After Etan

by Lisa R. Cohen

  “What do you mean, it would incriminate you? What is it that you did?”

  “Well, you know, as the FBI, that I used to be a child molester.”

  Galligan took notes and waited. She’d been reluctant to put anything on paper for fear it would shut Ramos up, but he didn’t seem to mind. Now she looked at the words she was writing as if to convince herself he’d just said them. As far as she was concerned, he had just incriminated himself. This was how she’d hoped the interview would go. Maybe in another hour he would give her another piece.

  “It was the other Ramos who used to hurt children and abused them. I’m not that person anymore,” Ramos went on. “Now I could be in a room filled with children and left alone. And I would never touch or abuse any of them.”

  But it was the old Ramos who’d brought Jimmy back to his apartment.

  “The FBI,” Ramos said, “could assume what the old Ramos did when he brought him to his apartment.”

  “We don’t like to make assumptions because they can be incorrect.” Galligan allowed herself a brief glance at Winslow, who nodded, and she finished. “We prefer that you tell us what happened.”

  Nothing.

  “Look,” Galligan tried, “we’re not here to judge you. Different people will do different things to give themselves pleasure. Help us to understand.”

  “You can conclude what happened.” Ramos wouldn’t budge. “But after I finished with the child, I got into a cab with the child on Avenue A and Prince Street and we went to the subway stop.”

  Galligan was incredulous. “Finished?” she thought. Finished didn’t mean giving the boy a glass of juice, as he’d previously told authorities. Finished meant something else entirely. It was a word adults used after sex. If there was any doubt about what Ramos was hinting at, that word dispelled it. It was clear that he had just said he molested “Jimmy.”

  Ramos described how he bought the boy a token from the token booth clerk, and then put him on the northbound subway to the aunt in Washington Heights. The mythical aunt in Washington Heights, Galligan and Winslow knew. This was the part of the story that matched the 90 percent confession, the part of the story the profilers had said was a typical response child molesters might have: They can get almost to the point of telling you that they harmed a child, but can’t bring themselves to say it all, so their version has them veering off at the last moment to substitute another action in place of admitting to murder.

  “Why would you let an eight- or nine-year-old boy take the subway by himself?” Galligan couldn’t help but ask.

  “Well you gotta understand something,” Ramos responded, with an odd studied manner that sounded like a clinician interpreting someone else, which in his version of events he was. “I was nervous about being seen with the child and I wanted to get rid of the child as soon as possible.”

  Galligan had told herself over and over going into this interview that unless Jose Ramos was threatened with something much worse if he didn’t admit to killing Etan Patz, there was no reason for him to fully confess. But at this moment, she had a flicker of hope. If they kept talking, if she could keep building a rapport, maybe they could get him to that point. They were already more than an hour into their interview, but the feeling bolstered her.

  “Jose, I’m curious,” Winslow asked, “you used the word ‘child molester’ when you talked about the ‘old Jose.’ What did you mean by that—were there other children that you molested?” Normally, an agent wouldn’t use the term “molest,” it sounded too harsh. Something like “you liked children” would elicit a better response. But Ramos had used the word himself. Now he gave them a list, shorter than the one they already had, but still surprising to hear him admit to. He told them matter-of-factly how the “old Jose” had sexually molested more than one retarded child in a New Orleans hospital.

  “What hospital was it, Jose?” Galligan asked casually, putting the pen down as though this were idle chitchat. In truth, she was starting to feel physically ill.

  Jeremy Fischer had told her about the retarded children, how Ramos, devoid of affect, had listed them among his conquests. Fischer had written about them too while still in the cell, particularly about one Down syndrome boy who was so damaged from the sexual abuse by his own family that he was—both mentally and physically—an even easier target for Ramos. “A wonderful little boy,” Fischer had quoted Ramos.

  “Do you remember the name of the hospital, or the names of any of these children?” The chances of being able to track one of these kids down was next to impossible, but Galligan had to ask.

