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Subscribe to RSSGarbage disposal records from 1979 may help investigators find the remains of Etan Patz. WNBC's Gus Rosendale reports.
Investigators are trying to determine whether they can track the remains of 6-year-old Etan Patz now that a suspect has made claims about where he tossed the boy's body in Manhattan in 1979.
Police contacted sanitation officials last week, when Pedro Hernandez was arrested, asking if the department has records dating back that far showing which trucks might have collected trash from buildings in the area, the Department of Sanitation told NBC 4 New York on Monday. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Hernandez has told police that he put the boy's body in a trash bag and left it in an alley a few blocks from the SoHo bodega where he claimed to have strangled the boy.
It was the first day Patz had ever been allowed to walk alone to the school bus stop. He never made it, and his disappearance mystified the city for decades.
Sanitation spokesman Vito Turso told NBC 4 New York that the city does have handwritten log books about which trucks picked up trash in certain locations, and records of where those loads were dumped.
Turso said if city trucks collected the bag with Patz's body, it could have been taken by barge to the former Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. It also could have been transported to an incinerator that used to burn trash near Gansevoort Street on the west side of Manhattan.
Turso said there was also the possibility that the bag would have been collected as commercial refuse by a private hauler. In that case, NYPD would have to identify the store and trace the hauler. That trash, Turso said, could have gone to Fresh Kills, the former Fountain Avenue landfill in Brooklyn, or some other private landfill.
"We await further word from NYPD," Turso said.
The Department of Sanitation also has records that show where in its landfills trash was dumped, by date and location. That could help narrow a potential dig for remains, if police decided to pursue one.
Read more about Etan Patz's disappearance on NBCNewYork.com
Timeline: The Etan Patz case
Previously on this story: Suspect on suicide watch
Hernandez, 51, was a stock clerk at the bodega at the time the boy disappeared. Police said he told them he lured Patz to the store with the promise of a soda, and then killed him in the basement.
He was charged Friday with second-degree murder and has not entered a plea.
His lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, told the court that Hernandez is a schizophrenic and has had both auditory and visual hallucinations. He has requested a hearing to determine his client's mental fitness.
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Sounds like the NYPD officers will be able to supplement their retirement by several hundred thousand dollars by digging in the garbage pits of NY, in fact you could probably spend 30 years at $1,000 dollars a day looking for this childs body and you will never be any closer than you are right now. But NY has unlimited funds when it comes to the police departments budget. NYPD will probably have an unlimited amount of money to hire 1,000s of police officers to dig in the landfill, this may be one of the least dangerous jobs in the NYPD next to being a cop and you still have the ability to kill at will any citizen that doesn't do as you say. The NYPD motto is "thank God for criminal" they make us one of the 1%ers.
Gary.... you are one very disturbed individual. Seek professional help.
Your rantings and ravings remind me of Adolph Hitler's... what the heck are you even talking about?
How does a loser like you get internet access? Now back to flipping those burgers.
God.....I hope you didn't procreate !!!!
Oh Gary...compassion much? I would love for this family to have some closure. God forbid anything would happen to a child of yours and you need the help of police.
Criminals like you always hate the cops but sure don't hate a person that murders a little boy, you need to focus on the fact that a child was murdered and a family finally has some answers. How about you do something positive in your pathetic life and maybe your attitude will change.
My heart goes out to the Patz family as it must be torture to not know where your child is for so many years.
That being said, I hope they give a ploygraph test and really do a complete interview with this suspect for every little detail of what happened that day in 1979. Something doesn't seem right about a mentally ill man coming forward in the middle of a suicidal depression to confess to a murder. Don't most child kidnappers/rapists/pedophiles do it more than once on the average? So, other than Etan, this guy has a spotless criminal record? Something doesn't seem right here...
A polygraph is inadmissible in New York Courts. The only way they could get it in court is if both parties stipulate to it being admitted as evidence. His attorney and the DA would have to agree before the poly is given that it can be used in court, Again, this must be agreed to before the Polygraph is given.
What good is a polygraph if the guy is delusional? He could pass the test telling you that he was sent from God to save the world from vampires. If he believes it, he can pass it.
I agree, it would be great to know if this was the truth to give the family some closure.... but without finding the body (needle in a haystack), right now, it doesn't look good.
