The evening before, Kelly went on, Hernandez had voluntarily accompanied New York detectives from his home in Maple Shade, New Jersey, where he lived with his wife and adult daughter, to the site of the former bodega. Today, it’s a tony eyeglass boutique, while the bus stop is now in front of the high-end designer Alberta Ferretti’s Philosophy clothing store.
On videotape, Hernandez described Etan’s murder to detectives. “He then led him into the basement of the bodega,” Kelly said, “choked him there, and disposed of the body by putting it into a plastic bag and placing it into the trash.
“We believe this is the individual responsible for the crime,” Kelly said firmly, adding that police had a written and signed confession. He conceded that there was no physical evidence. As far as the NYPD could tell, Hernandez had never been questioned in the past, although his name had appeared once on a 1979 police report detailing who worked at the bodega.
The police commissioner gave some background on their suspect—he was a former construction worker now living on disability. He had a wife and daughter, and no known criminal record. Kelly said police had told the Patzes of the arrest. “We can only hope these developments bring some measure of peace to the family.”
While Commissioner Kelly stood at the podium, the Patz family was still in Cambridge, gathered around a large table at a quaint Italian trattoria, celebrating the Harvard graduation. Soon after arriving for dinner, Stan had, indeed, taken another Zimmerman call, minutes before the New York press conference began. This time Zimmerman confirmed that for the first time since May 25, 1979, an arrest had been made.
“We’ve got the right guy,” he told Stan, who hung up the phone and finally broke the news to the rest of the table. There were some tears, and the acknowledgement of such an intrusion—the family’s sad past colliding with its present joyous occasion. Then, someone changed the topic of conversation, and Stan opened a bottle of champagne to toast his daughter-in-law. Talk at the table moved on to her many accomplishments, plans for the future, anything but the case. This was the way they had learned to respond to all such news—take it for what it was, put it aside, and live their lives.
On Friday morning, Stan and Julie started for home. They’d briefly considered changing course, spending some time on the Cape to delay the inevitable, but they knew they had to return to New York sometime. Stan pulled into a service station before the entrance to the Massachusetts Turnpike South. As he gassed up the van filled with Ari’s belongings headed for storage, he noticed TV monitors mounted over the self-service pumps, something he’d never seen before. He was even more struck to watch the face of his little son flash onto the line of screens.
Halfway home, Stan called Lieutenant Zimmerman. He didn’t think there’d be much fuss at home, since no one knew when they were returning. But just to be safe, he told Zimmerman the time of their expected arrival, and the Missing Persons commanding officer said he’d be there to provide police escort. Back in SoHo, they neared the loft ahead of Zimmerman, and Stan was amazed to see what looked like a gala film opening ahead. Both sides of the street were packed with reporters. The Patzes kept going, past their address, and crept through the traffic jam unnoticed, to turn right on West Broadway, where the bodega was once located. Again, an enormous press presence filled the sidewalks, spilling over into the intersection and making the import of this news finally register. The family waited a few blocks away until Zimmerman arrived, and Stan inched back to 113 Prince Street. He pulled up onto the sidewalk behind Zimmerman’s parked car, positioning the van door as close as possible to the building’s entrance.
As soon as he opened the door, though, camera lenses and microphones were thrust in his face from every angle. This was unlike anything the family had ever seen, even after thirty-three years of running this gauntlet. The whole time, Stan heard the background noise, “Mr. Patz, Mr. Patz, how do you feel…? What’s your reaction…? What can you say…?” He never made eye contact or spoke to any of them. Stan still harbored the bitter taste of the media swarm from the basement episode the month before, but nothing had prepared him for this.
The May 25 anniversary, coupled with the first-ever, highly publicized arrest after a full confession, conspired to heighten the fervor. “STRANGLED BOY, TRASHED BODY: COPS,” screamed the tabloid headlines. “POLICE REVEAL HORRIFIC LAST MOMENTS OF ‘MILK CARTON BOY’ ETAN PATZ.” Everyone wanted to know what Etan’s parents thought of it all. But, of course, they didn’t know what to think, nor could they afford to say even if they did. They’d been strongly cautioned by the police—and they understood the stakes—not to speak out. It was a standoff, but the press had the advantage. They could call it quits anytime and go home. Stan and Julie were home.
