Suspect awaits arraignment in '79 Etan Patz case

Friday, May 25, 2012

NEW YORK – The man accused of murdering 6-year-old Etan Patz underwent a psychological examination as he awaited arraignment Friday, exactly 33 years after the boy vanished without a trace in one of New York City's most traumatic missing-child cases.

After decades of dead-end leads and false hopes among investigators, Pedro Hernandez, a former convenience-store stock clerk, was arrested Thursday in the 1979 slaying.

Etan disappeared on a two-block walk to his school bus stop in Manhattan in a case that helped give rise to the national movement to publicize and find missing and abducted children. The boy was one of the first missing children to appear on a milk carton.

Hernandez, who was 18 at the time, told investigators this week that he lured the little boy into the shop with the promise of a soda, then led him to the basement, choked him to death and put his body in a bag with some trash about a block away. Authorities never found a body.

Hernandez, now 51 and living in Maple Shade, N.J., was scheduled to appear in court for the first time later Friday — a date now recognized as National Missing Children's Day.

The first court proceedings were set to unfold even as investigators were still working to corroborate what they said was an emotional, surprise confession by Hernandez, who emerged as a suspect in the decades-old case just days ago.

Police said Hernandez was taken to a secure wing at Bellevue Hospital early Friday to get medication for an existing health problem. While he was there, psychologists questioned him about his mental state, then cleared him to return to a regular holding area.

Police would not disclose the existing condition.

His court-appointed lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, had no comment as he arrived at the courthouse, saying he hadn't met with his client yet.

He asked reporters to be respectful of some of Hernandez's relatives assembled at the courthouse, including his wife, daughter and another man, who huddled together on a wooden bench, turning away interview requests for more than an hour.

"It's a tough day. The family is upset. Please give them some space," Fishbein said.

Crime-scene investigators arrived Friday morning at the building in Manhattan's fashionable SoHo section that once held the bodega where Hernandez worked.

People who lived in the neighborhood in the late 1970s described the place as a neighborhood institution, and one of the few places to buy groceries in a part of the city that was then grimy, industrial and only just emerging as a haven for artists.

Former Soho resident Roberto Monticello, a filmmaker who was a teenager when Patz disappeared, said he remembered Hernandez as civil but reserved and "pent-up."

"You always got the sense that if you crossed him really bad, he would hurt you," Monticello said, although he added that he never saw him hit anyone.

Monticello said Hernandez was also one of the few teenagers in the neighborhood who didn't join in the all-out search for Etan, which consumed SoHo and the city for months.

"He was always around, but he never helped. He never participated," Monticello said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Friday that investigators had yet to determine any motive for the slaying, but authorities said they have a detailed, signed confession, as well as accounts of incriminating remarks Hernandez made to others.

Etan disappeared on May 25, 1979, after his parents, Stan and Julie Patz, allowed him to walk to his school bus stop for the first time. The stop was adjacent to the bodega. The boy never made it onto the bus.

Hernandez wasn't initially questioned like other workers at the bodega and moved to New Jersey not long after the killing, Kelly said.

But the commissioner said Hernandez had told a relative and others, as far back as 1981, that he had "done something bad" and killed a child in New York City.

He emerged as a suspect after a tipster contacted police, following news reports about a fruitless search for the boy's remains last month in a basement near the Patz home.

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Suspicious stain found in search for Etan Patz

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Investigators and their vehicles massed in front of a building at Prince and Wooster Streets
in SoHo on Thursday morning in their search for traces of Etan Patz in the basement.

F.B.I. Renews Search in Etan Patz Case in SoHo Basement.
Investigators equipped with jackhammers entered the basement of a building in SoHo on Friday morning, starting the second day of the most extensive search to date for the remains of Etan Patz, a 6-year-old boy whose disappearance more than 30 years ago focused national attention on the problem of missing children.



Before the work began, Con Edison crews turned off utilities in the area where the search was being conducted. A law enforcement official at the scene said the goal was to remove an entire floor in the basement.

Officials said they would dig for five days, a much more extensive effort than was made 12 years ago, when detectives searched the basement of an apartment where the primary suspect, Jose A. Ramos, a former mental patient who was serving time for molesting a boy in Pennsylvania, lived when Etan disappeared.

The new search focused on a basement area that had been used as a workshop by a carpenter and handyman from Etan’s building. Investigators are working on the theory that the handyman, Othniel Miller, killed the boy and buried him there, one law enforcement official said.

In recent days, according to the law enforcement official, Mr. Miller was interviewed by agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and when the possibility was raised that the boy had been buried in the basement, he blurted out, “What if the body was moved?” the official said.

Investigators from the Police Department and the F.B.I. spent much of Thursday dismantling shelving in the basement, in a seven-story building less than a block from where Etan lived with his parents, Stanley and Julie Patz (rhymes with plates). The walls were to be checked for traces of blood, and the concrete floor was to be excavated.

“I think that there is guarded optimism that they’re going to find something,” an official said.

The search signaled a revival of a case that changed the rhythms and routines of a generation, and that Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, said in 2010 he would reopen. In the wake of headlines and a widespread search, many parents stopped letting children go to the school bus stop by themselves. Etan, a first grader who was wearing sneakers and an Eastern Airlines pilot’s cap, had pleaded with his parents that he was old enough to make the trip alone. He disappeared on the first day he was allowed to do so.

The basement being searched — at 127B Prince Street, at the corner of Wooster Street — had also been used by the SoHo Playgroup, a parent-led space for preschool children. A woman who had participated in the group as a child said she believed Etan was a member of the playgroup.

The basement is along the route Etan was to have followed that morning in May 1979. Somewhere between his parents’ loft at 113 Prince Street and the bus stop, on West Broadway, he disappeared.

Since then, the timeline of the case has been filled with despair. In the days after he vanished, parents tacked up posters in SoHo, and later his photograph was printed on milk cartons in hopes of jarring memories and generating leads.

On Thursday, officials cordoned off the corner, stretching a blue tarpaulin between the basement entrance and the back of one of the police vans. Onlookers took pictures as investigators milled beneath signs for boutiques like Lucky Brand, WiNK and Fred Perry, which now occupy the corner.

The stores and tourists threw into dramatic relief just how different SoHo is today than at the time of the boy’s disappearance, when it was gritty and largely empty, with many of the former light-manufacturing buildings now occupied by artists. It was almost as though those taking pictures were witnessing a dig into a distant epoch, one that felt far further in the past than 33 years.

In fact, the corner at the time had been home to the cooperative restaurant Food, one of the only places to eat in a neighborhood now jammed with expensive dining options.

The current search is largely being conducted by an F.B.I. evidence recovery team as part of a joint investigation by agents from the bureau and the Police Department’s missing persons and cold case squads. Archaeologists from the medical examiner’s office were also on hand.

