Deceased/Not Found NY - Etan Patz, 6, New York, 25 May 1979 #2 *P. Hernandez guilty*

Meanwhile, the Police Department defended itself against suggestions that it had moved too quickly when it arrested Mr. Hernandez, a suspect with no known motive and with no physical evidence to corroborate his words.

“There was no way we could release the man who had just confessed to having killed Etan Patz,” said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. “It would be unusual, to say the least, to release someone who confessed to a murder.”

The police have said Mr. Hernandez confessed to a family member and others that he had killed a child. On Friday, one of his sisters confirmed that account, saying in an interview that family members said he had told them at a church prayer circle in the early 1980s.

“He confessed that he killed a little boy,” the sister, Norma Hernandez, said at her home in Camden, N.J. “He strangled a little boy and put him in the Dumpster.”

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But she recalled that when he moved to South Jersey from New York shortly after Etan disappeared, “He was acting very strange — he was always very quiet, his stomach was always very upset.”

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He told investigators this week that he had coaxed Etan away from the bus stop with the promise of a soda. By that time, shortly after 8 a.m., the bodega was already open, but the basement had a separate entrance from the sidewalk accessible by a set of metal doors.

“He leads the kid down the steps to the basement and right there — at the bottom of the steps — he strangles him,” one law enforcement official said.

“He puts him in a bag, puts him in a box and carries it out,” said the official, adding, “I don’t think there is a passage of time” between when Mr. Hernandez strangled the boy and when he took the box out of the bodega.

Mr. Hernandez said he left the box a little over a block away in front of 113 Thompson Street, the police said, and on Friday night crime scene investigators had descended on that location.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/n...z-case-charged-with-second-degree-murder.html

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The investigator said he also found Mr. Hernandez’s story of carrying the boy’s body out of the basement in a box and taking it a short distance away in daylight implausible, and found it extremely odd that the search of the neighborhood later that day and the next day did not turn up a box with Etan’s body.

“With the searching they were doing,” the investigator said, “no one comes across this box in the alley?”


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/n...h-second-degree-murder.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

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Wondergirl said:

I wanted to find 438 West Broadway, where PH lived in 1979.

According to the detailed Map of locations that I linked here upthread, earlier today, the bus stop was actually on West Broadway.

I did a Google Streetview Walkabout at the link below, and was very surprised to see 438 West Broadway, PH's apartment, is indeed exactly the last spot Etan was seen (well, actually, it has been reported both ways, hasn't it? He made it to the bus stop/he did not make it to the bus stop?).

Anyway, PH's apartment was right beside the bus stop.

Here is a crude Map I did, from a screengrab of 438 West Broadway.

Let me know if I labelled anything wrong, please.

Link to Map. I suggest doing a Goolge Streetview Walk-about yourself:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=438+we...=m&z=17&iwloc=A&panoid=FXOUJ7Wtt_tWnTM8W2BgqA

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Former SoHo resident Roberto Monticello, a filmmaker who was a teenager when Patz disappeared, said he remembers Hernandez as civil but reserved and "pent-up."

"You always got the sense that if you crossed him really bad, he would hurt you," Monticello said, although he added that he never saw him hit anyone.

Monticello said Hernandez was also one of the few teenagers in the neighborhood who didn't join in the all-out search for Etan, which consumed SoHo and the city for months. "He was always around, but he never helped. He never participated," Monticello said.

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wfgodot said:

Etan is listed on Charley Project as having weighed 50 pounds - not that heavy for an eighteen year old grocery stocker at a bodega who had yet to hurt his back working construction.

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/p/patz_etan.html

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wfgodot said:

I wonder how soon they brought the scent dogs in. If they did do that.

Also, I doubt NYPD has told us all of what it knows about Hernandez and what he has told them. I don't think they're suckers.

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MrsG728 said:

:banghead: Not buying this whole thing... Don't ask, but my hinky meter has been off the charts since this "confession". Here's why:

1. The family claims he did a "bad thing" to a child, and they had been hearing about it over the years. Oh yeah? Where were they years ago?

