Stan had never talked to Detective Gannon before, couldn’t even remember his first name in the moment it took to hang up and note the call in the logbook. He wanted to come by, probably by 9 p.m. Gannon, like other cops before him, had some photos he wanted to show Stan and Julie, more “look-likes.” Was it okay to get there so late? The Patzes were used to cops showing up at all hours. Sometimes they called first, as a courtesy, but not always.
When Bronx detective Don Gannon arrived at the Patz loft, Stan and Julie sat and looked through the pictures, but as expected, none were Etan. They had no reason to suspect this time was any different than all the others. There would probably be some press, they were warned, about an arrest that day in the Bronx. But since these were “look-likes,” thought Stan, this would be yet another round of press to ignore.
John Miller waited out the police until they released the scene so he could get a closer look inside the length of the pipe. His flashlight danced around, to illuminate pockets of detritus the cops had left behind. Farther down the tunnel, the dank surfaces were completely blanketed with trash. Well into the second day of Ramos’s arrest, police had barely touched the enormous volume of his belongings. Miller assumed there’d be more official digging the next day and he wanted to do some of his own before then. He considered hunkering down on his hands and knees to burrow in, then crouched low instead, balancing on the balls of his feet to spare his buff-colored pants. Moments into his inventory, his eye caught a stack of paperwork. It looked like old mail; a promising glimpse into the man’s past. He picked up a wad of faded envelopes and examined them in the flashlight’s glare. The most legible one was a letter from the Social Security Administration postmarked 1979. It was addressed to Jose Antonio Ramos at an apartment on the Lower East Side. The paper was torn, but the address was clear—234 East Fourth Street.
Miller flashed to a mental map of lower Manhattan. East Fourth Street was six blocks north of Prince, and that street address was just blocks east of the Patz apartment. Maybe a fifteen-minute walk, at a clip. If this guy was in fact Jose Ramos, and he was living in the neighborhood when Etan was snatched, Miller thought, the vagrant’s interest in little blond boys just got much more damning.
The reporter’s instincts were glowing bright red. Within an hour he’d extracted the “babysitter” angle from a source at the Bronx DA’s Office, and landed an interview with the DA himself to ask him about it firsthand. Merola wouldn’t go into further detail or give out Sandy Harmon’s name, but he didn’t deny the connection either.
That night, some twenty-four hours after Ramos had told the Bronx DA’s Office of his connection to the Patz “babysitter,” Channel 5 ran the story. Miller’s report featured shots from inside the tunnel, as well as of the envelopes with the East Village address, and the other junk, now stacked outside. The camera lingered on the remnants of children’s toys—a stuffed bear, a collection of blank-eyed, smiling baby dolls, missing their clothes and a limb or two. The report also broadcast pictures of Jose Ramos and all the boys whose photos were found in his wallet.
As it turned out, Sandy was the biggest real break the case would see for years. While she wasn’t exactly Etan’s babysitter, as his parents would be quick to point out, Sandy Harmon had been hired to walk Etan and his two friends Chelsea and Kyra home from school during that school bus strike in the spring of 1979. Sandy had been in the Patz home, she had spent time with Etan, was even at the Patzes’ on May 25, picking up keys to the loft. She had intended to housesit over the long weekend while the Patzes went away. And then, of course, they never went away. Sandy was the one who’d been watching the news with her boyfriend in the first days after Etan disappeared, and then had seen him get up to leave, telling her he was going out to “help look for the boy.” But she had never called him Jose; contrary to what Ramos had told Frank Carroll the day before, he did go by other names. He was known as Michael to most of his New York friends.
Stan Patz followed the explosion of coverage that started on Friday night. The story leapt at him from the TV screen and the tabloid headlines, assaulting his frayed nerves all weekend long. The pictures had not been Etan, but this was starting to sound like more than a simple “look-like.” For the first time in quite a while, Stan and Julie were once again caught in that complex position, between two warring emotions. Almost three years into their ordeal, the half-formed scab covering their private life and private pain was being picked off yet again to ooze fresh blood. They greeted the news with the now familiar mix of trepidation tinged with the faint hope, one that could never be discounted, that new exposure could yield new information.