Three law enforcement officials said that investigators had brought a cadaver-sniffing dog to the basement within the last few weeks and that the dog had indicated the possibility of remains.

F.B.I. agents were seen escorting Mr. Miller to his apartment in Brooklyn on Thursday afternoon; a law enforcement official said investigators had tried to elicit information from him.

A grandson of Mr. Miller’s, Tony Miller, on Friday dismissed any suggestion that his grandfather might be a suspect in Etan’s death.

“I don’t think he could have done anything like this,” Mr. Miller, 33, said in an interview outside his grandfather’s house. “That’s not in his character. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s always been a good, hard-working man. He helped to straighten me out and guide me when I was a kid.”

Mr. Miller, a trucker who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, said that the first time he heard about the Patz case was from watching television news on Thursday.

“He never told me about it,” Mr. Miller said of his grandfather.

Asked how his grandfather was responding to the renewed police attention and to the extensive news media presence outside his home, Mr. Miller said: “He’s taking this real hard. He had a stroke, he’s diabetic, he’s not in good condition. This is really hard for him.”

Efforts to reach Mr. Miller were unsuccessful.

The night before he disappeared, Mr. Miller had given Etan “his dollar wage” for doing chores, wrote Lisa R. Cohen, in “After Etan: The Missing Child Case That Held America Captive.”

More than a decade ago, Mr. Miller invited the police to come in and examine the basement, suggesting that they could tear up the floor if they wanted, but that they would have to pay to replace it, a person involved in the inquiry at the time said. Because Mr. Miller was not a suspect, they did not take him up on his offer, the person said.

Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the police, said investigators would tear apart the 13-by-62-foot space, removing drywall and searching the cinder-block walls underneath. He also said they would break through the concrete floor.

No criminal charges have ever been filed in Etan’s death or disappearance.

When Etan vanished, the police assigned 30 officers and 5 detectives to the case and began what a deputy inspector called a “floor-by-floor, wall-by-wall, rooftop-by-rooftop, backyard-by-backyard search.” They also called in helicopters and bloodhounds.

Within a week, the police contingent had grown to 300 officers and detectives. They were handling 500 calls a day from people who said they had seen Etan or had ideas about how to crack the case. But nothing panned out, and two months after he disappeared, the missing persons squad said it had been the longest search for a missing child in New York in decades.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan declared May 25 — the day on which Etan had vanished four years before — National Missing Children’s Day.

In 2001, Etan was declared legally dead. His family filed a wrongful-death suit against Mr. Ramos, the man convicted of abuse in Pennsylvania; in 2004, a Manhattan judge ruled that Mr. Ramos had been responsible for Etan’s death. But the authorities said they never had enough evidence to file criminal charges against him in Etan’s case.

Mr. Ramos has been in prison in Pennsylvania since 1987 and is scheduled to be released on Nov. 7. He has been denied parole nine times in the last 13 years. Leo Dunn, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, said Mr. Ramos’s last parole review, in July 2009, referred to a “negative recommendation” from the Department of Corrections and said he would pose “a risk to the community.”

In 2000, the police searched the basement of the building at 234 East Fourth Street on the Lower East Side where Mr. Ramos was living when Etan disappeared. Investigators carted out an old coal-fired furnace along with barrels of ash and dirt from the basement floor.

Mr. Ramos was said to have admitted that he was with Etan the day he vanished, but denied abducting and killing him.

Etan’s father, Stanley Patz, did not return a call for comment on Thursday.

Related articles

• Official: Suspicious stain found in basement search for Etan Patz
• Etan Patz: How the Case Was Reopened
• Etan Patz disappearance set off decades of winding investigation

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The Disappearance of Etan Patz

Etan Patz

Future Flight Captain

The morning of May 25, 1979, was hectic at the New York City home of Stanley and Julie Patz. They lived in a converted loft in Manhattan’s Soho district, pioneers in a section of the city that would later become the place-to-be for New York trendsetters. Soho had been Manhattan’s manufacturing zone, characterized by block after block of 19th century, iron-fronted factories standing shoulder to shoulder. On overcast days it was easy to imagine the gloomy sweatshop conditions of old New York, but in the 1970s, a fair number of these buildings were dark and empty, and the streets were desolate and forbidding at night. Still, people were making their homes in the neighborhood, breathing new life into it. Artists were first drawn to the area, attracted to the large, open spaces and cheap rents. Stanley Patz, a photographer, and his wife Julie lived in a loft on Prince Street with their three children: Shira, then age 8; Etan, 6; and Ari, 2.

Julie ran a day-care center out of her home. On the morning of May 25, as was her routine, Julie got her own children ready for the day as she prepared for the 14 preschoolers she cared for. As Julie dished out breakfast for her family, little Etan started agitating to walk himself to the bus stop again. He’d been asking if he could for some time now. A six-week school bus strike had just ended; the buses were scheduled to resume service that day. During the strike, the Patzes had hired a woman to walk Etan to school, but now that the buses were back, Etan pleaded with his parents to let him walk the two blocks to the bus stop by himself. Etan was a good boy, and it was a close-knit neighborhood where the residents watched out for the children, so the Patzes gave in and told him he could walk to the bus stop like a big boy.Etan was elated. He was dressed all in blue that day—blue pants, blue corduroy jacket, and blue sneakers with distinctive fluorescent stripes along the sides. He carried a blue cloth bag with an elephant pattern on the fabric. And as usual he was wearing his black “Future Flight Captain” pilot’s cap, which covered his straight, light-brown hair. He pulled it down low over his brow, shading his blue eyes. He wore his prized cap all the time, even to bed. He’d bought it at an outdoor flea market for 10 cents.

Julie took Etan downstairs to the street and gave him a dollar for a soft drink at the local bodega. It was a misty morning, and the pavement was wet. Julie watched Etan as he started his big journey, two short blocks to the corner of Prince and West Broadway where the bus would pick him up. She kept her eye on him as he proceeded to the first corner at Wooster Street. After he crossed, Julie went back upstairs, confident that Etan could make it the rest of the way by himself. It was just 150 feet to the bus stop.

A woman who lived nearby saw Etan as he stood on the corner of Wooster and Prince, a relatively quiet intersection, as he waited to cross. A mailman also saw him at that intersection. They were the last people known to see Etan Patz.

The Boy on the Milk Carton

The school bus arrived at the West Broadway stop at 8:10 a.m. A group of children got on, but Etan Patz wasn’t with them. Later that morning at the Independence Plaza School on Greenwich Street, Etan’s first-grade teacher noticed his absence but failed to report it to the principal’s office. Julie Patz was unaware that her son was missing until that afternoon. The bus returned to the West Broadway stop at 3:15 p.m. The neighbor who always picked up Etan along with his own daughter was puzzled when Etan didn’t get off the bus. His daughter informed him that Etan hadn’t been in school that day. The man wondered why Julie or Stanley hadn’t called to let him know that Etan was staying home that day.

