A camerawoman outside the Patz residence on Spring Street.

Soho residents angry over Patz murder media blitz

By Paul Bisceglio

Local media went into a frenzy last week when 51-year-old New Jersey man Pedro Hernandez confessed to killing Etan Patz, a 6-year-old Soho resident who went missing on his way to the bus on May 25, 1979.

The disappearance made national headlines 33 years ago, largely thanks to the Patz family’s tenacious circulation of Patz’s pictures to media outlets. Last week, however, the family wanted little to do with the barrage of reporters, photographers and cameramen who piled out of news vans in front of their home at the intersection of Prince and Wooster streets.

“I wish this could end,” Patz’s mother, Julie, told a crowd of press on Monday morning, according to The Daily News. “This is taking my freedom away. I just wish this could be over.”

The family’s relationship with media soured as reporters continued to hound them for information throughout the day, approaching them on the street for quotes and rushing after them for pictures whenever they stepped out of their home.
Patz’s father, Stan, posted the following note outside the family’s door: “To all 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.”

Undaunted, the media stuck around the house until last Thursday, packed with laptops and recording equipment in vans and cars that lined Prince Street from Wooster to West Broadway, where a small memorial of flowers and candles marked Patz’s bus stop.

The Soho community did not make the media’s stay easy. The Patz family’s pleas incited antagonism between locals and journalists.

“They hate us,” one berated reporter said, citing multiple incidents of verbal abuse directed at reporters, photographers and media crews around the scene—even an attempted attack with a wheelchair. When the reporter told one resident that he was there to write about the murder, for instance, the resident responded, “I hope when you go to bed tonight you’re a real stressed motherf—er.”

Many community members happily affirmed their discontent with the media’s continued presence. Jaime Gutierrez, founder of the blog sohonyc.com, said that after so long, the Soho community was ready to let the story go, and that the journalists were scaring away tourists. Another resident said that the reporters should “get real jobs” and leave the family at peace. A young artist street vendor was blunt: “They’re f—ing goons.”

Sean Sweeney, director of the Soho Alliance and resident of the community since the mid-1970s, thinks the neighborhood’s longtime members are more resigned to media blitzes. “We roll our eyes and say, ‘We’ve been through this before,’” he said. Nonetheless, he called the reporters’ persistent efforts a “zoo” and argued that the media had crossed the point where press becomes “malevolent” and “paparazzi.”

“Leave them alone,” he said. “They’ve suffered enough.”

“I feel a bit like a goon,” one photographer admitted when told about the street vendor’s charge. He agreed that the coverage was excessive, and frowned upon some reporters’ invasive tactics—shadowing family members on the streets, badgering them for quotes, peering into windows. However, he emphasized that the choice was out of his hands. He had been told where to be and was just doing his job.

Other journalists were more defensive about their importance to the community. One reporter noted that a strong media presence pressures police to resolve the case and give the Patz family the answers they deserve.

A photographer argued that journalists play a role in promoting national awareness of childhood disappearances and abductions. Ernie Allen, president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, was quoted last week as saying that, with news of the renewed investigation spreading, “We have seen a huge increase in interest and calls—but I think the most positive and important result is that we are hearing from many parents of long-term missing children. It has given them hope.”

Another reporter mentioned that journalists were providing details that many Soho community members wanted to hear. Murray Weiss, DNAinfo columnist and criminal justice editor, told WNYC last week that the FBI is still skeptical about the confession of Hernandez, who is schizophrenic, bipolar and has a history of hallucinations, and rumors in the community persist that some members of the police and the district attorney’s office doubt the credibility of his case. Longtime Soho residents have been exchanging emails weighing the evidence of Hernandez’s guilt, and some remain unconvinced.

More than anything, though, the journalists were bored—and hot. Stuck in cars for hours in 90-degree heat, frustrated that they would be in the same place tomorrow and simply waiting for something to happen, most were as eager as the Patz family to put the story to rest.