  “Don’t remember, but I’m sure you could find out. And there was a boy in Ohio named P.J.,” Ramos added, “but I never knew his last name.” That was a lie, Galligan thought, picking up the pen and writing P.J. Fox’s name.

  “Let me ask you about this Jimmy some more. What did Jimmy look like?”

  “Light hair, light eyes, like I told you, eight or nine years old.”

  “So you’re in the park, or you’re near the park on the same day that Etan disappears, and now you see this other kid playing handball. Isn’t that a pretty big coincidence? Are you sure this kid couldn’t have been Etan?”

  “Okay,” Ramos said. “It could have been Etan. But even if that child was Etan, I put him on the subway, and I have not seen that child since. You know what you need to do? You need to go to Washington Heights and ask people there if they saw a child getting off the subway the day Etan disappeared.”

  “Interesting idea. But you know if it could have been Etan that you took back to your apartment and you molested him, I mean, it’s very hard to believe that there was another boy just out playing handball in Washington Square Park at that time on a school day, and that this boy is, as you said, eight or nine. You’re a smart man, Jose, tell me, if you were me, do you think that would make sense? Where were his parents? Why was he in the park? Isn’t it true that it was Etan?”

  “I said it could have been,” Ramos said in a hostile tone. “All I know is, he told me his name was Jimmy.”

  “Why do you think you abused kids at one time?” Galligan asked. “There’s usually a reason.”

  “Because it happened to me. I was abused myself as a child.”

  “Well, if you knew personally how painful it was, why did the old Jose do it?”

  “You can’t stop yourself,” Ramos said. “It’s all you know.”

  That’s as much as Ramos would say about his own experience, not about what happened to him, when, or by whom.

  “So what you’re saying then is when you had the boy in your apartment that you said might have been Etan, you couldn’t help yourself. We could understand that. And he was such a good-looking child, Etan, with that beautiful blond hair and blue eyes. I can understand why you’d be attracted to him, or why the ‘old Jose’ would have been.”

  You have to play along, the profilers had said. Pretend you’re talking about Mel Gibson or Robert Redford, not a child. That’s how you might talk to a woman friend, and he has to think you’re in this with him.

  “And he had such soft skin, too,” Galligan continued, hoping for anything that would click. “I mean, I have to say, I can understand how a person could find little boys attractive.” Ramos’s body seemed to relax, as though he accepted her empathy, but he didn’t say anything—he didn’t agree, but he didn’t correct her by saying it was Jimmy, not Etan.

  “So this was a very attractive little boy, Jose, and of course Etan was also a very smart boy, and he knew who you were.” Galligan tried to give him a justification to cling to. “I’m sure that he probably said to you, ‘I’m going to tell my parents.’ And I could see how you got angry and maybe you just shook him so he’d be quiet. You didn’t mean to do it, it was an accident. It was just an accident. And then you got scared. Isn’t that what happened?”

  Ramos didn’t go for it. “I’m getting out in 2014. I can do that,” he said, and that was it. If he said anything more, the implication was, he’d
be in a lot longer.

  “You think this boy could have been Etan,” Winslow said, pushing him now. “So it seems to me that it was Etan.”

  Ramos slumped down in his chair. They’d gone round and round. Galligan wondered, were they wearing him down? “Like I said”—he looked up at Winslow—“it could have been him.” Then, as though he’d caught himself, he spoke in a rapid-fire burst, giving his rote speech about putting the boy on the train.

  And then out came the papers, his religious drawings and poems about God, his testament to his faith, the draft of his request for representation to famed attorney Alan Dershowitz. Galligan tried to use that, and offered to approach Dershowitz on Ramos’s behalf.

  “But why would he come all the way here?” Galligan wondered. “He’d have to think you had something pretty big to draw his attention…”

  Both agents worked hard to divert him back to 1979. But their forward movement was stalled, and Galligan could feel herself slipping back, like a mountaineer scaling a sheer rock face, except now she could find no cracks to dig into and secure her position.

