The closest thing was an FBI database—the National Crime Information Center—that kept a record of stolen cars, boats, and other crime statistics. It even tracked missing children, but a database is only as effective as the people who enter its data, and in this case, many in law enforcement didn’t know it existed. This was especially true when it came to kids who went missing. As of May 1981, there were almost twenty times more stolen license plates than missing children listed in the NCIC.
Even as Stan lobbied public opinion on the staid editorial pages of the Times, Julie was the one who more often stood in the limelight. She was willing to ride a train or take a flight to any media market, no matter how small, to do what the nonexistent national machinery should be doing—getting the word out to farmers and businessmen and housewives that her son and God only knew who else was missing.
There were no statistics, no clear definition of what “missing” even meant. Were runaways “missing”? That upped the numbers exponentially. Were children snatched by one angry parent from another in a custody dispute “missing”? Again, a whole different set of figures came into play.
So many wildly fluctuating figures were thrown around in the first years—from hundreds to thousands to an astounding 1.3 million missing children. There were no studies to cite, just anecdotal evidence and blind extrapolation. But one thing was clear. There needed to be a number—without it Julie or Stan or any missing children’s advocate got stuck on the first question. How can you talk about a problem that doesn’t exist?
In the early 1980s people began writing about the subject, and for the most part they simply quoted each other’s statistics. In early 1981 a journalist named Kristin Cole Brown wrote a lengthy feature on missing children for the New York Daily News Sunday Magazine, and cited another article in the American Bar Association Journal on parental abductions, saying that one hundred thousand custodial spouses snatched their children annually. She hoped it was a good figure.
Kitty, as her friends called her, was a mother of two young children herself, and she’d become profoundly interested in the subject, but as she’d researched the article she’d realized that the only real experts out there seemed to be the parents themselves. She was uncomfortable asking such sensitive questions, of compounding the grief of these mothers and fathers. She had called Julie Patz with her heart in her throat, cringing inwardly at the sense of intrusion. But Julie quickly put her at ease, giving her implicit permission to ask the most sensitive of questions.
By this point, Julie had had so much experience telling her story and appealing for help that she’d become resigned to the draining effort it took. If Etan had become the poster child for missing children overnight, Julie had gradually become the poster mother. Parents from every part of the country facing the same terror knew who to contact and learn from, as they too suffered the agonizing wait and pressed for help. The horrific Atlanta child murders were occurring over this period of time, twenty-nine black children and young adults killed over a two-year period, their families ultimately uniting to decry the lack of attention their cases received. When Atlanta mother Camille Bell began to speak out about her nine-year-old son Yusef’s death, the only other name she’d ever heard connected to missing children was Julie’s.
Julie was in touch with grassroots shoestring organizations around the country—from the Bergen County Missing Persons Bureau to California’s Stolen Child Information Exchange. From sea to shining sea there were parents of missing children who, in trying to find their children, found each other. And they all seemed to converge at Julie Patz’s door.
So a few months later, Kitty Brown called Julie again, to ask her about appearing together on a Philadelphia talk show. By then, Kitty was doing volunteer work for an upstate New York group, Child Find. Founded by a woman whose ex-husband had gone into hiding with their daughter, Child Find focused on parental abductions, getting missing children’s photos distributed as widely as possible, and serving as a point of contact for runaways as well. If for whatever reason a child didn’t want his parents to know his whereabouts, Child Find could work as a third party to mediate or get messages through. Like other fledgling advocates, the group was feeling its way, but as the issue of missing children got more exposure, Kitty, the newly named information director, was being asked to make media appearances.
The Philadelphia show was Whitney & Co, hosted by local TV personality Jane Whitney. It would be a one-hour live telecast, and Kitty’s maiden voyage. Would Julie train down with her and add her expert input? Julie agreed. They caught the Amtrak together, and en route, Kitty confided her stage fright. She felt the burden of speaking for her organization as the panel’s “expert” without the chops to back it up. Every time she’d spoken to the show’s producers to prepare, she’d gotten a sense of vertigo that had almost knocked her off her feet. She told Julie she was petrified she’d open her mouth and choke.
“What if I sit there, struck dumb, on live television?” she worried.
“Oh, that used to happen to me,” Julie replied reassuringly. “It still does sometimes, but I’ve got a trick. When you can’t squeeze a word out, just put your hand up to your mouth and pretend you’re coughing.” She illustrated. “Works like a charm every time.”
Kitty tried it a few times, but she was skeptical. Her heart began to pound the minute she and Julie walked into the studio the next day, getting worse as she sat to be thoroughly powdered and primped. Julie, the veteran, disregarded the fuss, didn’t glance twice at a mirror, and spent the moments leading up to airtime reviewing her notes. She seemed oblivious to all the hoopla that stood out in Kitty’s first-timer consciousness.
“Aren’t you nervous?” Kitty asked her as they sat on the set and waited for the countdown to go live.
Julie smiled. “I’m not nervous,” she replied. “I’m excited, because this is another chance.” When the cameras rolled, Julie retold with quiet composure the story of the day Etan walked off for school alone, the terrible days that followed, and the uncertainty they still faced. She talked about their search and the futility of trying to reach every small town where her son might be, not knowing his family wanted him back.
