One of the first milk carton kids whose kidnapping and murder took nearly four decades to solve.
It was the last day of school before Memorial Day weekend, May 25th 1979, and the Patz household was hectic. Everyone was busy getting ready for their days, Julie was taking care of her two-year-old son and another two-year-old that had stayed the night and Stanley was getting himself ready for work as a photographer. Shira, the oldest of their three children, was getting herself dressed for her school day.
That left Etan Patz, the six-year-old that was searching for more independence, he too was dressing for a day at school. He put on blue pants, a blue jacket and his favourite black Eastern Airlines future flight captain cap. After he was dressed Etan went to Julie and begged that she allowed him to walk the two blocks from their apartment to his daily bus stop. Begrudgingly, Julie agreed and once her son had packed his elephant print tote bag with his favourite toys, she walked him to the street and gave him a dollar to get some soda.
Before Etan left his mother’s hold he told her “It’s fine, mom, I can do this,”.
Julie thought everything was going fine that day as she ran her daycare from the family apartment. It wasn’t until Etan didn’t come home from school did alarm bells start ringing. Julie contacted one of Etan’s closest friend’s mother in hopes of tracking down her son. The other mother revealed that Etan hadn’t even gotten on the bus to school that day.
The police were called right away and a search with close to 100 officers began they were joined by a pack of bloodhounds as they searched around the lower Manhattan area. The apartment that had hours prior been home to the pure glee of children was now the headquarters of the search for missing Etan Patz.
Etan had last been seen at 8 am on the corner of Prince Street and Wooster Street he had his tote bag with him and a dollar bill in hand, heading towards his bus stop.
The community continued looking for Etan as the family became social pariahs and the police team that was once nearly 500 dropped to only 4 missing person detectives.
In June 1979, Julie did an interview where she addressed the community.
“The community has been very supportive and people have been wonderful in the search for Etan and distributing more than 300,000 circulars, but I can understand why they personally want to shun us, they’re self-conscious, and I suppose parents worry that there’s some weirdo out there, and what happened to Etan could happen to their kids,”
In the same interview, Julie spoke directly to the person that may have Etan held captive.
“We know he’s alive.Whoever took him might be desperate for a child, but that person cant make Etan happy. We won’t press charges — all we ask is please bring Etan back to us.”
The circulars that Julie spoke of were covered with images of Etan that Stanley had taken. They were all over New York. But they weren’t enough to get the image and story of Etan around, which is why he was put on the side of a milk carton. The smallest hope was that the milk cartons would go between county lines and spread further than what the flyers ever could.
If having their child missing wasn’t enough for the Patz family to handle, they were also harassed by reporters and tabloid photographers. One moment reported by Julie was when a photographer went up to her and said “Would you mind working up a few tears for me now? So I don’t have to come back and bother you again when they find the body?”. This would be one of many instances of rude media staff.
Away from the public view, the police had several theories going but they would all wind up fruitless in the years of searching. One of the suspects that the Patz family seemed to cling to more than others was Jose Ramos.
Ramos had been suspected by law enforcement from very early in the case because of his connection to Etan and the prior accusation that followed him. Ramos was easily linked to Etan as his girlfriend at the time had been hired by the Patz family to walk Etan to the bus stop before school on multiple occasions. And people had reported that he had been inappropriate towards children before the case.
There was doubt sprinkled against Jose Ramos as a suspect due to the relationship with his previous victims. Ramos would build trust with his victims and had been spotted with them before the crime, Ramos was never seen with Etan. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been involved but for some, that was just a small seed of doubt.
Years later, in 1987, Ramos was convicted of corruption of a minor and indecent assault of a 5-year-old. During this, Ramos gave a partial confession to a federal prosecutor regarding Etan’s case, he confessed to attempting to molest Etan but he did not kill the boy. Jose Ramos was never criminally convicted of any crimes towards Etan Patz.
After Ramos was put into prison, Stanley would write yearly letters to Ramos attempting to get him to confess to having involvement in Etan’s disappearances.
Etan Patz was legally declared deceased in 2001, there was no body. No evidence of his passing but equally there was no evidence that he hadn’t passed.
Once Etan was legally deceased, the Patz family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Jose Ramos. In the suit, it was ruled that Ramos was responsible for Etan’s death. Despite that charge, the police were still searching for the person that could legally be convicted of Etan’s disappearance and death.
After gaining a warrant for another suspect’s property, the police went to search the floor underneath their workshop. Right after the floor had been pulled up someone reached out to investigators. Jose Lopez from new Jersey suspected his brother-in-law Pedro Hernadez was responsible for Etan’s death. His reasonings were Hernandez worked in the bodega that Etan would’ve stopped at to get his soda and not too long after Etan disappeared Hernadez moved back to New Jersey.
Hernadez was never mentioned throughout the case but it wasn’t as though he was keeping what he knew a secret. Hernadez told his church, his ex-wife and a childhood friend along with many more.
Once the police took Hernadez in for an interview, he confessed in a matter of hours.
Hernadez confessed that he lured Etan into the bodega’s basement for soda. Inside he snuck behind Etan and strangled him before putting him in a plastic bag. He thought that Etan was still alive when he put him in the bag and then inside a box that was then dumped on the side of the street just a block away. Etan’s body has not been found to this day.
33 years after Etan disappeared police were able to announce they had officially arrested someone in regard to the crime.
Hernadez’s trial was in 2015 and ended with a mistrial after 18 days of deliberations. His retrial was in 2017, where a jury took 9 days to deliberate. They found him guilty of kidnapping in the first degree and murder in the second degree.
Under New York Law kidnapping changes from second degree to the first degree when any of the three following occur:
- Ransom is demanded
- The victim dies
- The victim is restrained for more than 12 hours so that you can physically injure or sexually assault the victim, commit another felony, terrorize a third person, or interfere with the performance of a governmental or political function
Under New York Law murder of second-degree is when any of the following occurs in the case:
- Intentionally caused the death of another person,
- Recklessly caused the death of another person under the conditions that showed that you had a depraved indifference for human life,
- Caused the death of another person during the commission of another crime such as robbery, burglary, arson, or sexual assault, or
- Caused the death of another person under the age of 11 during the commission of a sex crime such as rape in the first degree, criminal sexual act in the first degree or incest in the first degree.
Etan’s disappearance and murder prompted the creation of National Missing Children’s Day (25th May) and the creation of the Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
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