  They’d circled around several times and John Winslow’s attention was drifting. He wondered how much longer it would be before they were sure there was nothing more to get from this guy.

  “Hey, you!” Ramos’s sharp bark invaded Winslow’s reverie. “I’m over here.” The inmate shook his head in high dudgeon. “If I’m going to take the time to talk to you, you should pay attention.”

  Winslow apologized.

  Galligan was going to take a chance. She changed direction with a hard left. “Isn’t it true, Jose, that you made comments to other inmates, including, ‘You’ll never find Patz’s body’ and ‘There is no body’?”

  Ramos paused and Galligan thought he was mentally sorting out what would sound the best.

  “No, I didn’t say that.” He didn’t ask who had said that or where she’d heard it—the kind of response Galligan would have expected if he were responding naturally, the kind of response the interviewing experts who’d trained her told her to look for.

  “We have you on tape saying these things, Jose. We could play the tapes for you if you want. And then how will you explain those comments?” This was a huge bluff and she hoped he wouldn’t call her on it.

  But Ramos didn’t challenge her. “If the FBI does have tapes of me saying those things, I don’t remember ever making those comments,” he said stonily. “And even if I heard them, it wouldn’t help my memory.”

  The mention of tapes and the informants reminded Ramos of Stuart GraBois, and he was now back on a rant against GraBois’s unjust vendetta.

  “He’s obsessed with this case.” Ramos smiled. “I bet if I helped you and he wasn’t in on it, he’d have a stroke.”

  Galligan lobbed another one of the themes. “So why don’t you do it, then? If you helped us after stonewalling him all this time, he’d get none of the glory.” This was an easy one, as she knew GraBois couldn’t care less who got the credit. “Help the FBI and give Stuart GraBois a stroke. It would be the best payback for everything he’s done to you.”

  “But I am going to get back at him. I’m going to tell the world about his tactics. I’ve been talking to Lisa Cohen from ABC PrimeTime Live who’s been begging me for an interview, and I’m going to do it. I’ll tell everyone how much he abused me.”

  “We don’t want to abuse you, Jose,” Winslow said. “We want to help you. The FBI can make your life easier. If you tell us what you know, if you tell us where the boy’s body is and what really happened, we can arrange for another prosecutor to handle the case, not GraBois. We can set it up for you to do federal time too, not state.”

  “It would be safer for you, doing federal time,” Galligan added. “And we might be able to get you into a prison in Florida, near your mother.”

  Ramos wasn’t interested. “It’s not so bad in Pennsylvania. I have more freedom at Rockview than I do here in the federal system.”

  “Yeah, well, here’s the thing, Jose. When Pennsylvania takes you back, they’re transferring you to Graterford, which isn’t quite so free. I believe that’s maximum-security, isn’t it, Agent Galligan?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “You can’t do that!” They were coming up on hour five, and all the niceties were out the window. They’d saved this theme for last.

  “It’s already done. But if you help us, Jose, we can get that changed.”

  “It’s not possible.” Ramos was clearly agitated. Gone was the chatty self-assurance. “You’re wrong,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “It’s going to happen, but we can control it. We are the FBI, and you keep telling us this was another boy that day, and it could have been Etan. C’mon, it was Etan, and you’re not helping us. Just help us here, so we can help you.”

  Ramos was struggling to tamp down his fury. A full two minutes passed before he finally composed himself, gave a bizarre, fake-hearty smile, and signaled the end to the interview.

  “Thank you very much for coming to see me,” he said, as though he’d just hosted an intimate dinner party. “I’ll think about it, and if there is anything more I can do to help you with the case, I will certainly let you know. But really, I’d suggest that the FBI do a better job of investigating the facts if you want to find Etan. This could all be over if you’d just do your job properly.”