At the Patzes’ loft, Julie was beginning to worry. Etan should have been home by now. She called the neighbor who usually escorted Etan and learned for the first time that Etan hadn’t been in school that day. Julie immediately called the police, then called her husband who raced home.

NYPD Detective William Butler got the call from his dispatcher at 5:15 p.m., and he and his partner drove directly to the Patzes’ loft. As soon as Detective Butler spoke to Etan’s parents, he knew instinctively that this was not a typical lost-child situation. In most cases it’s just a case of crossed signals, kids thinking they have their parents’ permission to go to a friend’s house when they really don’t. Other kids just wander off and play hooky. But Butler felt this case was different.
The search for Etan Patz began that evening. Nearly 100 officers combed the area, knocking on doors, searching rooftops and basements. The Patzes’ apartment was used as a temporary command post because Etan knew his phone number. Julie and Stanley hovered by the phone, praying for him to call. The police stood by in case a kidnapper called in with a ransom demand.

The night wore on. Just before midnight it started to rain. Julie fretted because Etan had left that morning with only a light jacket. Detective Butler quietly worried that the rain would wash away Etan’s scent. Bloodhounds were being brought in from upstate, but they weren’t scheduled to arrive until 8 a.m. He hoped there’d be something left for the hounds to smell.

The next morning when the bloodhounds finally arrived, they were given a pair of Etan’s pajamas to identify their subject, then they were sent out into the streets with their handlers. In the meantime the search area was expanded to encompass the entire lower end of Manhattan from 14th Street to Battery Park. Police helicopters hovered over the search zone, scanning rooftops. Police boats scoured the waterways.

The police appealed to the public for any tip that could lead to the boy’s whereabouts. Toll-free telephone numbers were set up, and calls started pouring in, some from as far away as California. Neighborhood residents helped in the search, papering the city with color posters of Etan’s face. The media jumped on the story and propagated several erroneous leads regarding Etan Patz sightings in Boston and other places.

On Sunday, May 27, a witness came forward who claimed to have seen a boy who fit Etan’s description talking to a “suspicious-looking man” three blocks from the corner of Prince and Wooster Streets where Julie had last seen her son. Under hypnosis, the witness described the man as white, about 40 years old, with freckles and dyed blond hair. It was a tenuous lead because the witness wasn’t sure if the boy she’d seen was actually Etan Patz, but the police couldn’t discount any possibility.
For days it seemed that Etan’s smiling face was everywhere—on lamp poles, in store windows, in the newspapers, on television. The police continued the search, giving it everything they had. But on June 6, 13 days after he disappeared, the emergency response was terminated. Etan Patz’s disappearance remained an open case, but most of the officers who had taken part in the search were eventually reassigned to other cases. But for Detective Butler, Etan’s case was still very much on the front burner. Nearly every day he would drive down Prince Street at 8 a.m., imagining what might have happened to Etan on the morning of May 25, hoping that something would occur to him that he hadn’t thought of before, that he would see something that would trigger an idea. He visited the scene every morning for years, and Julie Patz took comfort in looking out her window and seeing his car pass by. As long as the case was still active, Etan might still be alive.

But weeks turned into months and months turned into years. Etan became the first missing child to be featured on a milk carton. The search for the skinny, middle-aged, blond man with freckles was ultimately fruitless. It wasn’t until 1982 that detectives in the Bronx picked up a suspect in an unrelated crime and stumbled upon a solid lead. The suspect was a known pedophile.

I Was Ready to Explode

Jose Antonio Ramos

Jose Antonio Ramos was a drifter who sold cheap jewelry and small toys on the street to get by. His graying hair was long and unkempt, and his beard hung down to his chest. He weighed 180 pounds and stood five feet nine inches, his posture was hunched. Despite his off-putting appearance, his voice was unusually soothing and gentle. NYPD officers arrested him in 1982 for allegedly attempting to lure two young boys into the drainage tunnel where he’d been living. In searching the tunnel, the police found several photographs of young boys, most of them with light-colored hair similar to Etan’s. Detectives questioned Ramos about his interest in young boys and asked if he knew anything about Etan Patz. He denied knowing anything about the missing child, but he did say that he knew the woman who had walked Etan to the bus stop every morning during the school bus strike.

The detectives proceeded cautiously. Could it be possible that after all this time, they had stumbled upon the first solid lead in the coldest missing person’s case the city had ever seen? They urged Ramos to explain his relationship with the woman who had worked for the Patz family, but the suspect was cautious himself. He refused to say any more about the woman. He did, however, reveal that in 1979 when Etan had disappeared, he had suffered a nervous breakdown and that he had been hearing a voice in his head. It “would try to force me to get violent,” he said.

“I had to hold it back,” he said during the videotaped interrogation. “I had to do a lot of really forceful holding back, you know. ‘Cause I was... I was ready to explode.”

Ramos said nothing more about Etan Patz.

Detectives tracked down the woman who had been hired to walk Etan to the bus stop during the strike. The woman admitted that she had been seeing Ramos in 1979. At the time Ramos had been renting an apartment on the Lower East Side. She broke down into tears when she revealed that Ramos’ interest in her was just a ploy to get to her young son whom he had molested on several occasions. She never attempted to bring charges against Ramos.

Ramos was clearly a dangerous individual, but the police didn’t have enough evidence to charge him with a crime. They had no choice but to release him.

****

Three years later, in 1985, federal prosecutor Stuart GraBois was assigned to the Patz case. His boss at the time, then U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani, instructed him to do whatever it took to get a conviction, and Giuliani promised to give GraBois whatever he needed to make that happen. GraBois started poring over the old files. When he read the police reports on Ramos, he decided the man deserved further investigation. By this time Ramos was incarcerated at Rockview State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, serving a sentence on an unrelated child molestation conviction. GraBois arranged to have Ramos brought to New York for questioning, and U.S. marshals escorted the suspect to GraBois’ office in lower Manhattan.

Oddly, when Ramos was brought to New York, he thought the authorities there were after him for tax evasion. Two detectives from the NYPD Missing Persons Squad, Robert Shaw and Daniel Cavallo, sat in on the interview. Ramos was read his Miranda rights and offered a lawyer if he wanted one. He declined, saying that he didn’t need a lawyer. He had read up on criminal law while in prison and become a “jailhouse lawyer,” offering legal advice to other inmates at Rockview. Ramos was in good spirits as the interview began. Apparently he was looking forward to matching wits with a real attorney.

GraBois was patient. For an hour and a half, he questioned Ramos about his background, his childhood, and his prison experiences. Ramos remained cool and seemed to enjoy the attention. Then GraBois finally dropped the bomb: “How many times did you have sex with Etan Patz?” he asked.