A makeshift memorial for Etan on the corner of Prince St. and West Broadway

After a NJ man is formally charged with ’79 murder of Soho boy, residents reflect on how 
a disappearance changed a neighborhood

It was a fateful day on May 25, 1979, when 6-year old Etan Patz attempted a first-time walk on his own to his school bus stop at the corner of Prince Street and West Broadway. It would be the last time anyone would ever see the boy again.
But now, 33 years later, amid headlines from across the city and the nation, NYPD officials have expressed confidence that a New Jersey man, a former Soho bodega stock boy, is the person who abducted the 6-year-old on his way to school. He has now been officially charged with second-degree murder in the decades-old case, Pedro Hernandez, 51, of Maple Shade, N.J., confessed to NYPD detectives last week that he abducted, strangled and discarded Patz’s body in the trash near a bodega at 448 West Broadway, where Hernandez had worked and Patz had stopped to buy a soda on his way to school.
Hernandez reportedly told police he had never seen the boy before and had decided to abduct him because of an “urge to kill,” according to a law enforcement source quoted in the New York Post.
Despite a lack of any physical evidence and little hope of recovering Patz’s body, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told the press last Thursday, “We believe this is the individual responsible for the crime.”
A lawyer for Hernandez has said that he suffers from mental illness, including delusions and hallucinations.
Hernandez was identified as a suspect in the past month by a member of his family, reported to be his brother-in-law, Jose Lopez, following the news that NYPD and FBI investigators had been digging up a basement on Prince Street where yet another suspect, handyman Othniel Miller, had kept a woodshop. That search did not yield any evidence.
Before last month’s renewed interest in the case, police officials believed a convicted and incarcerated pedophile named Jose Ramos was responsible for killing Patz. Ramos had known one of Patz’s former babysitters, and circumstantial evidence against Ramos was strong enough that in a 2004 case, he was held civilly liable for the boy’s death. Ramos has continued to deny any involvement in Patz’s disappearance.
From both a local and national perspective, however, the impact of the Patz case has been undeniable.
“Today…law enforcement is responding more swiftly and effectively than ever before: We have mobilized the eyes and ears of the public to help in the search for missing children through the use of technology and new tools like the Amber Alert; parents are more alert and aware; and the result is that more missing children come home safely today than at any time in American history,” said Ernie Allen, president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
In addition, Allen said, an important change came about in 1982, when Congress passed the Missing Children’s Act, making it possible to enter information about missing children into the FBI’s National Crime Computer.
He added that the renewed investigation into the Patz case has helped shine the spotlight back on missing children.
“We have seen a huge increase in interest and calls—but I think the most positive and important result is that we are hearing from many parents of long-term missing children. It has given them hope…When NYPD and the FBI started digging up that basement last month and then made an arrest this week, it sent a loud, clear message to searching parents and to law enforcement everywhere that these cases are never closed until we either find the child or learn with certainty what happened to the child,” Allen said.
Janet Hayes, a local political leader and longtime village resident who was living on the Upper East Side at the time of Patz’s disappearance, recalled that everyone in the city was aware of the case.
“It was an event that did affect the whole city, no matter where you lived,” Hayes said. “We read about crimes all the time, but a 6-year-old boy abducted on his way to school from a safe neighborhood was not supposed to happen. I still remember his face on the milk carton. People talked about it for a long time.”
Sean Sweeney, director of the SoHo Alliance and a neighborhood resident for more than 30 years, recalled the neighborhood back then as being much more quiet, with almost no tourists.
“The area was very quiet; you only had factory workers in the area. Kids were definitely able to walk to school and be safe,” Sweeney said.
He said he too remembered the posters of Patz that dotted the neighborhood after his disappearance, and recalled police knocking on his door about a week after Memorial Day. “They knocked on my door and I was busy—I couldn’t talk to them,” he recalled. “They didn’t make it sound urgent, it seemed routine to me.”
But with the recent confession and arrest of Hernandez, Sweeney expressed surprise. “I was shocked when I heard the reports,” he said. “I remember that bodega where he worked. It always seemed very dark and dirty, like there was something not right there.”

A camerawoman outside of the Patz residence on Prince Street.