“The police have been wonderful, but they’re limited,” she said. “There’s no way for them to get into every school in the country, where Etan might be at this very minute. If a child is taken, unless it’s a crime of passion, the chances are they’re taken elsewhere, to a different city, state, or country, but most importantly a different police jurisdiction.” And if he had been killed, there was the horrible possibility he was one of the thousands of unidentified bodies there was no system in place to identify.
“We don’t know that our son is dead,” she stated calmly, as she had so many other times. “We hope he’s alive, although we realize he could be dead. But mostly we need to know so we can put our lives back into order.”
Kitty knew from their conversations that Julie was a reluctant spokesperson, but you couldn’t tell that from her public persona. As the younger woman listened and took in Julie’s understated but SoHo chic wardrobe, the sleek chignon she often wore to keep her hair out of her eyes, and her dignified bearing, Kitty couldn’t help but be grateful that Julie was willing to tell her story over and over to help other families and other children. You couldn’t watch her face on a television screen and say, “That could never happen to me.”
When it was Kitty’s turn to speak, and her legs got numb, her mouth so dry she couldn’t swallow, she thought of Julie’s advice. She put her hand up to her mouth, coughed discreetly, and the words flowed, conveying her natural, unstilted passion.
“We envision a computer bank in every state,” she said, “tied into a nationwide database.” Perhaps a federal agency would oversee it, she continued, to collect and distribute the names and faces of the missing, along with descriptions, medical records, all the critical information that might bring a boy like Etan back.
“It may take a federal agency to make i
t happen,” Kitty said. “The odds are slim, but we will fight for it and it will happen because it is important.”
“See?” Julie said after the camera lights shut off. “You did fine!”
By the time the Patzes marked the second year of Etan’s disappearance, Julie was working not just to get the word out, but to turn words into action. She’d been employed part-time at an art gallery in the neighborhood, Gallery 345, run by artist and fiery political activist Karen DiGia. In advance of that anniversary the gallery mounted an exhibit called “Weeping in the Playtime of Others,” after a book of the same name by Ken Wooden, a journalist who had written extensively about missing and sexually abused children.
Over the next week there would be workshops on the sexual exploitation of children and child snatching by a noncustodial parent. Julie had helped Child Find put together information packets, which included tips and practical strategies for how to protect your own kids: Don’t write your children’s names on the outsides of their clothing or their bags; don’t inadvertently give strangers help in gaining your children’s trust. Teach your kids their phone numbers—with area codes. Come up with a family password that a stranger must know before your child will go with them willingly. When Julie Patz gave that advice, parents always took it more seriously.
The stark white walls of the airy East Village space were covered with framed articles on the subject and school photos of children known to have been missing or abused. The cheery portraits in the context of such a disturbing topic were difficult for some to take, but Julie urged people not to put their heads in the sand. Child abuse and molestation existed, and wishing it away did nothing to help fight it.
“Kids have become big business and big pleasure,” she told a reporter at the show’s opening, “and something has to be done about this.”
The opening-night reception was a strange affair, wine and cheese surrounded by the haunting faces of these lost children. Swedish actress Liv Ullmann provided star wattage, moving among the small collection of locals, parents, and Village art scenesters. The clinking glasses and hum of small talk provided a contrasting soundtrack to the show’s theme of missing and exploited children. A few of the art critiques were especially difficult for Julie to hear. One section of the display was devoted to pictures of Etan, those beautiful portraits taken by his father.
“What’s he doing up there,” she overheard one woman, referring to Etan’s picture, “when everyone knows he’s dead.”
In fact, a new development in the case suggested otherwise. Julie came alone to the event, her usually pale face flushed and animated. “Why isn’t Stan here?” Kitty asked.
“Can you believe it, we have a lead,” Julie replied. “He’s been talking to the police all day.”
Stan arrived sometime later, and hugged Julie.
“No apparent news,” he said with a grimace, although he filled her in later.
Stan had picked up the phone the evening before and spoken at length with a man who called himself “Marlowe” but who had immediately admitted the name was fictitious.
“I know this lady in New Jersey who has Etan,” Marlowe told Stan. “She did me a solid once, and now I want to return the favor. She goes back and forth about contacting you, and it’s taken her eighteen months to even go this far. I told her I’d act as a go-between to confirm your telephone number.”
Stan had learned not to say much to these kinds of callers, but he was taking copious notes. The man sounded young, but it wasn’t clear.
“Where are you now?” he asked. “Can we meet?” From the noises in the background, Stan presumed he was in a private residence. There was the sound of a televised ball game in the background, which at some point switched to pop music.
“No,” said Marlowe, he was wanted by New York cops. He explained that this woman couldn’t care for the child properly anymore. He said that the woman was older, and that she knew the Patzes. He hadn’t met the child himself, he said, but Marlowe had seen a picture of him, one processed by a well-known lab, over the weekend. It was dated two months earlier, March 1981.
“I just had a baby recently myself.” The man seemed to be trying to relate. “So I understand how you feel… I’ll try to talk to her, and now that I know I have the right number, I’ll call you back again soon.” Marlowe hung up.