This time, though, was different. Unlike past headlines, now they ran next to pictures of the same tangible, sinister-looking face. The weekend that followed the drainpipe arrest marked the first time Stan’s painstakingly constructed self-protective patina began to crumble.
For three years, since the day Etan disappeared, there had always been two basic scenarios Stan could choose to believe. In one, evil, unthinkable forces abducted and did his son harm. In the other, a deranged but well-intentioned motherly type, an infertile woman perhaps, was loving Etan somewhere in a parallel life. Stan had worked hard over time to ignore the first image and nurture the second. He did so with great skepticism, but it helped him get through each day. Now, as he stared at the disheveled, hollow-eyed man in Saturday’s New York Post, Stan began to retrace his steps back to that carefully created mental fork in the road, to wander fearfully down the other path. A pedophile? In a filthy drainage tunnel? Stan longed for some facts, something real to bolster the media hype. But no one in a position to give him any called. All weekend long the press did, though, and he politely declined their interviews. He didn’t want to add to the misinformation.
By this time, Stan Patz had reverted back to the days without sleep or food. On Monday afternoon when he finally worked up the nerve to call Missing Persons and put his fears into words, he had his first moment of relief in three days. “There’s no possible way,” he heard a detective say. “Just believe us.” Stan wanted to believe, and so he did.
Ramos was held briefly for psychological observation, then released a few weeks later. The parents of the schoolkids weren’t going to pursue charges, and the Bronx DA’s Office turned their attention to the daily murders and rapes they needed to be chasing. Mario Merola’s spokesman issued a statement concluding Ramos was not involved in the Patz case. The brief flare-up of interest died back down. But the jagged rent in Stan Patz’s defenses could not be mended, and after that weekend, his darkest fears had a face. He and Julie began to wonder about this abandoned lead. Talking to reporter Richard Rein a few weeks after the Bronx incident, they expressed their anger.
“We’re very unhappy about the drainpipe case,” Stan told Rein, who by now had interviewed the parents several times and written about them extensively for People magazine. “We haven’t seen the toys they found, and we’ve argued that we’d recognize Etan’s toys—the cops wouldn’t. The woman who was the guy’s girlfriend was, in fact, a woman who had cared for Etan.” Why hadn’t police contacted her? Stan and Julie wondered. And who’s keeping track of this Ramos?
No one was, apparently, but authorities would later learn that over the next few months Ramos was living less than ten blocks away from the Patz apartment. Soon after his release, he went back to the Brooklyn room where he’d told Frank Carroll he kept the rest of his inventory and cleared it out. He set up a new headquarters back in the Patzes’ Manhattan neighborhood, moving his junk to a vacant store in the West Village. There he slept on a mattress for a brief period, until the store’s owner kicked him out. No one in law enforcement knew this at the time. And no one from the Manhattan DA’s Office ever called Frank Carroll either. Ramos was another in a long string of briefly considered then disregarded leads.
Jose Ramos might never have been seen again, except for a New York vice cop who stumbled across him just a few months later. Officer Joseph Gelf
and knew right away that he had caught the “drainpipe man.” Ramos was carrying a newspaper clipping in his pocket that said so.
CHAPTER 7
Up on the Roof
[T]he defendant… directed informants to engage in an occupation involving a substantial risk of danger to their health, to wit:… Contact between defendant’s mouth and informants penises with informants who are less than 14 years of age.