When a reporter on Prince St. told a Soho resident yesterday that he was there to write about the Etan Patz murder, the resident gave him a typical response: “I hope when you go to bed tonight you’re a real stressed motherf***er.”

(By Paul Bisceglio.)

The resident’s antagonism reflects the community’s growing hostility towards the media around the Patz family’s home. Journalists’ cars and vans have crowded the intersection of Prince and Wooster Streets since last Friday, when 51-year-old New Jersey resident Pedro Hernandez was arrested  for murdering 6-year-old Etan 33 years after he disappeared on his way to a bus stop on nearby West Broadway.

In 1979, Patz’s family and the Soho community relied on media outlets to spread the word about their missing son. In the wake of Hernandez’s arrest, the family has repeatedly asked journalists to leave them alone. Tension between the press and the community is palpable.

“They hate us,” one berated reporter said. He cited multiple incidents of verbal abuse directed at journalists around the scene, and even an attempted attack with a wheelchair.

Many community members were happy to affirm their discontent. Jaime Gutierrez, founder of the blog sohonyc.com, said that after so long, Soho was ready to let the story go. Another resident said that the reporters should “get real jobs” and leave the family at peace. A young street vendor put it more bluntly: “They’re f***ing goons,” she said of the media.

“I feel a bit like a goon,” one photographer admitted when told about the charge. He thought that the coverage was excessive, and disagreed with some reporters’ invasive tactics – shadowing family members on the streets, badgering them for quotes, looking through windows.

The photographer, however, emphasized that the choice was out of his hands. He was told where to be and was simply doing his job.

Other journalists were more defensive about their place in the community. One reporter noted that the media’s presence pressures police to resolve the case, so it does more good than harm. Another mentioned that journalists were providing details that many community members wanted to hear.

More than anything, though, the journalists were hot and bored. Sitting in their cars for hours in 90 degree weather, frustrated that they would be in the same place tomorrow just waiting for something to happen, most were as eager as Patz’s family to put the story to rest.

The New York Post reported that Hernandez told police he “lured the boy with candy, stabbed him, cut up his remains and put them in plastic bags.” Hernandez is said to have worked in the area at the time of Patz’s disappearance, and the Post writes he had admitted to killing a child to several family members and others. While police were looking for new leads in the basement of the Prince Street building, at the intersection of Spring Street, a relative of Hernandez reportedly called police.

This timing of this news is particularly interesting as Patz went missing on May 25, 1979, almost 33 years to the day of Hernandez’s arrest. Patz, who lived with his parents and two siblings on Prince Street had begged his parents to walk along to catch the school bus on nearby West Broadway. He was last seen walking to the stop that morning.

Patz soon became the poster child of missing children across the country, and thanks to the tenacity of his parents, he became the first child to have their face on a milk carton.

Sean Sweeney, Director of the SoHo Alliance and a longtime neighborhood resident, recalls when SoHo was filled with artist lofts and industrial retail stores at the time of Etan’s disappearance. The residents were a very close knit community, he said.

“When Etan Patz disappeared, his mother contacted all the other mothers. There wasn’t a lamp post south of 8th St. that didn’t have his missing child poster on it,” said Sweeney. “I think part of Etan being so well known was that his parents were tenacious. His father was a photographer and they had a good picture of him. At the time, missing children were barely reported in the news or not at all.”

Update:

During a public statement to the press yesterday evening, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirmed the arrest of arrest of Pedro Hernandez, 51, of Maple Shade, N.J., for murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz.

Hernandez who worked as a stock boy at a bodega and lived in an apartment on W. Broadway. According to his 3 hour confession to police, Hernandez lured Etan into the bodega, located on 488 W. Broadway,  with the promise of a soda before choking him to death. He then placed the body in a plastic bag and tossed it in with the garbage.

“Earlier this month the NYPD missing person’s squad received information from an individual which led them to identify Hernandez as a person of interest in Etan’s disappearance on May 25, 1979,” said Kelly. “In the years following Etan’s disappearance, Hernandez had told a family member and others that he had, quote, done a bad thing and killed a child in New York.”

The name Etan Patz conjures up so much for so many in New York City.

