The loss of a child is always a tragedy for parents. Teenagers run away from home for a variety of reasons. However, they often eventually return home. On the other hand, disappearances of a few-year-olds can be more dramatic. Unfortunately, we most often associate the disappearances of children with the activities of pedophiles. This time I will present the story of Etan Patz, who disappeared when he was only 6 years old. His face is probably familiar to most Americans. I invite you to read the story of the boy's disappearance.
Etan Patz was born on October 9, 1972, in New York (New York State, USA). He was the child of Stanley and Julie Patz. He had two siblings - Shira and Ari. Inferring from the photos, it can be assumed that he was an ordinary, cheerful boy. The world heard about him after the events of Friday, May 25, 1979. Etan was then 6 years old.
That day, the blue-eyed boy with the characteristic blonde hair packed a bag with his favorite elephant-shaped cars, took a dollar to buy a soda, and left the house by 8:00. His family lived in SoHo, Manhattan, New York. It was an apparently ordinary day. The six-year-old went to the bus stop to take the school bus to his lessons. The relatives remembered that the boy was dressed in a blue jacket and jeans. He wore a cap with the Eastern Airlines logo on his head and characteristic sneakers with fluorescent stripes on his legs.
This day, however, was special in some respects. For the first time, Etan managed to convince his mother to let him walk two blocks to the bus stop on his own. The woman agreed because the boy knew the area well and it was a short journey.
Ethan did not come back on time after school that day. You might think he had a friend or colleague or missed the return bus. As time passed, my parents' nervousness grew more and more. Soon anxiety gripped them for good. The relatives found out that no one saw the six-year-old at school that day.
The search for the boy began on an impressive scale. The New York police spared no money for the entire operation. Dozens of officers were sent with tracking dogs. From the air, the search was supported by helicopters. More districts of New York were checked. There were door-to-door knocks and thousands of homes were searched.
Etan's father, Stanley Patz, was a professional photographer. He also pursued his passion at home. For this reason, the family had a large number of photos of the boy. Soon, photographs of him appeared on television, on posters hung around the city, and on billboards in Times Square. Eventually, they were also printed on milk cartons, which were distributed throughout the country.
Etan Patz was not the first missing child to appear on a milk carton. This method was used a few years earlier, when two boys went missing in Iowa. However, it was the disappearance of little Etan Patz that caught the attention of parents and children not only from New York but also from all other states.
In 1983, the then US President Ronald Reagan declared May 25, the day of the kidnapping of Etan Patz, "National Day of Missing Children." The case also inspired the creation of the National Center for Missing and Abused Children (NCMEC). It happened in 1984, five years after the boy disappeared.
The country was swept by a new wave of concern for the youngest as the faces of more missing children began to appear on pizza boxes, shopping bags, phone books, and more. Sometimes this method worked. This is what happened, for example, in the case of seven-year-old Bonnie Lohman. The girl came across her childhood photo while shopping with her stepfather, who had kidnapped her five years earlier. Such cases, however, were rare. The main effect of these photographs was the spread of awareness that the US was not a safe place, as so far many Americans have thought.
Although Etan Patz became perhaps the most recognizable face of this action, his actual fate was still a mystery. As the years passed, law enforcement continued to investigate the boy's disappearance. In the 1980s and 1990s, investigators' tracks led as far as the Middle East, Germany, and Switzerland.
In 2000, investigators searched Jose Ramos's New York basement. The man was sentenced to 20 years for child molestation. Importantly, he had previously been in a relationship with one of Etan's caregivers, so it was likely that he knew the missing boy. However, after eight hours of searches, the police found no evidence. In 2001, 22 years after his disappearance, Patz was declared legally dead.
The boy's father, however, was convinced of Ramos' guilt. So he filed a civil lawsuit against the pedophile. Patz won in this trial, which ended in 2004. Jose Ramos never confessed to the boy's murder, and no criminal trial was initiated against him.
In 2012, the police investigated a new lead. This time the suspect was Othniel Miller. The man worked as a handyman. Most importantly, he reportedly knew Etan and poured a concrete floor shortly after his disappearance. There was an assumption that in this way he successfully hid the body of the six-year-old. Investigators checked this thread and again found nothing.
However, the work of the police caused the media to become interested in this case again. A few weeks later, authorities received a call from Jose Lopez claiming his brother-in-law, Pedro Hernandez, was responsible for the death of Etan Patz. In 1979, Hernandez was 18 years old. At the time, he was working as a sales assistant in a grocery store on Prince Street, not far from the boy's house.
Days after the disappearance of the 6-year-old, Hernandez moved back to his hometown in New Jersey. Soon after, he began telling people that he had killed a child while in New York. He confessed this to his church group, childhood friends, and his fiancée. Only after a call from his brother-in-law did the man report to the police.
After being arrested, he told detectives that he had lured Etan into the basement of the store. There he allegedly grabbed him by the neck and began to choke him. However, Hernandez claimed that the boy was still alive the last time he saw him. He then put his body in a plastic bag, which he then placed in a box and discarded.
Thirty-three years after the boy went missing, the police made the first arrest in this case. The trial took a long time, however, as the only evidence was provided by Hernandez's testimony. The defense argued that the then 51-year-old man suffers from a mental illness that makes it difficult for him to distinguish fiction from reality.
Hernandez's lawyer reminded the jury that the defendant's IQ was 70. The lawyer also suggested that the police conducted the interrogations that they manipulated a mentally ill man who confessed to something he did not do. He also tried to convince the jury that Ramos had a clearer theme.
Ultimately, the 2015 trial did not end with a verdict. One jury member found Hernandez innocent, and unanimity was required. Two years later, another trial took place. The jury then managed to establish a common position. On February 14, 2017, Hernandez was found guilty of kidnapping and murder. The man was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.
Thus, the family managed to obtain justice after so many years and somehow close this difficult stage full of uncertainty. Thanks to this story, the problem of missing children was also publicized in the USA. The memory of the case of the "first milk carton boy" is still alive today.
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