—Felony Affidavit of P.O. Joseph Gelfand, Manhattan South Public Morals Division, August 24, 1982
By the summer of 1982, police officer Joe Gelfand knew he was burned out, so he put in for a transfer from the New York Police Department’s Narcotics Division to Vice. Working Narcotics was by turns hair-raising and mind-numbingly tedious, like a factory job bottling nuclear waste. Gelfand worked fourteen- to sixteen-hour shifts, each one the exact same. Every day a “buy and bust”; plus every day in court for the buy and bust the day before. He spent so much time at 100 Centre Street, he felt like he should just go to law school and be done with it. Plus the bad guys in Narcotics were more desperate than at Vice, since the hookers and numbers runners were back on the street in no time, but a drug bust could put you away for good. So the odds that some cornered dealer would pull a gun were that much greater. At thirty-two, Gelfand had been on the job over thirteen years, and although he was inured to the sense of danger, he knew it was there every single day.
Established in the early seventies, Vice’s official name was the more genteel “Public Morals.” In the Manhattan South Public Morals Division, or MSPMD, Gelfand could clock out after eight hours, and get his life back. Here they were a little more laid-back—on one of his first busts, a gambling racket, Gelfand cuffed his perp behind his back, the way he’d always done with the dealers. “Hey Sarge,” the old-time racketeer said to Gelfand’s boss, who was standing nearby. “What’s with the cuffs?” “Oh,” the sergeant replied, “he just came from Narco.” In Public Morals, the cuffs went on in front; not quite by the book, more informal.
And there was more variety in the new job—there was prostitution, loan sharking, and illegal fireworks. MSPMD even had its own Pedophilia Squad, the only one in New York, created to meet the demand of the Times Square trade. Gelfand’s first assignment was to the Pimp Squad, a name that made most people laugh when he mentioned it. Of course, there was nothing funny about the work. The victims were the hookers themselves, beaten, starved, or imprisoned by their pimps, and they weren’t big on testifying against their “protectors.” Gelfand would work on a long-range plan, visiting prostitutes in lockup for their own crimes. He would pass out his card and promise to do right by them in exchange for giving up their pimps. Sometimes they’d warm to him—he was unintimidating with his slight build, softly curling brown hair, and a pleasant, almost sweet voice that held traces of a faint stammer when he got worked up. Out on the street, Gelfand was known as a good detective with the ideal unassuming features for this kind of undercover work—one of his colleagues liked to joke that he looked like he’d be more at home playing the flute in the philharmonic. Plus, he was one of the fastest runners in the squad.
MSPMD covered nine precincts, from 59th Street east to west all the way downtown. It ran out of the makeshift fourth floor at Manhattan Traffic, a crumbling red-brick building in the heart of the fur district on West 30th Street. From the outside, the landmark building looked stately, a medieval castle right out of King Arthur’s court. But inside, the officers sat in one sweltering room at worn desks shoved against each other, and got bragging rights for the biggest rat sighting. They carped constantly about what a dump it was, how nothing worked right, if at all. “Out of Order” signs usually hung on the bathroom doors.
Gelfand had barely been in Public Morals a week when Eddie Curry, a cop in the Pedophilia unit, took him on his first ride-along. “You don’t know Public Morals if you don’t know Pedophilia,” was the gist of Curry’s pitch. “Let’s go see the sights in Times Square.” On this unusually cool August night, wearing frayed cut-off shorts and T-shirts, Gelfand and his tour guide pulled up in an unmarked car across from the Playland Arcade at 42nd Street and Broadway. In 1982, Times Square was still the dazzling, Technicolor jumble of an earlier incarnation—of seedy strip joints, peep shows, and live! sex acts live! on stage live! parlors.
Amid this mecca of degeneracy, Playland stood out as a pedophile magnet. When cops from Curry’s unit weren’t actively investigating a complaint, they’d hang out across the street from the arcade, in the same building where the glittery ball dropped on New Year’s. An empty office on the second floor provided a surveillance position for detectives peering through sooty blinds at the various games played below. If someone were lucky enough to witness a transaction, he’d pursue on foot. But catching a pedophile in the act was a rare occurrence, just by the crime’s very nature and, in these cases, because of the ready compliance of its victims.