If you’re under 30, it is likely to draw a blank stare, but for many others it’s different, particularly if you were growing up in the city around 1979, when Patz, a 6-year-old Soho boy, disappeared on his first solo trip to school.

“Mom used to say, ‘You’ll end up like Etan Patz and no one will ever see you again’ when I walked too far ahead in NYC as a kid,’” @AlexSalta wrote on Twitter last week. “It worked.”

Patz was a trending topic this week and last as investigators went back to a Soho basement to dig for clues with a new suspect in the case. It’s the kind of story that grips you every time it resurfaces, although it probably didn’t change behaviors as much as people think.

Peggy Schneider, naturally, was thinking about Patz this week, since she was in middle school in Manhattan when the boy disappeared—but then again, she thinks about Patz and his parents a lot.

“I can still see his smiling face; I have probably thought about it once a month for my entire life,” she said in a phone interview.

Her friend was Patz’ babysitter, so she had a personal connection, but even that was not enough to change her habits. She still traveled the city on her own as a young teen.

So did I and most of my friends. The city was less safe in the ’80s, yet many parents then were much less protective than they are now.

Columnist Lenore Skenazy got a lot of mileage a few years ago when she wrote about letting her 9-year-old son ride the subway alone, and has since expanded the column into a movement to promote raising “Free-Range Kids.” Her column would never have drawn the uproar 30 years ago that it did in 2008.

I was a few years older than Skenazy’s son when I began riding the subway with a friend, but around the 3rd grade, I began walking to school alone—of course, that simply involved crossing a street that my parents could see from our window. My friends and I would play ball after school with other neighborhood kids, and we managed to do it without refs or adult supervision.

Still, I didn’t have to cross any streets to get to the concrete “field,” and I know things will be different when my son reaches the age when we have to start making these impossible decisions. There is a lot to be said for letting kids figure it out for themselves, but the rub is deciding when to do it and how much to let go.

Schneider’s youngest sister, Zoe, 40, is a year older than Patz would be today. She doesn’t remember being reigned in much growing up, but somewhere between then and now, city parents began tightening the leashes for better and, perhaps, for worse.

She may be more tapped into this generation of New Yorkers than anyone; she is the organizer of Magic Garden, a large monthly party for people who grew up in the city, giving them a chance to meet people who don’t ask, “What was that like?”

She used to come home late at night from babysitting gigs when she was young, but her immediate neighborhood in Tudor City was shielded from cars. Now in Harlem, she said “it is really scary” to think about her children someday walking by themselves near so much traffic.

“Babysitting at age 9 is crazy, but it was what it was,” she said. “It all worked out and everyone made it through.”

Not that parents didn’t worry quietly. Mine are fuzzy about how Patz affected their thinking, but my mother does remember me taking the train to high school in the Bronx. It wasn’t all that long after Patz disappeared.

“I always say I spent four years looking out the window,” she told me.

Josh Rogers, contributing editor at Manhattan Media, is a lifelong New Yorker. Follow him @JoshRogersNYC.

Children playing in New York City in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons.

The city was less safe then, but parents were also less protective

By Josh Rogers

The name Etan Patz conjures up so much for so many in New York City.

If you’re under 30, it is likely to draw a blank stare, but for many others it’s different, particularly if you were growing up in the city around 1979, when Patz, a 6-year-old Soho boy, disappeared on his first solo trip to school.

“Mom used to say, ‘You’ll end up like Etan Patz and no one will ever see you again’ when I walked too far ahead in NYC as a kid,’” @AlexSalta wrote on Twitter last week. “It worked.”

Patz was a trending topic this week and last as investigators went back to a Soho basement to dig for clues with a new suspect in the case. It’s the kind of story that grips you every time it resurfaces, although it probably didn’t change behaviors as much as people think.

Peggy Schneider, naturally, was thinking about Patz this week, since she was in middle school in Manhattan when the boy disappeared—but then again she thinks about Patz and his parents a lot.

“I can still see his smiling face; I have probably thought about it once a month for my entire life,” she said in a phone interview.