Ramos’ face sagged. He was visibly rattled. As reported by Edward Klein in Vanity Fair, Ramos started to sob. “I’ll tell you about it,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything. I never told anyone any of this before. I want to get it off my chest.”

Ramos said that he saw a boy who fit Etan Patz’s description in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village “that morning.” The boy was alone, “bouncing a ball.” The park is roughly four city blocks north of the Patzes’ home in Soho.

GraBois asked him what the boy looked like. Blond and blue-eyed, Ramos said. He then described Etan’s distinctive blue sneakers with the “bright strips.” Ramos said he invited the boy to his apartment to watch television.

GraBois asked Ramos why he wanted the boy to go with him.

“For sex,” Ramos said.

Ramos described his attempts to molest the boy, but the boy “wasn’t interested,” so Ramos gave up. He said he then took the boy for a walk through the Village and finally put him on a subway “to visit his aunt in Washington Heights.” The Patzes have no relatives in Washington Heights.

GraBois and the detectives expressed their disbelief, but Ramos clung to his story. He said that the next night he saw television news reports on the search for Etan Patz, and he was “90 percent sure” that this was the boy he had taken to his apartment. Ramos claimed that he left his apartment and tried to help in the search for Etan himself. In his gut, GraBois felt that Ramos had not parted company with Etan Patz at the subway stop as he claimed and that Ramos was responsible for what happened to the boy. If Ramos hadn’t murdered the boy to eliminate a witness to his pedophilia, he might have sold Etan to another child molester or an illegal adoption broker. GraBois pressed Ramos to come clean, but the man wouldn’t say anything more about Etan Patz. He finally said that he wanted to tell GraBois everything, but “maybe I better have a lawyer here.” By law, GraBois had to terminate the interrogation until Ramos was provided legal representation. Later, as the suspect was escorted out of GraBois’ office, Ramos told Detective Shaw that when he finally told them everything, Shaw would get a “promotion” and become “famous.”

Investigators had connected Jose Antonio Ramos, a convicted pedophile, to the Etan Patz case, but it wasn't until 2004, 25 years after Etan vanished, that a New York judge ruled Ramos responsible for Etan's death. Ramos is currently serving time in a Pennsylvania prison for molesting an 8-year-old boy in an unrelated case. He is expected to stay behind bars until 2012, but lawyers for the Patz family intend to fight to keep Ramos behind bars for the rest of his life. (ABC news)


The Light-Haired Teenage Boy

Jose Antonio Ramos never made a full confession. In subsequent interrogations, he flitted around the issue but basically stuck to his original story: he had taken a young boy who might have been Etan Patz to his apartment for sex and released him later that day. The police and prosecutors handling the case were sure he was lying, but they had no proof. Charges could not be brought against him. But Stuart GraBois was not about to let Ramos serve out the remainder of his sentence in Pennsylvania and go free. The Patz family deserved to know what had happened to their son, and GraBois vowed to do everything he possibly could to bring Ramos to justice.

Ramos, a Puerto Rican-American, was born in the Bronx on July 23, 1943. The oldest of five brothers, he claimed to have had sexual relations with one of his brothers when they were children. He also claimed to have been molested by an uncle. After dropping out of high school, he enlisted in the Navy in 1960. At various times he has claimed to have received decorations and commendations in the Navy and has boasted of having held an executive position in a New York advertising firm, accomplishments that cannot be substantiated.

By the early ’70s he had become a drifter, bumming his way around the country, earning money selling used merchandise on the streets. Over the years he had been arrested several times in several different states for a variety of crimes from burglary and battery to “exposing his person.”

When he was arrested in the Bronx in 1982 for allegedly luring young boys into his makeshift drainage-tunnel residence, the police were unable to assemble enough evidence to bring charges, but five months later he was arrested again, this time at a video-game arcade in Times Square, for propositioning three young boys between the ages of 9 and 12. Charges were filed against Ramos but were later dropped when the boys, all of them street-tough delinquents, failed to answer subpoenas for their testimony.

In 1983 Ramos showed up outside Watersmeet, Michigan, where several thousand members of the Rainbow Family, a loose collective of hippie holdovers, New Agers, and assorted free spirits, were having their annual gathering. Ramos was observed handing out Star Wars figurines and trading cards to the children at the convocation’s Kid Village. His behavior alarmed some of the caregivers, and they alerted the Rainbow Family’s internal security force, the Shanti Sena, who asked Ramos to leave. He departed without putting up a fuss.

Two years later he showed up at the Rainbow Family annual gathering at the Mark Twain Forrest in Missouri. He was traveling with a light-haired teenage boy. They’d arrived in a 1978 blue Ford school bus that Ramos had bought at an auction in Coconut Grove, Florida. Once again Ramos was spotted hanging around Kid Village, handing out small toys and trinkets, and the Shanti Sena were immediately alerted. They remembered Ramos from their last encounter with him, and this time they took his picture and kept an eye on him. While at the gathering, Ramos made friends with a couple from Erie, Pennsylvania, and their two little boys.

After the Rainbow Family reunion, Ramos showed up unannounced at this couple’s home on several occasions. Whenever he came, he offered to do work around the house—painting, car repairs, whatever needed doing. The couple eventually trusted Ramos enough to let him baby-sit their boys while they were away for a day or so. They later discovered that Ramos had molested one or both of the children while they were under his care.

Incredibly, the following year Ramos and the teenage boy arrived at the next Rainbow Family gathering at Hearts Content in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest. Once again the Shanti Sena caught him hanging around Kid Village, and this time they followed him back to his blue bus and banged on the door. Ramos was inside with his teenage friend and a little boy he’d met at the gathering. He swore he hadn’t touched the child, but the Shanti Sena didn’t believe him. They photographed both him and the light-haired teenager, and gave Ramos a stern warning to stay away from the children. At least one of the Shanti Sena was convinced that Ramos was scouting out children he could kidnap and sell.

Sensing that they meant business, Ramos abandoned his companions and fled from the gathering with only his dog, an akita named Jesse. But the Shanti Sena finally decided it was time to notify the police about this man. State troopers intercepted Ramos near Route 80 in Shippenville, Pennsylvania. He was arrested and charged with “involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, statutory rape, and indecent assault.” He confessed to sexually assaulting the child in his bus, but because the police failed to read him his Miranda rights, the confession had to be thrown out and the case was dropped.

Ramos went free but not for long. The next year he was convicted of molesting the two young boys in Erie and sentenced to prison at Rockview State Penitentiary in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania.