As Curry looked around for a place to park, he schooled Gelfand about the chickenhawks, older men who loitered casually behind the James Bond pinball game or the trendy new Asteroids machines at Playland, to offer kids quarters in hopes they’d see a return on their investment. Most of these young boys, some not yet in their teens, were actively soliciting; others just wouldn’t turn it down if approached. These kids would hang out in Playland all night long, Curry told Gelfand, and their parents usually didn’t care enough to miss them.
Before they even made it to a parking spot, Gelfand noticed a shaggy haired, Hispanic-looking male with a group of blond, preteen-looking boys. “Look over there,” he told Curry. “It looks like the old guy is trying to pick up those kids.”
It was 10:30, and the theater crowds jammed the streets. As the three boys and man began walking from Broadway toward Eighth Avenue, the unmarked car trailed them, but winding through the traffic slowed down the cops. “I’m going after them,” Gelfand told Curry in a reflexive move, “and we’ll meet up later.” He grabbed his walkie-talkie and jumped out to follow on foot. He crossed west toward the bus terminal and checked in with his partner. “Curry, I’m heading into Port Authority.” There was no answer. Public Morals, he thought with disgust; just like the toilets—nothing works. He lost sight of the car and, with it, his backup. But his targets were still visible, so he kept following. He was also losing his bearings, though, while trying to keep the man and boys in sight through the throngs of people streaming past him.
At Ninth Avenue, Gelfand turned south, and lost the four briefly, then saw them again crossing back and forth across the avenue. Are they trying to lose a tail? he wondered, pulling back a few steps. No, he realized and picked up the pace again; this guy’s looking for a discreet spot to do his business. Finally, Gelfand followed as they turned east on 39th, where the foursome headed up a long garage ramp toward upper-level parking. Gelfand watched from fifty feet away as the group walked to the top of the ramp, then climbed over a low adjoining wall to the rooftop of a two-story building next to the garage. Gelfand started up the ramp too, treading gingerly as he approached the top. He could see the man talking to the boys, then unzipping his fly. The smallest boy was up close to the man. Almost to the end of the ramp, in the dark, Gelfand’s foot went down hard on a loud piece of broken glass. Everyone turned. Gelfand pulled out his gun. “Police officer, freeze. Don’t move,” he yelled. “It’s okay, just put your hands on the wall!” He wasn’t sure it was okay. He was alone in the dark, on top of a building God knows where.
As Gelfand reached the rooftop, two of the boys took off, jumping over the wall back onto the ramp. They ran down to the bottom and out of sight. Waving his service revolver, Gelfand motioned the man up against the wall, while sizing up the remaining kid. He was clearly the youngest, and now he was crying. “Come here,” Gelfand told the boy, then “Keep your fucking hands on the wall” to the man. The boy went toward Gelfand, who grabbed him. “How old are you?” Gelfand asked the quivering shape. “Nine,” said the boy, who was really eleven. “Please, please don’
t shoot,” said the man, who looked about to cry, too.
“Don’t run away,” Gelfand said to the boy. “I’m not going to arrest you. What did he say to you?” The boy looked terrified, but his words were clear. “He told me to suck his dick,” he said. “First he asked us if we wanted to make some money. He said, ‘I’ll give you ten dollars to suck your dicks.’ ”
Gelfand looked around, trying to think straight. It was probably eleven o’clock by now. This was new territory for him, but he could tell they were in the Garment District. By day it was teeming with deliveries; double-parked trucks and clothing racks rolling through the streets. By night it was desolate. Gelfand realized he had jammed the boy up into his armpit, like a football. He knew that even if he could hold the perp, if he lost the kid he’d have no case. He looked at the man, the kid, and the wall, and thought, “What the hell do I do now?”
Suddenly a window opened in a building across from him, higher up, maybe the fourth or fifth floor, and he could barely make out the silhouette of a man’s head poking into the night. Gelfand had a fleeting vision of an angel descending to rescue him. No one, he was sure, actually lived in the Garment District. “I’m a police officer,” he yelled to his angel. “Listen—call 911. Tell them where I am, ’cause I have no idea. Tell them I need some help.”
After Etan Page 12