As long as I live, I will never understand how someone can look at a child and then do them harm, such as killing them. I will never understand this, no matter how long I live. Only a complete monster could kill a child
This is terrible for the Patz family, I can't believe the NYPD will possibly dig through 33 years of garbage to maybe find something. I understand that they can't convict without evidence, his confession means nothing unless they find something that connects him to Etan. This could be nothing more than a nightmare reopened for the Patz family, if they can't find something to make the nexus. I pray for the Patz family and the NYPD that they find evidence and never let this child killer see the light of day again.
While I have great sympathy for the Patz family and what this situation must be putting them through, I very seriously doubt the veracity of this mans claim.
If he is able to provide irrefutable proof, yes, accept his version. Unfortunately, (or fortunately predicated on your perspective) I do not believe he will be able to do that. And any attempt at locating remains in a landfill would be problematic at best and impossible at worst. Too many variables and unknowns to be even considered.
I remember well looking for Etan when he disappeared. We lived on Long Island and I worked in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan and everytime I went from job site to job site, or when we went to the City with family, we always looked for Etan. His picture was in my work van and a copy in my wallet. My own son was 3 when Etan disappeared and I couldn't imagine the pain the Patz family was going through. I still can't.
Is there anything to even indicate that the guy is telling the truth? I would want to be 100% certain before I started digging through 30 years of garbage.
To Woody/1065787 : It is my understanding in previous articles that he told his brother in law that he had killed a child.
The "Fresh Kills" landfill? Really? Only in NYC I guess.
Rodski Thumps,
"Kills" as in Fresh Kills Landfill comes form the Dutch word meaning stream, channel, riverbed, etc. It does not refer to some sick NYC sense of humor.
Although it would be kind of weird if it did.
more likely the "not so fresh kills" dump if they find him there
This is a needle in a haystack situation.
IF the child was put in a modern landfill they MIGHT be able to pinpoint to some degree the grade and depth of the layer he is in.
Landfills "cover" everyday all garbage with cover soils at the end of every shift. (modern landfills do)
This creates layers and time lines, but it also covers a VERY large area of trash moved, compacted and covered in one day.
This project would be a major excavation and unless the landfill is already "at grade" it will shut the landfill down.
Being this old, (and if the child is in a landfill) the grade for grass planting should have been reached long ago.
I work in the gas production end of a modern landfill, this is how I know these things.
I hope they have luck with this, but you are talking about a MAJOR project.
Another problem is that anaerobic bacteria that produce the methane my company sells from landfills will probably already have digested the remains.
God Bless this child, and good luck to the family.
Viewer...
This particular landfill had actually been closed PRE 9/11 and was used as a site to locate the Twin Towers debris immediately after the attack and then to sift through the debris for remains in the longer term.
And being that it IS NYC and there are other 'unsolved' crimes, I'm not positive, but feel confident saying that there probably are remains of others buried there. Fresh Kills was an active landfill for ALL of NYC for years.
That will make it even more difficult.
Bottom line, I think it's a waste of time.
IF they CAN pinpoint this as the landfill in question, the best thing they can do would be to erect a memorial marker.
Finding anything after all these years will be virtually impossible.
Oh, great.. Another.. "my client is a lunatic defense"!!!! Why don't defense attorneys get a little more original???
The guy went on to marry and have a child(ren) and they NEVER said a world about his mental state, but now he confesses and he's got mental problems? Come on! America needs to do away with the "insanity" defense because it's just allows guilty people to not receive the same sentence as others.
semcrae...
Actually, there is a degree of truth to an insanity plea, although it IS misused more often than not.
In reality, NO SANE person intentionally kills another person unless in war, and that more often than not makes the individual insane or close to it.
But I agree that the "insanity" plea should be eliminated, unless it is proved beyond doubt that the individual has NO cognitive reasoning abilities what-so-ever.
NYPD have quite a turn around time for solving crime. Only 33 years. They are getting better!
Why did these people let their 6-year-old walk alone to the school bus stop in NYC? He could just have easily and foreseeably been hit by a car. Stupid.
Parents weren't as paranoid 33 years ago. I sometimes think that parents have gotten too over-protective. As for being hit by a car, a six year old raised in NYC is more traffic savvy than one raised in the suburbs. If he was trained to obey traffic signals, he was in no greater danger of being hit by a car than an adult.
There was nothing much left to little Caylee and that was 6 months after Casey Anthony dumped her; so it stands to reason that 33 years later Etan has virtually disintegrated.
Can't wait till this POS is in General Population, they will take care of him!
Why is this only charged as second degree murder? Any murder of a child, because it was obviously thought out, should be a death sentence for the perpetrator of such a heinous act. The child deserves better than that and so do the parents!