  The two agents walked out of the room, leaving Jose Ramos sitting there with his arms full of the paperwork he’d refused to hand over, waiting for the guard to cuff him and take him back to the cell. Neither Galligan nor Winslow spoke as they made their way down the prison hallways and out into what remained of the daylight. It was muggy and gray, which matched Mary Galligan’s mood. There had been no food breaks, no bathroom breaks, no mental health breaks. It felt as though their visit with Ramos had lasted for days. She was bone-weary exhausted. She was also nauseated.

  They walked through the parking lot, still in silence, until Galligan couldn’t go any farther. She stopped between two cars, doubled over, steadying herself with a hand on each vehicle. She was going to throw up.

  She never got sick like this, let alone on the job. Despite her short time at the Bureau, she’d witnessed some gruesome sights. She’d never cried in front of another agent, and she’d never gotten sick. But now she didn’t think she could stop herself. It was mortifying that John Winslow, the most senior, most revered agent on her squad, a man she wanted to model more than anyone else, was standing there to watch her do it.

  “You have to give me a minute,” she called to Winslow. “Go ahead. I’ll be right there.”

  She tried to distract herself by taking stock of the last five hours. Yes, Ramos had said more here than he had in the past—they had taken the case a little further. It was clear to her that he had sexually molested a boy on that day. But Ramos had not admitted to anything more. She had failed in her appointed task. She was angry, frustrated, and self-recriminating. Now she had to drive for hours, before calling GraBois and telling him she didn’t have what she’d come for. She was not Clarice Starling and Jose Ramos was not the likable, if murderous, psychopath Hannibal Lecter. This was real life, and it sucked.

  As much as she’d envisioned the triumphant Hollywood-ending phone call to the Patzes, she’d have nothing for them today. But that’s not what made her sick to her stomach, it just made her heartsick. No, her insides were churning after spending the last several hours locked in a small room with that man. Now she understood why Stuart GraBois was so firm in his convictions. He’d been in that room too, more than once. She was certain now that Jose Ramos had taken six-year-old Etan Patz and done things to him that no human being should have to suffer, let alone a child. Then he had killed him. She was sure of it. And she had practically held his hand in there and told him it was all right. She knew she’d had to do it, but it was the most sickening experience she’d ever had in her life.

  CHAPTER 27

  Prime Suspect

  Ja
y Schadler: … Were these boys that you had molested?

  Jose Ramos: See, if I answer that and tell you that, you know, there’s a possibility I could be charged with a crime, you understand?

  Jay Schadler: These were other kids, though, that you had molested?

  Jose Ramos: I’m not about to commit perjury on national TV.

  —interview with Jose Ramos, ABC News PrimeTime Live, conducted June 20, 1991, aired August 15, 1991

  Leaning over in the parking lot of FCI Otisville, Mary Galligan swallowed hard several times, breathing the mist in deeply to expel the toxic air of that small, fetid space. She felt the gorge settle back down into her stomach, and walked toward Winslow’s car. Luckily, the ride home was a smooth one, and her insides gradually calmed, despite one lingering image she couldn’t shake. It wasn’t so much the graphic sexual nature of his exploits in New Orleans, but the idea that Ramos’s targets were mentally disabled. Children were vulnerable enough victims, but obviously they weren’t vulnerable enough for Jose Ramos. When Jeremy Fischer had first raised it in his interview, she’d almost hoped he was lying, but now Ramos had inadvertently corroborated one more of the informant’s claims.

  When the agents got to the rest stop where they’d left Galligan’s car, they found a pay phone and reported in to GraBois.

  “I think he’s your man,” Winslow told him, before putting Galligan on.

  “He did it, Stu,” Galligan agreed. “I’ve never been more sure of anything. I’m just sorry I can’t say he told me himself.” Then she filled him in.

  “You did great,” GraBois told her. “You got new information, you corroborated the informants, and we all knew that he wasn’t going to hand you a confession. Go home, take the weekend, and we’ll just have to see what happens Monday. At this point I don’t see why you shouldn’t be there with me.”

  On Monday, Ramos would be transported from Otisville to New York where GraBois was going to meet with him a final time in a conference room off the third-floor U.S. Marshals’ holding area.