His blue bus, which had been impounded by the police in Shippenville, was declared abandoned and sold to a salvage dealer who towed it away and cleaned out its contents. Among the items found in the bus was Ramos’ diary. The man who found it flipped through it quickly, decided it was worthless, and tossed it into the fire where he was burning the rest of Ramos’ trash. No one will ever know if Ramos had written anything that could have connected him to the disappearance of Etan Patz.
But what became of the light-haired teenage boy who had been traveling with Ramos? The Shanti Sena had noted in 1986 that he was about 13 or 14, which was about how old Etan Patz would have been. Could this have been him? What happened to him after Ramos had fled the Rainbow Family gathering?

"He's a Predator"

Federal Prosecutor Stuart GraBois had Ramos transported from prison in Pennsylvania to his office in New York for interviews on several occasions. Sometimes Ramos would be a wiseass, once showing up wearing a yarmulke and speaking in a Yiddish accent. Other times he behaved himself, but he always clung to his original story. Yes, he admitted, he had been with a boy who could have been Etan Patz the day Etan disappeared, but he did not harm the boy. Ramos insisted time and again that he had put the boy on a subway headed for his “aunt in Washington Heights.” But when GraBois found out about the charges that were dropped in Warren County, Pennsylvania, on a technicality, he took a new tack. At one of the interviews, he made Ramos a solemn promise. If Ramos didn’t start cooperating, GraBois would get himself deputized in the state of Pennsylvania and try that case himself. He wasn’t bluffing. If he couldn’t persuade Ramos to confess to what he had done with Etan Patz, GraBois would make sure that Ramos would stay imprisoned for as long as the law allowed. Ramos was taken back to Rockview, and GraBois set the wheels in motion for his legal debut in Pennsylvania.

While investigating the Warren County case, GraBois received a surprise assist from the members of the Shanti Sena who had been alerted to Ramos’ suspicious behavior at Rainbow Family gatherings. Overcoming their counter-culture distrust of law enforcement, the Shanti Sena gave GraBois the Polaroid they had taken of the teenager who had been traveling with Ramos. As soon as he saw it, GraBois was afraid to even think that after all these years this could possibly be Etan Patz. The photo was sent to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., where it was compared with photos of Etan’s parents when they were in their early teens as well as photos of Etan’s siblings. Existing photos of 6-year-old Etan were fed into a computer that aged the image and predicted what Etan would look like at age 14. The photo the computer produced was nearly identical to the Polaroid of the teenager who had been traveling with Ramos.

Still, GraBois was reluctant to jump to conclusions. He had learned from the Shanti Sena that the teenager’s parents ran an orphanage in Columbus, Ohio. GraBois and his investigators flew to Ohio and searched for this teenager. They learned that the boy had been adopted, which would have been a logical cover story if Ramos had sold Etan to the owners of the orphanage. GraBois wanted to believe that this was indeed Etan Patz, but he knew that he needed proof, and he was determined to get it. Before attempting an approach, GraBois wanted as much information as he could find. Further investigation revealed that the teenager had been arrested, which meant his fingerprints had to be on file in Ohio. Thrumming with anticipation, the investigators had the fingerprints analyzed and compared to Etan’s fingerprints. When the results came back, the news was disappointing. The fingerprints didn’t match. Police finally approached the teenager and obtained samples for DNA analysis. Once again, no match. The teenager wasn’t Etan Patz.

Nevertheless, GraBois pressed on with the Warren County case against Ramos. His investigators located the little boy who had been in the bus with Ramos at Hearts Content and discovered that he had indeed been molested by Ramos. GraBois figured that, even if he couldn’t solve the Etan Patz case, another conviction would keep Ramos off the streets that much longer, sparing more children from the man’s abuse.

The trial began in October 1990. Ramos, now clean shaven and with short hair, spoke to reporters as if he were insane, inviting them to a “shrimp dinner” at the jail that night. Ramos, the jailhouse lawyer, had already filed numerous motions with the court, and in a letter to the judge he admitted his crime and asked that the child he had molested not be put through the anguish of having to relive the incident in court. The request was unnecessary. His attorney had already worked out a plea bargain with prosecutors in which Ramos would plead guilty to oral intercourse if the charges of anal intercourse were dropped. GraBois agreed to the deal because he, like Ramos, did not want to put the boy through the turmoil of testimony in open court. The judge sentenced Ramos to 10 to 20 years on top of his existing sentence. It was the strictest sentence the law would allow.

Some felt that GraBois had missed a golden opportunity to get Ramos on the stand and grill him about Etan Patz, but GraBois didn’t think that Ramos could be intimidated. GraBois’ strategy was to pile so many years on top of Ramos that he might finally see the logic of coming clean. GraBois was willing to have him transferred to a more desirable federal penitentiary in exchange for the truth about Etan Patz. GraBois even sweetened the deal by offering to reunite Ramos with family members he hadn’t seen in more than 18 years. But Ramos didn’t budge from his original story, and so he was sent back to Rockview to serve hard time.

****

Ramos was subsequently transferred to the Smithfield Correctional Institution in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. Two inmates who had served time with Ramos over the years each swore that Ramos had separately told them details about Etan Patz, but when confronted with these statements, Ramos insisted that he knew nothing more than he’d already admitted.

In October 1985 the focus of the investigation shifted to Israel where a previously unpublished photo of Etan appeared in an Israeli magazine with the caption “Etan Ben-Haim.” The photo had been taken by Stanley Patz, who had given prints to friends and relatives. It was not one of the photos that had been released to the press, which made the investigators suspicious. Stuart GraBois traveled to Israel and enlisted the help of the Israeli police, but attempts to track down the source of that photograph yielded nothing of substance. The focus of the investigation remained on Jose Antonio Ramos.

In the summer of 2000, police in New York did a thorough search of the building on East 4th Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side where Ramos had lived in 1979. They scoured the apartment and the basement, looking for bone fragments that could be used for DNA analysis. Their efforts were exhaustive but ultimately fruitless.

“He’s a predator,” Stanley Patz said of Ramos in an interview broadcast on 60 Minutes II, “and he should never be allowed to be near children again. He should be kept behind bars until he’s too old to walk.”

Every year on October 9, which is Etan’s birthday, and May 25, the day he disappeared, Stanley Patz sends Ramos a copy of Etan’s missing-persons leaflet. On the back he always types the same message: “What have you done with my little boy?”

On November 15, 2000, Stanley and Julie Patz signed a petition asking the court to declare Etan legally dead so that they could file a wrongful-death suit against Ramos. They are convinced that Ramos is responsible for the disappearance of their son.

Ramos’ sentence will be up on March 13, 2014, unless he is granted parole. He was denied parole in June 2000, but he will become eligible for reconsideration in 2003.

Etan Patz, if he’s still alive, will be 36 years old this year.

Bibliography

Battelle, Phyllis. “Help Find Etan Patz.” Good Housekeeping Feb. 1980: 66-74.