To all the media people hanging around here: You have managed to make a difficult situation even worse. Talk to your assignment editors. It is past time for you to leave me, my family and my neighbors alone.
Stan Patz’s second sign Front door, 113 Prince St., 5/28/2012
Stan Patz replaced his previous note with a new, less sociable sign. Over the next days, the mob scene waned, but a smaller group of tenacious photographers and reporters had taken up residence on Prince Street. Stan knew some of them were there on assignment and had no choice, even felt uncomfortable being there, but it didn’t change the sense of imprisonment. In an old habit left over from 1979, Stan vented his frustration with a bike ride, but not before a New York Post photographer chased him on foot down Prince Street. He caught up blocks away when Stan stopped for the light at West Broadway, where a shrine of flowers, teddy bears, and a large picture of Etan leaned against the wall of the former bodega.
“A Haunting Ride: Etan’s Dad Cycles Past ‘Murder Site’ ” read the next day’s headlines. That was the same day Julie Patz finally ventured out for some nearby shopping and was immediately overtaken by lensmen, who stepped in front of her each time she tried to clear them, and reporters who clamored to get inside her head. She couldn’t give them the answers they were looking for even if she wanted to, and she just wanted to be left alone.
“I wish this could end,” she finally cried, breaking her silence in a rare display of emotion. “This is taking my freedom away. I just wish this could be over!” The Daily News reported it the next day as her first press statement, underneath the headline “Etan Patz’s Parents Show the Strain…”
“Did you see the photo of Julie in the News today?” Stan wrote in a furious e-mail to me. “Like the photo of me on my bike yesterday, this is a classic, modern example of yellow journalism; the reporters are creating the situation due to their stalking presence and then falsely shaping the narrative.”
Despite their silence, the Patzes were the easiest, nonmoving target. Elsewhere there was little to report. But John Miller stayed away from Prince Street and instead dug into a decades-old cache of New York sources to get beyond the sparse official statements to the facts of the case.
Pedro Hernandez was scheduled for arraignment on Friday, May 25. He arrived at Bellevue Hospital at dawn that morning, still in police custody, to receive ongoing medication. When Hernandez got to Bellevue, his comments there triggered a suicide watch. He was committed to Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward, where he’d be held until arraignment.
But the DA was not rushing to the arraignment, where his office would have to formally get behind the charge. His office was not sure it wanted to do that without assurances there was more evidence beyond Hernandez’s own confession. Phone calls flew back and forth between the DA’s office and NYPD headquarters.
Miller had covered a lot of crime stories in his career, and he’d never before seen this kind of reaction in such a high-profile case. Usually officials from all sides are happy to take a bow after a big arrest, but this time, Kelly and the NYPD had been alone on the stage. Miller knew top officials at Vance’s office were still talking about options, ways to slow things down, but he also knew the NYPD had them over a barrel.
In fact, a
fter the district attorney wouldn’t authorize the arrest on a murder charge the day before, and with no other way to hold Hernandez, Police Commissioner Kelly himself had ordered the arrest—murder in the second degree.
“There was no way we could release the man who had just confessed to killing Etan Patz,” Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said.
The DA’s office faced an uncomfortable situation. A big case usually develops first with a painstaking investigation that leads to evidence, and then a suspect, and, sometimes, a confession. In this instance, the police had a confession, but the painstaking investigation was just starting. Given the withering criticism the DA’s office had suffered from a string of high-profile cases they’d recently lost, no one was in the mood to take one on that seemed incomplete. Especially this one.
The arraignment had been scheduled for 2 p.m., but slid first to 3:00, then 4:00. By 4:45, with no sign of progress, the court sent a message to the DA’s office: we need the complaint sent over now—let’s get this done by the end of the day.