The call had lasted eight minutes. Stan wasn’t sure if he should get excited or not. Both he and Julie had learned to steel themselves against cruel hoaxes and rip-offs. Still, “Marlowe” had had a lot to say.
The next day as Julie was busy getting ready for the gallery opening, Stan called Bill Butler and filled him in.
“Do not pick up the phone,” Butler admonished. “Let the machine get it.”
Less than two hours later, Marlowe called back. This time, the background noise suggested a bar or party, with both male and female voices blending together. The tape recorder spooled as he said he was waiting for the woman to call him. Etan was fine, he assured, and he’d been in private school for the last two years. Marlowe spoke with the smooth confidence that suggested he’d made a career out of such conversations. Initially dubious, Stan’s bullshit meter was going off the charts.
Stan immediately called the cops back. We’re working on a plan, they told him. Just keep recording the calls and we’ll get back to you. Over the next hours Marlowe called repeatedly, obviously hoping to get Stan himself on the phone. Finally on Wednesday, Marlowe left the instructions on the tape. Stan must take the Long Island Railroad to the West Hempstead stop. Next to the train station, he should check into the Hotel Hempstead Motor Inn. Bring $2,500.
The man was firm. “This is not a ransom. It’s a loan. She’s going to pay you back.” He promised to call Stan in the hotel at 2 p.m.
Butler and the other detectives went into action. Stan would go along with the instructions, surrounded by undercover officers and wired for sound. He was waiting outside his apartment when an oversized yellow Checker cab pulled up. The back door flew open.
“Get in,” said the driver. Stan did, and realized there was a man sitting on the floor in the back, concealing himself. They might be under observation, the man indicated, better not to take chances. The cab drove to Sixth Avenue, and when it turned north toward Penn Station, the man sat up to wire Stan.
“Pull up your shirt.” When Stan did, the cop was dismayed to see he had nothing on underneath the long-sleeved pullover.
“You should have worn a T-shirt,” the detective complained.
“No one told me. It’s summertime.” The detective had no choice but to wire Stan without it, plastering the microphone with heavy electrician’s tape to his bare chest. Stan recognized the absurdity of speeding uptown, half naked and half lying on the backseat as a man worked over him. Is this whole thing really necessary? he asked himself. He didn’t dare ask the cop.
“Now, don’t worry. Our guys are going to be all around you, watching and ready to move, but you won’t know who they are.” The man left him at the entrance to the train station.
Stan rode the train, easily picking out his team. When he checked into the hotel, another undercover duo posing as man and wife came up to the desk next to him. This place probably has never seen this much action, he thought. Up in the room, Stan opened the door to a sharp knock and was given an envelope, the handoff, with the $2,500. But when he looked inside, it was filled with torn newspaper.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. “You couldn’t come up with the real $2,500? This is not big business here, this is retail.” For the first time this didn’t seem like a game. “I would have coughed up the money myself somehow, if I’d known I was going to be stuck in a hotel room with a criminal, handing him this.” He had no interest in getting roughed up for a wad of newspaper.
After the detective left, Stan walked to the window and drew the curtains. Directly below him a man stood in the parking lot and Stan made a few nervous remarks into his chest about sending out for pizza for everyone, t
hinking the man looking up at him might hear. He later learned that no one had heard—the mikes had died almost immediately after being taped to Stan’s bare skin.
But the cops did catch their perp—in the very same parking lot. He was calling it off anyway, he told police, because he’d mistaken the husband-and-wife team in the lobby for the Patzes themselves and was angry that Stan had disobeyed him by bringing Julie. Marlowe turned out to be a thirty-two-year-old con artist named James Slaughter, whose previous criminal career involved stealing people’s pets and holding them for ransom. He was charged with attempted grand larceny and aggravated harassment. And as much as Stan Patz had grumbled about how silly the whole exercise had seemed, using him as bait, he wouldn’t have begrudged the cops any request, no matter how outlandish or inconvenient. For their part, the task force detectives had long since overcome their own initial suspicions of Stan and his cool, even sarcastic façade.
“Stan was instrumental in making the extortionist’s arrest,” one detective later told a reporter. “The Patzes have been terrific. They’ll do anything you ask.”
A month after the gallery exhibit, Kitty Brown brought her children to the city to meet Shira and Ari and accompany them to a neighborhood fair. “There’s a big street festival a few blocks away. It’s my kids’ favorite,” Julie had told her. “You can stay over.”
It was the annual festival of the Feast of St. Anthony. Kitty’s children were in wonderland—they had never seen anything like it, with the lights, the noise of the music and the throngs of people, and all those rides. They’d been to their local county fair, but this was so compressed, souvenir booths and homemade stands displaying icons of the saints, all sandwiched between the city buildings. Kitty held the kids’ hands and they navigated the crowded streets. She strained to hear Julie say something over her shoulder about the last time they’d been to this fair, just after Etan disappeared. The four-year-olds wanted to stop and play all the games; Ari loved the tommy gun that shot BB pellets at a target. Everyone rode the Tilt-a-Whirl, which threatened stomachs full of fried dough and cotton candy.
After Etan Page 9