CBSNews.com. “Etan’s Parents to Sue Child Molester.” Sept. 5, 2000.

De La Cruz, Donna. “Missing Boy Whose Case Sparked a Movement to Be Declared Dead.” Crimnews. June 2001.

“Final Reckoning.” People 4 Dec. 2000: 212.

Klein, Eric. “The Long Search for Etan Patz.” Vanity Fair June 1991: 136-158.

Mabrey, Vicky (correspondent). “60 Minutes II: What Happened to Etan Patz?” Sept. 5, 2000.

Meek, Miki. “An Icon of Tragedy.” U.S. News and World Report, 13 Aug. 2001: 18.

“MP-8M.” New York Missing Persons.

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Everybody would like to know who killed little JonBenet Ramsey

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Image via Wikipedia

Fifteen years have passed since JonBenet Ramsey was killed in her Boulder, Colo. home over the Christmas holiday and the brutal murder of the child beauty queen still remains unsolved to this day. Had JonBenet lived, she would be turning 21 years old this Saturday, August 6.

On Dec. 26, 1996, 6-year-old JonBenet was found bludgeoned and strangled to death in the basement of her family home. A ransom note from an anonymous group of individuals "that represent a foreign faction" asking for $118,000 in exchange for the safe return of JonBenet was found just hours before, but no call ever came from a kidnapper and it was never linked to a murderer. See the full text of the ransom note originally published by Vanity Fair magazine here.

John and Patsy Ramsey, JonBenet's parents were prime suspects for years and repeatedly appeared on news channels defending their innocence and demanding justice for the murder of their young daughter. The entire Ramsey family was cleared of any involvement in the murder of JonBenet back in 2008, thanks to then newly discovered DNA evidence, according to 9News. Patsy Ramsey, JonBenet's mother, died 2 years earlier in 2006 of ovarian cancer, tragically, she was still considered a possible suspect when she died.

Beginning in 2010, investigators reopened the case and launched a fresh round of interviews with witnesses that could provide more insight into the murder, according to ABC News, but nothing fruitful came of those interviews.

The DNA evidence still points to an "unexplained third party" that serves as a vague lead for authorities still pursuing the case, TIME magazine reported.

According to 7News, Boulder police have tested more than 150 DNA samples and investigated nearly the same amount of potential suspects in their ongoing investigation, but none have ever been linked to the crime.

After all these years, Boulder police have received thousands of tips about her murder and still receive several monthly. Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett said in 2010 that he personally gets five or more tips each month, according to Fox31. The ones that have potential are passed along to Boulder police's Major Case Unit. There have been plenty of false leads as well, including most famously Mark Karr -- who bizarrely admitted to being with JonBenet the night of her death, but DNA evidence later cleared him of any wrongdoing in this case, MSNBC reported. Craig Silverman, talk radio legal analyst on 630 KHOW that has covered the unsolved murder since it first broke, spoke to Fox31 about the public's interest in the case:

Silverman went on to say on his Huffington Post blog, "This JonBenet murder mystery has never been lacking for clues. There are too many clues. It is putting all the puzzle pieces together that matters."

It remains one of the most notorious murders in U.S. history and a decade and a half later there is still no justice for JonBenet.

For a full timeline of the events of the unsolved murder case during its peak years in the 1990s check out the Daily Camera's chronological summary of the major events form Dec. 1996 to 1999.

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Alice Mae Van Alstine - Unsolved Cold Case

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Alice Mae Van Alstine

DOB: May 23, 1947

Age at Report: 28

4375 N.E. 29th St.

Des Moines, IA

Polk County

Height: 5’ 7”

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Blue

Missing Since: March 26, 1976

The postcard’s backside message, however, alluded to an anything-but-Merry Christmas and also foretold a tragic irony. It was here the 28-year-old Des Moines woman had penned to a close family member:

Hi there – We’ll see you Fri eve – around dark. My husband isn’t coming – he is a ‘missing person’. Will explain later. Love, Alice

Three months later on a cold Friday night, March 26, 1976, it was Alice — a former “Minutemen” sympathizer who’d recently abandoned the right-wing paramilitary organization — who tucked her children into bed at their 29th Street apartment and then vanished into thin air, never to be seen nor heard from again. Her purse and money were found in the apartment, and, despite the near-freezing 37º outside temperature, she’d also disappeared without her coat or shoes. Neighbors reported her as missing on Sunday.

Investigators found Alice’s car door open, the keys in the ignition. Her 6-year-old son told officers that when he got up Saturday morning, “Mommy wasn’t there.”

Detective Paul Womak said the disappearance is mysterious because, based on interviews with Van Alstine’s friends and relatives, she “was very close to her family — the good mother — who for all practical purposes just disappeared.”

To Alice’s close family members and friends, her mysterious disappearance was anything but a mystery; almost all believed she’d been kidnapped and assassinated by Minutemen or Minutemen sympathizers because she wanted to leave the organization but knew too much about their activities in Iowa and was considered a “traitor.”

Founded by Robert DePugh of Missouri in 1959, Minutemen believed a Communist takeover was eminent, and were known for stockpiling weapons, ammunition and explosives, and plotting and carrying out right-wing paramilitary activities.

Alice, indeed, had known and witnessed plenty while married to her first husband, Lee Andre, and already had begun cooperating with officials.

On July 21, 1977, Des Moines Tribune writers Greg Stricharchuk and Gene Erb published a page one, full-scale exposé on Minutemen activities in Iowa that chronicled several Minuteman-related incidents in the Des Moines area. According to the article, Alice stated in a sworn deposition that while married to Andre, suitcases belonging to Minutemen were left at her home, that one suitcase contained a Bible with secret coded messages, that the suitcases were burned when Minutemen were sought by authorities, and that stolen weapons and explosives were stored in her barn. In that same deposition, Alice acknowledged that explosives had been used to bomb a Des Moines home and that she’d been visited by FBI agents.

So convinced of the Minutemen’s involvement in his daughter’s disappearance and murder, Alice’s father, World War II veteran Howard Barnes, took to sleeping each night on a sofa for more than a year with a loaded .30-caliber carbine at his side. The July 1977 Des Moines Tribune article quotes Barnes as saying that before Alice vanished she’d told him, “Dad, they [the Minutemen] are going to kill me.”

At the time she’d confided in him, Barnes said he couldn’t picture Minutemen “that vicious a bunch,” but fully believed it after his daughter went missing and after driving more than 15,000 miles talking to people about Alice and her connections to the Minutemen. Based on his discoveries, Barnes began to fear he, too, may be killed or his hand-built home in Lovilia bombed.

