[Video below.] Federal investigators and New York City police are preparing today to dig beneath the streets near a Manhattan apartment building where 6-year-old Etan Patz disappeared 33 years ago.
The search for Patz has been one of the largest, longest lasting and most heart wrenching hunts for a missing child in the country’s recent history.
Investigators are also reexamining the decades old assumption that Patz was abducted by convicted abuser Jose Ramos. Ramos, now in prison for an unrelated case, was never charged with Patz’s abduction.
The dig underway today is related to another person, a carpenter who had befriended the boy. The carpenter’s name had surfaced in earlier investigations, but he had never been targeted as a suspect.
The carpenter’s shop was at or near the location of today’s search.
Patz vanished on May 25, 1979 in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan while walking alone to a school bus stop.
He became the first missing child whose face appeared on the side of a milk carton.
For the Patz family, it has been more than three decades of agonizing investigations and years of wondering what happened to their blond son with the gorgeous smile.
In an interview with “20/20” in 2009, the boy’s fatherStan Patz said, “I still gag with fear that this child must have felt … when he realized he was being betrayed by an adult.”
The case had been dormant until Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. reopened the case in 2010. Former DA Robert Morgenthau, who had declined to proceed with the case, citing insufficient evidence.
Click below for a video report:
{ABC News/Matzav.com Newscenter}
It happens by them and it happens by us. It is ugly. It is the worst crime that one can commit because it destroys the innocence of a child and can lead to their death. Their spiritual, emotional and physical death. You just can’t look away from it or deny it. It is as ugly and as disgusting, as creepy and as terrifying as you see it right here in this old story and video. It is no less scary or horrifying to a Jewish child than it is to that sweet innocent Etan Patz. And no Jewish parent, neighbor, Rabbi, Bais Din should believe otherwise and take any more lightly than this parent does. Don’t be fooled because our abusers return the children to their parents that we have it any better than they do. Don’t be fooled for one minute. They don’t return the “same” child to their parents. The children that they touch change immediately. They are betrayed “by THAT adult” and are changed immediately. They are not the same innocent, trusting neshomas that their parents sent out that morning. They are scared, touched, threatened, terrified, confused, humiliated, disgraced, thrown off balance, ashamed, etc. They are not sure who they are and why they were chosen to be hurt in that way. They don’t know what they did to deserve that, how they sinned or were “bad” to have gotten such a terrible punishment. They take the blame on themselves and feel guilty and don’t know what to do with that either. They believe that they are bad and they believe that their abuser will hurt them more or their families as they threaten to do so they allow the abuse to continue over and over again.
Remember the innocence on Etan’s face and think about that when you defend an abuser or question whether a victim is telling the truth.
wow. i remember this case. cant beieve it is 3 decades!~
mAkes me feel old
Does anyone besides me remember that for a while the family and/or investigators suspected this may have been another “Yossele Schumacher” story? They actually checked religious relatives of the family in Israel to see if Etan had been abducted by them. Of course this was absolutely not the case. For years i thought he would be found alive somewhere, especially when reading how his parents could not forget or come to terms with his disappearance. May they have a nechama.
unfortantly sounds familiar about the part that eitan the kid insisted on going alone to the bus stop