Her friend was Patz’ babysitter, so she had a personal connection, but even that was not enough to change her habits. She still traveled the city on her own as a young teen.

So did I and most of my friends. The city was less safe in the ’80s, yet many parents then were much less protective than they are now.

Columnist Lenore Skenazy got a lot of mileage a few years ago when she wrote about letting her 9-year-old son ride the subway alone, and has since expanded the column into a movement to promote raising “Free-Range Kids.” Her column would never have drawn the uproar 30 years ago that it did in 2008.

I was a few years older than Skenazy’s son when I began riding the subway with a friend, but around the 3rd grade, I began walking to school alone—of course, that simply involved crossing a street that my parents could see from our window. My friends and I would play ball after school with other neighborhood kids, and we managed to do it without refs or adult supervision.

Still, I didn’t have to cross any streets to get to the concrete “field,” and I know things will be different when my son reaches the age when we have to start making these impossible decisions. There is a lot to be said for letting kids figure it out for themselves, but the rub is deciding when to do it and how much to let go.

Schneider’s youngest sister, Zoe, 40, is a year older than Patz would be today. She doesn’t remember being reigned in much growing up, but somewhere between then and now, city parents began tightening the leashes for better and, perhaps, for worse.

She may be more tapped into this generation of New Yorkers than anyone; she is the organizer of Magic Garden, a large monthly party for people who grew up in the city, giving them a chance to meet people who don’t ask “what was that like?”

She used to come home late at night from babysitting gigs when she was young, but her immediate neighborhood in Tudor City was shielded from cars. Now in Harlem, she said “it is really scary” to think about her children someday walking by themselves near so much traffic.

“Babysitting at age 9 is crazy, but it was what it was,” she said. “It all worked out and everyone made it through.”

Not that parents didn’t worry quietly. Mine are fuzzy about how Patz affected their thinking, but my mother does remember me taking the train to high school in the Bronx. It wasn’t all that long after Patz disappeared.

“I always say I spent four years looking out the window,” she told me.

Forensics teams from both the NYPD and the FBI assembled at 7 a.m. yesterday morning at the basement of 127 Prince St. at Wooster St., which according to reports currently serves as a storage space for the Leslie/Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Police say new evidence led them to search the property. Several stores on and near the property, including a Lucky Brand store and the boutique Wink, have been closed to facilitate the investigation.

The building was originally searched in 1979 when it housed a carpentry workshop. Othneal Miller, who used to live in the building’s basement apartment, used to reportedly pay the young Patz to do minor chores around the building. At the time of Etan’s disappearance, the basement had a dirt floor where officials hope to find personal effects or human remains. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne stated that the case is still being treated as a missing person, and not a homicide.

The joint investigation began in 2010 after Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance reopened the case after the parents of Etan, Stanley and Julie Patz who still live in Soho, petitioned Vance to find out the fate of their son. Tim Flannelly, of the FBI’s New York Field Office, stated that a combination of new and reexamined evidence led them to search the property.

Work has begun in earnest, but is painstakingly slow. The NYPD plans to work around the clock and expects to complete their search of the 13’x62’ property within the next four days. Investigators are currently mapping out the unused basement before the meticulous removal of the drywall and cement floor. At press time, they have begun removing bookcases from the room.

“We’re going about this very carefully, to make sure that if any evidence is found it will be preserved for forensic testing,” said Flannelly.

The six-year-old Etan became the poster child of missing children everywhere, and thanks to the tenacity of his parents, was the first child to have their face on a milk carton during the 1980s. No one was ever prosecuted in connection with Patz’s disappearance.

Sean Sweeney, Director of the SoHo Alliance and a longtime neighborhood resident, recalls when SoHo was filled with artist lofts and industrial retail stores at the time of Etan’s disappearance. The residents were a very close knit community, he said.

“When Etan Patz disappeared, his mother contacted all the other mothers. There wasn’t a lamp post south of 8th St. that didn’t have his missing child poster on it,” said Sweeney. “I think part of Etan being so well known was that his parents were tenacious. His father was a photographer and they had a good picture of him. At the time, missing children were barely reported in the news or not at all.”