Iowa Minuteman today no longer work strictly underground and even go so far as to publicly announce local leaders’ names on their website. The organization’s right-wing agenda hasn’t changed, but one key supporter has enabled them to bring the group’s fanatical rhetoric into the mainstream; Iowa congressman Steve King not only shares their extremist ideology, but helps raise funds to support their agenda.

Today’s Iowa Minuteman: Augmenting Iowa Congressman Steve King’s Mission

Iowa Congressman Steve King‘s mutually rewarding relationship with the Minuteman is clearly no secret in Iowa, nor any other state. A simple Google search string using the words iowa congressman steve king minuteman turns up close to 2.5 million results on any given day.

The Iowa Minuteman Civil Defense Corps website states its Primary Objective is to “Secure the borders of the United States.”

On congressman King’s website, “Border Security” tops his list under his Immigration Issue Statement.

The Iowa Minuteman’s Volunteer Registration Application(under the “Join Us” link on their website or available in PDF format here) not only asks for a potential member’s concealed weapon license number, but asks if the enrollee can “serve on the border” and, if so, his or her “preferred state.”

President Bush referred to the group as “vigilantes.” (Radio Iowa, May 30, 2006)

The terms “illegal immigrants” and “border security” populate the Iowa Minuteman’s website pages; both terms also permeate a vast number of pages and press releases available on the Iowa congressman’s official website.

Though Minutemen focus on concealed weapons permits while King opts for an electric fence like used on cattle, the differing options haven’t deterred either party’s support for one another; King has received some $7,500 from anti-immigrant PACs.

The Iowa Minuteman’s latest announcements page hails King for having filed the “English Only” lawsuit regarding Iowa’s English Only law, and also touts the Postville, Iowa, raid on illegal immigrants.

Alice Mae Van Alstine was not a Communist nor an illegal immigrant, but a devoted mother of four who witnessed firsthand the Minutemen’s illegal — and deadly — activities in Iowa and tried to break free from the organization.

If you have any information about any of these cases please contact the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation’s Cold Case Unit at (515) 725-6010, or send e-mail to: coldcaseunit@dps.state.ia.us.

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50-year-old murder mystery still resonates

Monday, February 20, 2012

Girls’ deaths remain under investigation

Patty Pritz, 14, and Mattie Restine, 13 (1961) Two girls
in their early teens disappear from a popular hang-out
spot, only to be found two days later dumped outside
town, executed. The killer has never been found.

CARLSBAD, NM (KRQE) - Despite the passage of more than a half-century, it’s a crime that still haunts this small, southeast New Mexico town.

Two girls in their early teens disappear from a popular hang-out spot, only to be found two days later dumped outside town, executed. The killer has never been found.

“They weren’t prostitutes,” said Anne Restine Self, the sister of one of the victims. “They weren’t drug dealers. They were little girls.”

And while the case has been re-opened over the years and remains under investigation by the Eddy County Sheriff’s Office, authorities are no closer to solving the murders today than they were 50 years ago.

Asked what it would take to bring the killer or killers to justice, Eddy County Sheriff Ernest Mendoza said, “Actually somebody to come forth and confess.”

The girls’ story begins on Aug. 11, 1961.

On that hot Friday evening, Patty Pritz, 14, and Mattie Restine, 13, followed the crowd to The Beach, a local amusement park where Carlsbad kids hung out.

Anne Self remembered the last time she saw her younger sister, Mattie.

“Well, we had a fight,” Self said. “She wanted to wear my shoes and since I wasn’t going to get to go, I told her, ‘No.’ And she went and asked my mom if she could wear my shoes and mom said, ‘Yeah.’ And I was mad.”

Janis Isaacs, a friend of Patty’s, told News 13 she was at The Beach that night and saw the two girls.

“They had on sailor outfits that were sort of matching,” she said. “And I think we were at one of the carousels or something and … I just waved and (Patty) waved back and smiled. That was the last time I ever saw her.”

Witnesses saw Patty and Mattie leave The Beach about 8:40 p.m. No one except their killer ever saw them alive again.

An eyewitness later told police he saw two girls strolling down the sidewalk on Mesquite Street in town when a man in his mid-20s driving a 1955 or ’56 light-colored Chevrolet sedan stopped in front of them. The witness said the man got out of the car and began talking with the girls. A brief scuffle followed, perhaps even a shriek. The man hustled the girls into his car and sped off.

“My mother was just frantic,” Self said. “I mean, she was just out of her head. She kept saying, ‘Something’s wrong. Someone’s hurting my baby. Something’s not right.’ ”

Two days later, rabbit hunters confirmed Mattie’s mother’s intuition. Shortly after 1 p.m., the hunters discovered the two girls’ bodies dumped in the scrub brush 13 miles outside of town in a rugged area known as the Rocky Arroyo. Both had been shot execution-style in the head at close range.

“The world is full of people that are absolute evil,” said Bonnie Sexton, a friend of Patty’s.

The crime scene was horrific. One of the girls had been raped, her clothing tossed into the mesquite. The other girl was still wearing her sailor outfit.

“It’s something you don’t forget when two children are assassinated like that for no reason at all,” said Ray Anaya, who drove the ambulance to the crime scene that day. “I’ll never forget.”

The evening the girls’ bodies were found, Mattie’s father, Pete Restine, told his children the news.

“And he said, ‘Mattie’s not coming home,’ ” Self said. “ ‘Something bad happened. She’s in heaven now.’ ”

The murders made headlines as officers fanned out across New Mexico in search of the killer. They interviewed some 150 people – friends, neighbors and known criminals – but precious few clues surfaced.

As time went by, the case grew colder. Eventually, the case files were boxed up and sent to storage until an enterprising Eddy County sheriff’s investigator revived the case 43 years later.

That detective had Mattie’s body exhumed and even called in a psychic, but the trail remained stone cold.

Today, the case is assigned to Eddy County sheriff’s investigator Richard Sillas, who told News 13 the case will continue to be investigated if new leads come to light.

“It’s not put on the back burner,” Sillas said. “The case will always be worked.”

Still, asked if any leads remain to be investigated, he said. “At this time, after 50 years, no.”

But Mattie’s sister cannot let it go. She’s compiled boxes of documentation and is convinced the murderer’s identity remains buried somewhere in her files or the official case file. And Self constantly presses the Eddy County Sheriff’s Office to work the case.

“There’s been several times I thought about killing myself because I couldn’t handle it,” Self said. “I feel like I need to find out what happened to her and why. Because she was a sweet little girl. Why did it happen?”

However, she knows that solving the case is a long-shot.

“I’ll probably go to my grave working on it,” Self said. “My mom, dad and my brother went to their graves not knowing, and I probably will too.”

Patty is buried in the Carlsbad city cemetery. Her mother died years ago and her stepfather, who still lives in Carlsbad, doesn’t talk publicly about her.

