It was 33 years ago today that 6-year-old Etan Patz disappeared from a SoHo street in New Jersey, becoming the nation’s first “milk carton kid.”
Yesterday, Pedro Hernandez was arrested in his disappearance.
As Blippitt first reported yesterday, Hernandez admitted to police that he had strangled the boy back in 1979, and last night he formally was placed under arrest.
The former bodega stock clerk, who lured Patz off a street with the promise of a soda before allegedly strangling him in a basement, will be arraigned today in a lower Manhattan courtroom.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said police focused their attention on Hernandez, who now lives in Maple Shade, New Jersey, after the Missing Persons Squad got a hot tip from someone who remembered Hernandez having spoken of having killed a child.
“In the years following Etan’s disappearance, Hernandez had told a family member, and others, that he had ‘done a bad thing’ and killed a child in New York,” Kelly said.
Based on that information, police went after Hernandez.
Kelly said Hernandez, who worked at the bodega for about a month, confessed to police after he was picked up on Wednesday night. Some of the interviews were reportedly conducted at the scene of the crime.
Kelly said that the suspect had not yet given a reason for attacking Patz and said there was “no reason at this time” to suspect that the boy was sexually abused in any way.
He said it was “unlikely” Patz’s remains would ever be found as Hernandez told them he put the boy’s body in the trash.
Hernandez does not yet have a lawyer.
More in the video below.
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