2. First it was a box, then a bag for the body's disposal. A mere "meme" or just a total flip flop in the story?

3. Apparently, he suffers from delusions and schitzophrenia, as well as other mental health issues. It wouldn't be the first time that someone thought they killed someone when it was indeed a delusion.

4. Lack of physical evidence.

5. From newyork.cbslocal.com : " Authorities are considering whether to excavate the basement of the old deli, now an eyeglasses shop. The police will also retrace garbage truck routes from the late 1970s that could lead to a search of landfills to try to find any of the boy’s remains."
This daunting task of trying to find a needle in mount everest (fresh kills and Arthur Kills are huge mountains) in my opinion is just impossible, time consuming, and more painful ngst for the family.

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DevilsPlayThing said:

Sympathy for Ramos is not an issue. He molestered children - and is in prison for that crime. Park Rangers on multiple undercover operations discovered Ramos illegal activites with children at the Rainbow Gatherings. Ramos did not harm Etan. GraBaois was investigating Etan Patz case. GraBois stated Ramos was responsible - and had every means of investigating a case possible. Ramos is in prison - no children are being harmed by him. GraBois came across a child molester while investigating a missing 6 year old boy. A common occurance. For 33 years the person who harmed Etan has been on the streets free to harm others. This is a problem.

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Bodhi said:

I found an interesting video that may be the bodega and possibly Hernandez's brother-in-law from the early days.

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/47106472#47106472


When the news broke on Thursday, I went looking for a video I'd seen during the search of the basement last month. It's of William Butler, the detective who retraced Etan's steps daily and later committed suicide. Butler goes into a bodega and asks the man behind the counter if anyone was talking about the Patz case. I was checking if the man's name was Pedro. It wasn't. It's Juan.

According to this article, Hernandez was working at the bodega with sister Luz's husband, Juan Santana at the time Etan disappeared.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/waiting_for_killer_to_snap_c9eI26iqgDtq7in0NcN3gO/1

Other sources said that Juan owned the bodega.

Hernandez contacted his sister Luz last month to discuss the search of Miller's basement. He has had very little contact with Luz in years and he wasn't calling to make chit-chat, she said.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justic...al-confessor-who-broke-the-Etan-Patz-cold-cas

Is the bodega in the Butler video the right bodega? I've read there

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The brooding Hernandez — whose family members told cops they believe is gay — had been working at the deli with his sister Luz’s husband, Juan Santana, at the time, Monticello said.

“Pedro wasn’t a friendly guy, he didn’t smile very much,” Monticello said. “He was 19, but he looked older, and he wasn’t a guy you wanted to really hang around with.”

Relatives said he struggled through his adult life. In his 30s, Hernandez went to work for a dress company but got injured on the job and started popping prescription meds, Suarez said

In the late 1990s, Hernandez was diagnosed as bipolar, according to Suarez and another sister, Margarita Lopez.

“One day he was very happy, and the next day he wasn’t,” Suarez said. “We really didn’t know what was wrong with him. He lived a very private life. He would never tell us if he was broke or sick.”

He also has cancer and four years ago was hospitalized and diagnosed with HIV, Suarez said.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/..._to_snap_c9eI26iqgDtq7in0NcN3gO#ixzz1vzk5FsHb

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In an interview with the New York Post tabloid published on Saturday, Hernandez's sister, Lucy Suarez, said that his family knew about his claims and that he had tried to confess to police in 1979 but been dismissed as not involved.

"Every time the Patz anniversary came up, and we saw it on TV, we would always get haunted by it," Suarez told the newspaper. "I would say, 'Why doesn't he turn himself in? And my sister said, 'He did, but the police let him go because they said he was too crazy'," she added.

However, though police interviewed several people who worked at the grocery store where Hernandez was a stock boy, no evidence has yet emerged that Hernandez was ever spoken to by police

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/26/etan-patz-prosecutor-questions-charges?newsfeed=true
.

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i.b.nora said:

For technical reasons I can't view the MSNBC video so I can't comment on it.

However, the Christian Science Monitor article is quite good, but it needs a corrected link:

The unusual confessor who broke the Etan Patz cold case

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