The document finally arrived. Hernandez would be arraigned remotely from Bellevue Hospital. At 6:20 p.m., the video image from a small Bellevue hearing room was beamed to a downtown courtroom. Judge Matthew Sciarrino and Assistant District Attorney Armand Durastanti could view Hernandez sitting quietly in a chair in orange prison garb, his gray hair and goatee close-cropped, hands behind his back.
ADA Durastanti confirmed the charge—murder in the second degree of six-year-old Etan Patz.
“It’s been thirty-three years,” Durastanti said, “and justice has not been done in this case.”
Hernandez himself said nothing during the proceedings, but appeared to listen while his brand-new lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, requested a “730,” the standard psychiatric evaluation to determine whether his client was competent to stand trial.
“I do that on the basis of a long psychiatric history,” Fishbein told the judge, “including, what I’m told and I believe to be accurate, a diagnosis of schizophrenia and bipolar disease.
“In fact,” the defense attorney added, “he was admitted to the hospital initially because of the long-term medication that he’s been under. There’s also history of hallucinations, both visual and auditory.”
Once Hernandez was arraigned on the second-degree murder charge, the DA’s office would normally proceed to grand jury, but Judge Sciarrino agreed with the request for a 730 and ordered Hernandez due back in court June 25. In five minutes it was over, and the official proceedings went on a one-month hiatus. Which left a huge vacuum that immediately began to fill—with speculation and spins, half-truths and outright fabrication.
Pedro Hernandez had a large extended family whose members gave the press an array of family history, most important about the allegations that Hernandez had talked in the past about hurting a child. “He didn’t say, ‘I killed somebody,’ ” sister Lucy Suarez told the Associated Press. “My conclusion was that it was a hit-and-run, or he hit someone with a bike. Nothing like a murder.”
Others in the family, however, alluded to a prayer group meeting Hernandez had attended many years earlier, with another sister and brother-in-law, Jose Lopez. Following the meeting, Hernandez allegedly spoke of killing a child, not identified. After watching the Othniel Miller coverage, Jose Lopez had evidently felt the need to get the confession off his chest, and went to the police. That certainly raised the question—if Lopez had heard it with his own ears, why hadn’t he or either of those two other witnesses to the alleged confession come forward earlier?
The rumor had ricocheted around the family for years, and at least one other sister told reporters she had come forward, believing Etan Patz was the child in question. A week after Hernandez’s arrest, John Miller and producer Arden Farhi drove to Camden to talk to her.
Farhi had spent the week before in Camden and surrounding towns getting the lay of the land, and making contacts with the Hernandez family. A handsome young new breed of producer-slash-cameraman, he possessed a quiet charm atypical of his more brash colleagues. That, and his sympathetic, long-lashed Rudy Valentino eyes got him in doors Miller’s more intimidating former-Fed look couldn’t. This time the two men got inside the sister’s modest home, where they interrupted her reading a Google search of news reports on the case.
Norma Hernandez was caring for a one-year-old nephew, who slept in a Pack ’n Play in a corner of the living room. To avoid waking the baby, she took Miller and Farhi to an enclosed porch, where she offered two folding chairs. Sitting crouched down in a child’s Thomas the Tank Engine chair, she recounted what she could remember about her trip to the Camden police to report her brother more than a decade before. She recalled seeing the Patz story on television, then nervously driving down to police headquarters. The officer listened to her story, wrote it down without asking her to sign any statement, and then, she said, nothing happened.
Miller watched for signs of prevarication. He was impressed by her manner—when she didn’t know the answer to one of his questions, she said so. When he pressed her in follow-ups, she clearly distinguished what she knew personally from what she’d heard second- or thirdhand. Miller relied on a thirty-five-year-long career’s worth of gut instincts, and he believed her.
