Etan Patz: police arrest suspect who confessed to killing

Pedro Hernandez reportedly told police that he strangled Etan Patz and stuffed him in a box, which he discarded in New York

Etan Patz of New York went missing in 1979.

One of America's most notable missing child cases, the disappearance in 1979 of six-year-old New Yorker Etan Patz, appears to have reached a breakthrough after police arrested a suspect.

Patz went missing just blocks from his parent's home in downtown Manhattan in 1979 as he made his first ever unaccompanied walk to the school bus. His case became a national cause célèbre, and his face was one of the first to appear on milk cartons in an effort to find out what happened to him.

Now a New Jersey man, Pedro Hernandez, has been arrested after apparently implicating himself in the child's killing. "An individual now in custody has made statements to NYPD detectives implicating himself in the disappearance and death of Etan Patz 33 years ago," New York police commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a statement.

The break in the case came one month after the FBI and NYPD officers conducted a four-day excavation of a basement in Manhattan's Soho neighborhood, near where Patz lived and was last seen. At the time, police said no obvious human remains were found and it remained a missing person case.

Hernandez, who is believed to be in his mid-60s, worked at a shop near to where Patz lived, authorities said.

He told investigators that he suffocated the boy, then put the body in a box, walked down a Manhattan street and dumped the box in an alley, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorised to discuss the investigation and spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Although this is the first arrest in the case investigators cautioned they are still trying to confirm Hernandez's account and have little to go on other than his word. No body has been found.

"Let me caution you that there's still a lot of investigating to do," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

Hernandez, who moved to New Jersey shortly after the boy vanished, was picked up there late Wednesday and was being questioned Thursday at the Manhattan district attorney's office.

The New York Post said Hernandez had told family members, and a "spiritual adviser", about once killing a child and one relative eventually contacted police in April after hearing about the new Soho dig.

Although Etan was formally declared dead in 2001, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance re-opened the case in 2010 and investigators tore apart the basement in April looking for clothing and human remains after a cadaver-sniffing dog sensed something at the site.

The floor was in a basement once used as a workshop by a handyman, Othniel Miller, now 75, who had paid the boy to help him with chores. Miller was questioned by police but was not charged with a crime. Police later said the search found "no obvious human remains."

Long targeted as a suspect in the case was Jose Antonio Ramos, a friend of Patz's babysitter who was later convicted of child molestation in a separate case in Pennsylvania. He is due to be released from prison in November.

Ramos, whose girlfriend babysat Etan, was declared responsible for Etan's death in 2004 in a New York civil case brought by the Patz family.

Etan's parents, Stanley and Julie Patz, became outspoken advocates for missing children, bringing the issue to major national attention. Four years after their child went missing President Ronald Reagan declared 25 May – the day on which Etan disappeared – as national missing children's day.

Voice of the Gospel Christian Radio - Radio Stimme des Evangeliums

Donnerstag, 24. Mai 2012

Etan Patz: police arrest suspect who confessed to killing Pedro Hernandez reportedly told police that he strangled Etan Patz and stuffed him in a box

Etan Patz: police arrest suspect who confessed to killing

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