Today, there was an article on the homepage of MSNBC about a man who served a prison term for a rape that he didn't commit. Our justice system is comprised of human beings, which means that there will always be errors or outright corruption. Until we can be 100% sure that no error is EVER possible, no one should be executed.
Death by hanging of child killers. Actually, I think that is too good for them but I cannot think of anything more suitable........well, I can but I don't want to.
I think it would be a misuse of public funds to spend money to pay people to search for a body that was buried that long ago.
Rodski Thumps,
"Kills" as in Fresh Kills Landfill comes from the Dutch word referring to a waterway and not some sick NYC sense of humor.
Maybe they will find other missing persons who have not been at the landfill as long as Etan.
I was 29 when this little boy disappeared and I never forgot him. My own kids were 8 and 7 at the time. There is a little girl still "missing" after nearly 30 years, her name is Tiffany Pappish. She never came back from the convenience store less than a block from her home, she was sent after hamburger buns like she had been before. She lived in a small, close neighborhood on the near west side of Cleveland. Just like Etan there was never a trace of Tiffany ever found. I was struck by both these children and for some reason over all these years have thought of them occasionally and every time those thoughts brought me to tears. Little people are not supposed to die. Peace.
what a "waste" he is already dead ,stop wasting our money on overtime on a useless case NYPD,go solve some current crimes or our crooked politicians who steal from us everyday
One problem I have with Hernandez' 'confession'. He claimed he enticed Etan with the promise of a 'soda'. Didn't Etan's mother claim, as it was reported in several newspapers, that she gave him $1 to buy a soda that morning before school?? Most people who try to entice children offer candy or ask them if they want to see their 'puppy'--not soda; especially at such an early morning hour. UNLESS Etan went into the bodega to buy the soda and Hernandez said something like: 'Sure kid, but come with me to pick it out', or something like that. There's just too many years and so much media reporting of this case to believe anyone at this point. I do think trying to find Etan's body in trash that's been piling up for more than 30 years is like looking for a needle in the biggest haystack you can imagine. Not going to happen!!
And what good would it do for them to find the remains - yes, maybe some for the family, but to me, even that is pretty morbid. The child is gone, nothing will change that. The sicko they have may or not have done the killing, but would finding remains change anything about prosecuting the case? But hey, this is political now, not a concern for cost, reality or outcome - just make the mayor and PD look good.
He told his family over the years that he killed a child in NYC and they didn't do a thing. I suppose they felt he would not kill a family member so no need to let someone know what he is saying. His family is as disgusting as he is. Perhaps they should be looked into, maybe they have done horrendous things also if they can sit on this all these years. His bottom feeder lawyer is building a mental case for him, just wondering if he had been treated for it in the past or just now for an excuse. He needs to never see the outside of a prison.
I feel really awful for Etan's family. I cannot even begin to imagine the intolerable pain that losing a child to murder causes. Even when you have the murderer, you have the body, you have what they call "closure", you really don't. The hole in your soul will not heal. Graves are for the living, not the dead. If you believe in heaven, you know that the soul has gone to heaven, what is left is just a shell, you aren't there. Graves are used by the living as a place to go to honor, remember, talk, grieve, etc. If I were this family, I would have long ago taken some of Etan's favorite things and have them placed in a grave, place a marker and have that someplace to go. You could have every law official in New York digging 24/7 and never find anything. If that man did kill Etan, and that's a big "if", there are still not going to be any remains. Why would anyone want to torture Etan's family like that? Watching people dig through 30 years of garbage trying to find a bone belonging to my child. What a horrible imagery. Thinking that my precious child's body is in that horrible place. Let Etan rest in peace, let his family live in peace.
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush;
I am the swift uplifting rush,
Of quiet bird's in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
I don't think Hernandez is the killer.. but he might have known the real killer and that's how he knew about those never released details about Ethan that convinced the NYPD to arrest and charge him. The man is now in the advanced stages of mental illness and Schizophrenia and if he did know the real killer maybe he is confusing himself with that person in his mind or he's finally repeating what he has always known.Schizophrenia is a complex mental disorder that makes it difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences
He has no criminal record no other random acts of violence toward children or anyone else in the entire 33 years since he claimed he took a child into a basement and quickly killed him and disposed of him with no motive!! I think he's giving the police details that were maybe shared with him by the real killer.. the man is a Schizophrenic i doubt anything he says will be reliable.People want the truth not some mentally ill false confessor which I think this man is..