Camden authorities later said they’d searched unsuccessfully for any sign of that visit, although they admitted some of their records may no longer exist. If Norma’s story is true, it adds to the credibility of Hernandez’s present confession. It also begs the question: why didn’t Camden police move back then?
More details emerged in press accounts, some more credible than others. The Post, that equally aggressive and sometimes creative New York tabloid, proclaimed early on that Hernandez had stowed Etan’s body in the bodega refrigerator, and more intriguing, that unnamed sources exclusively told the paper “Pedro Hernandez provided detectives with ‘intimate details’ about the murder of Etan Patz that only the killer could have known.” The tip was so exclusive that no other press followed up with confirmation, and many expressed doubt.
Indeed, after the first reports on May 25, 2012, when tabloid headlines proclaimed “Etan Case Solved,” and the graphics on ABC News’s Good Morning America read “FAMOUS CASE OFFICIALLY SOLVED,” the rush to judgment from some members of the media was replaced by a more general skepticism.
Even before Hernandez’s lawyer raised the specter of severe psychiatric illness, his client, being monitored at Bellevue, looked prime for a mental-health defense. Hernandez, it turned out, had been taking at least one antipsychotic medication, olanzapine, for years. Also known as Zyprexa, it’s used primarily to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
As far as convincing evidence went, what was publicly known was scant: there was the emotional, detailed confession—a confession so compelling it completely convinced the cops in the room. Hernandez had worked at the bodega Etan frequented; he’d moved away from SoHo a month later. There was the vague earlier account of harm to a child. But beyond that, little else. In the state of New York more than a confession is needed to convict, no matter how convincing such a statement may be.
Authorities examined the area around 113 Thompson Street, where Hernandez showed them he’d left the bag containing Etan’s body. Could it have been picked up by NY Sanitation or private carters? And why didn’t searchers, who combed the SoHo streets several times that night, looking through piles of trash, find it? Those were just a few of many unanswered questions.
Whether or not Pedro Hernandez did murder Etan Patz, he seemed to have lived an otherwise unremarkable, crime-free life both before and after the six-year-old disappeared. His family told reporters about his temper, and that both his ex-wife and current wife had filed orders of protection against him. But there were also neighbors’ accounts of a polite, quiet family man who raked his leaves, mowed his lawn, and attended backyard barbecues.
Perhaps most puzzling, alongside that portrait of contrasts, was that he had no motive. When asked repeatedly by police
why he’d done it, he’d allegedly responded each time, “I don’t know.” Typically, a murderer has a motive, and a child murderer has a sexual predilection. But he had no known history of pedophilia and denied to police he’d molested Etan before killing him. Instead, he said, he strangled the boy as soon as he reached the bottom of the basement stairs.
As he dug for elusive details, John Miller turned all these questions over in his head. For years, he’d been among those who’d believed Jose Ramos was responsible for the murder of Etan Patz. Ramos had written a letter to Miller from prison in the late 1990s basically repeating the “90 percent confession” he had given to Stu GraBois and two New York police detectives years earlier in GraBois’s office, where Ramos had admitted the attempted molestation of a young boy he thought was Etan.
Miller had worked with FBI profilers on a number of cases. From the standpoint of “offender characteristics,” Ramos was certainly more attractive. Ramos was a serial molester of children. He had a connection to Etan. He had the means, motive, and opportunity. He was a classic “groomer” of his young victims. But there was no evidence Ramos had ever killed any of them, before or after being implicated in the Patz investigation. And he’d confessed only to trying to molest a boy he believed was Etan, not to killing him.
While Hernandez seemed to have none of the characteristics that made Ramos the more likely suspect, he had been working on the corner where Etan vanished, on the very day he vanished. And there was the full confession.
Miller picked up the phone and called a longtime friend and FBI colleague, now in Los Angeles, a retired agent and profiler who specialized in child abductions, sexual assaults, and murders. Jim Clemente had been on the team who’d coached Mary Galligan before she questioned Jose Ramos back in 1991, so he knew the Patz case better than many.
After Etan Page 48
