the freezer. Despite the fact that the police would have searched the store, the bag was never found nor was any other evidence.
Hernandez then walked detectives through the streets of SoHo after his arrest, starting at the basement doors of the bodega & ending near a corridor behind the grocery store, a little over a block away, where he may have left the box 33 years earlier. Police believe the box was picked up by garbage collectors. He then wrote a letter to Etan’s parents, “I am really sorry that I was the one that hurt your child. I hope that the kid might be in heaven.” After Hernandez was arrested, he was believed to be a suicide risk & was taken to Bellevue Hospital.
During his time in the hospital, Hernandez admitted that he hears voices talking to him & he was diagnosed with a personality disorder by a defense psychiatrist. The trial began in January 2015, two-&-a-half years after his arrest & Hernandez’s diagnosis of mental illness became a major part of the defense.
Etan’s remains have never been found & there is no scientific evidence from crime scenes to prove Hernandez’s accounts. The prosecution’s case was made up of statements to investigators & confessions to relatives & church group members. Hernandez’s lawyers argue that he has limited intelligence as well as a personality disorder that makes it difficult for him to distinguish between reality & fantasy. Therefore, he may have confessed to something that he believed he had done, but it does not mean he actually did it. No parent that knew Etan who had been at the bus stop that morning saw him there despite the fact that Hernandez confessed to have seen Etan & lured him from the bus stop.
His youngest daughter, Becky Hernandez, testified about her father’s erratic behavior & his claims to seeing demons as well as an angelic woman in white, his watering a dead tree branch in order to make it grow & how she witnessed him talking to himself.
They refer to the initial hours of interrogation when Hernandez denied any involvement in Etan’s case before the video recording began. During this time, he repeatedly asked if he could go home as he continued to deny his guilt. His lawyers feel that the detectives made Hernandez believe that they were his friends & played on his religious beliefs; in one recording, a detective told him that he showed “the strength of the Lord.”
On the other hand, the prosecution experts interviewed Hernandez & concluded that he isn’t mentally ill & that his words could be believed. To back up their statements, the jury was shown home videos of Hernandez socializing like anyone else. It was reinforced that when he filled out his driver’s license renewal form, he hadn’t reported any mental illness.
District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr absolutely believed that Hernandez’s confession had not been fabricated as the product of mental illness & was finally admitting to something that had tortured him. Harvey Fishbein, Hernandez’s court-appointed attorney, wanted the jury to wonder what happened during the six hours of Hernandez’s confession before the video tape was turned on. When asked why the tape hadn’t started earlier, it was indicated that there was no legal requirement that it be taped. Because of that, there was no way to know if he hadn’t been fed information or that he hadn’t been berated.
Detectives gave assurance that Hernandez had only been handled fairly & that he was not given any information about the case & he hadn’t been influenced. It was fully Hernandez who had volunteered all the information provided. When his family was asked why they hadn’t contacted authorities sooner when he spoke of doing something bad to a young boy, they said that they hadn’t known if they could believe him.
The jurors watched video recordings of interviews that Hernandez gave around the time of his arrest as well as testimony of the detectives & the individuals he had confessed to decades earlier.
The defense also argued that Jose Ramos, the convicted child molester, had the motive & opportunity to have been the one responsible for Etan’s disappearance. It was Hernandez’s attorney’s belief that if the DA’s office tried Ramos, he would be convicted.
However, the prosecution believed that the evidence against Hernandez had been much stronger than the evidence against Ramos. The prosecution indicated that they had one piece of critical information; when Hernandez showed police where he dumped Etan’s body, he noticed there was a door there where he hadn’t remembered one. This ended up being correct; when the building’s history was researched, it was discovered that the door had been added after 1979 & Hernanez’s recollections were correct which was a fact that was not publicly known. However, the defense interjected that Hernandez wasn’t even sure which building it was & said, “I thought maybe this is it.” And then he looked & said, “No. This is it.”
The trial lasted nearly three months & after eighteen days of deliberation, the judge declared a mistrial was declared on May 8, 2015 after the jury failed to reach a verdict & one member of the jury declined to vote to convict. That member of the jury, Adam Sirois, felt a big issue was the mental health issue as well as Hernandez’s confession & the fact that they were unable to see the entirety of the interview. Adam said that many of the jurors couldn’t wrap their head around the fact that a person would confess to something they hadn’t done whereas he believed that Hernandez’s mental illness may have led him to falsely confess. They disagreed on the possibility that he may have been coerced.
Stan Patz was very disappointed with the mistrial & said, “How many times does a man have to confess before someone believes him?”
In 2017, a year & a half later, Pedro Hernandez went on trial a second time & the evidence & issues from the first trial carried over to the second. Like the first, the second trial also lasted three months & ended in a nine day deliberation. However, unlike the first trial, this jury did reach a verdict & Pedro Hernandez was convicted of murdering Etan Patz 37 years after the six-year-old boy left home & vanished. He was sentenced to 25 years-to-life.
Stan Patz spoke out & said that they had waited a long time & finally found some measure of justice for their wonderful little boy Etan. “I am truly relieved & I tell you, it’s about time. It really is about time.”
Etan’s case has long haunted detectives involved & they had hoped there would have been a movie-like ending where Etan would eventually walk through the door, but sadly, it didn’t work out that way. Despite the relief that the case was finally solved, there would never be complete closure & detectives would have wanted nothing more than to give Stan & Julie Patz their son back.
Etan Patz would be 51-years-old today. His remains have never been found.
References:
- Mother Jones: Stranger Dangers: The right’s history of turning child abuse into a political weapon
- National Center for Missing & Exploited Children: Straying away from “stranger danger”
- Jacobin: How the “stranger danger” panic in the 1980s helped give rise to mass incarceration
- Brennan Center for Justice: The history of mass incarceration
- Salon: What ‘80s kids also remember: On stranger danger, Satanic panic & generations of trickle-down fear
- Salon: We’re still way too afraid of “stranger danger”
- The New York Times: The science of the search for the boy on the milk carton
- The New York Times: No sign found of boy’s body as search in SoHo ends
- The New York Times: Stoic in court, Patz suspect is heard in harrowing confession
- The New York Times: Earlier suspect may be Etan Patz’s killer, defense says
- The New York Times: What happened to Etan Patz? Unraveling a nearly 40-year-old case
- CBS News: Etan Patz case: 1979 disappearance of NYC boy continues to haunt investigators
- Wikipedia: Disappearance of Etan Patz
- Statista: Countries with the largest number of prisoners per 100,000 of the national population, as of January 2024
- The New York Times: Search for boy’s body returns to cellar that looked uneven decades earlier