Mattie is buried in a small, rural cemetery in Bokoshe, Oklahoma. Her sister lives nearby and visits her grave often to remember and reflect.

“I guess the thing that hurts me so bad is the fact that I think about the night that she died and how scared she was, had to be,” Self said. “She had to know … And I couldn’t help her.”

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The Murder of the Grimes Sisters

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Chicago's Notorious Unsolved Murders

The mid-50s were a time when the city of Chicago lost whatever innocence it might still have had by that time. Although the city was notorious for its violence going back to its very early days as a fort. It was the home of notorious gangster such as Al Capone. However, in the 1950s, it was still a time when parents did not think twice about letting their young children head downtown via public transportation to see a movie. That began to change in the mid-50s.

First, in 1955, the city was rocked by the brutal deaths of three young boys. Known as the Schuessler-Peterson murders, it was a crime that stunned and shocked the city. Three young boys had spent the day downtown seeing a Disney movie and never returned. Days later their nude and brutally beaten bodies were found dumped near a forest preserve. It would take decades for that crime to be solved.

Less than a year later, in 1956, another murder would stun the city yet again. Whatever remnants of innocence the city might still have had disappeared when two girl, two sisters, were found naked and dead beside the road. The similarities between the two cases would cause many to wonder if they were connected. Was someone out to kill the youth of Chicago? It would take time to tell and when it was told, the answer would bring relief to some and leave nothing but frustration for others.

It was December 28 in 1956 when Barbara and Patricia Grimes decided they would head off to a local theater to see a movie. The two girls were huge fans of Elvis Presley and his latest movie Love Me Tender was out and showing at the Brighton Theater. Barbara was thirteen years old and Patricia was fifteen. Both were of the age that their parents felt no compunction about letting them travel into the city to see the movie.

The the Brighton Theater was not very far from their home. Of course, their parents must have reasoned, what could happen. It wasn't the same thing as the Schuessler-Peterson boys who had traveled so far from home just the year before. That kind of distance could only lead to trouble. The Grimes sisters would almost be in their own backyard. So, with a whole $2.15 between them the two sisters set off to see the movie.

It was a late evening showing that they planned on attending. Exactly how they got to the theater is unknown to this day. Neither of their parents gave them a ride. Employees at the theater concession stand reported, later, that they saw the two in line to buy popcorn at 9:30 p.m. That was right as the movie was starting and the movie was over with by 11. Since the theater was so close to their home, it was expected that they would be home by 11:45 p.m. or midnight at the latest and if the girls took their time.

In addition to employees at the movie theater, several of the girl's friends were also there. They too would report seeing the two girls in line to buy popcorn. They reported that the girls waved and were laughing and appeared to be having a good time. Noting unusual was spotted and no one unusual was seen around the sisters or talking to them.

Once the movie was over, more witnesses would claim to have seen the two girls. Numerous witnesses would later tell police that they saw the two girls getting on the Archer bus heading toward the city. The witnesses on the bus would also claim that the two girls got off the bus at Western Avenue which was actually about halfway to their own home and the usual bus stop. Exactly why the sisters would get off at this location is unclear.

Their parents stayed awake, awaiting their return. 11:45 came and went. Then the clock in their house struck midnight. The sister's mother sent their two other siblings, Theresa and Joey, to go to the bus stop and wait for the two girls. After three buses came and went and Patricia and Barbara were not on it, the two came home and reported that their sisters were still nowhere to be found. Their worry began to grow, but maybe they had run into friends and had decided to hang out at the theater a bit longer. When one o'clock came and went, the panic began to set in. Their mother waited until 2:15 in the morning to finally call police and report her daughters as missing.

Despite their parents not finding or seeing the two girls, there were others who claimed to have seen them. One of their classmates would later tell police that he had seen the girls at a restaurant called Angelo's Restaurant on December 29. This, he would claim, was more that 24 hours after they had been reported as missing to the police. At the same time a railroad conductor would tell police that he had seen them on his train while it was near the Great Lakes Naval Training Center which was in a northern suburb called Glenview. This was a very long way from where the two lived and no one could be sure why they were up there.

What was launched now was the largest manhunt in the history of Chicago at that time. It was theorized that the girls had runaway. Despite objections by their mother, who refused to believe that they would do so, the police were convinced that this was what it was. So, they were not panicked or too worried. They sent out descriptions as far as they could and hoped that they would turn up. In fact, their disappearance spread across the country. Even Elvis Presley, upon hearing what huge fans of his the sisters were, released a statement urging the two girls to head back home or contact their parents.

There would be strange reports from witnesses that would plague police for years afterwards. For example a security guard would claim to have seen the girls when they stopped and asked him for directions on December 29. He claimed that this happened in the early morning.

On December 30 the owner of a restaurant called the D & L Restaurant would claim to see the sisters. He stated to police that it appeared as if Patricia were either drunk or sick and was in the company of a strange man.

On January 1, as the new year dawned, the sisters were reported to be seen on a bus traveling on Damen Avenue. Where the sisters were going or where they got off was not reported.

The week following that supposed sighting a hotel owner would deny two girls a room. When the news of the Grimes sister's disappearance hit the news that hotel owner would claim he was certain the two girls were the missing sisters. He claimed he denied them the room because of their age.

On January 3, 1957, at least three employees of a record store would claim they saw the sisters enter the store. They claimed that the two girls, that they swore matched the descriptions of the Grimes sisters, spent time listening to Elvis Presley records before leaving.

Things were going to get stranger, however, before anything would be found. A bunch of random letters were suddenly received by the Grimes sister's parents. The letters claimed to have the two girls and that he would release them into the custody of their parents if Mrs. Grimes would come to Milwaukee on January 12. She went where instructed, accompanied by the FBI , and sat in a Catholic church with a bundle of money totaling $1,000 sitting next to her. The letter had promised that Barbara would enter the church and retrieve the money and then bring it to the kidnapper. Of course, no one showed, and the letters were eventually traced back to a mental patient.

Even stranger events were in store. In one of the oddest developments, on January 14, the phone rang at the home of Wallace and Ann Tollstan. Their daughter, Sandra, was in the same class as Patricia Grimes, and a friend. It was near midnight when the phone rang, which is always a suspicious time when the phone rings. The ringing phone startled awake Mr. Tollstan. He fumbled for the phone and picked up the receiver and asked who it was. No one on the other end responded and silence greeted him for several seconds before the caller hung up. Puzzled, still half-asleep and a bit frightened, Mr. Tollstan hung up the phone. The phone rang again and this time Ann Tollstand answered the phone. Once again, for several seconds, there was silence as she spoke over and over into the phone. Then, suddenly, a female and very hushed voice asked, "Is that you, Sandra? Is Sandra there?" As Mrs. Tollstan ran to get her daughter, the caller hung up and Mrs. Tollstan stood in her house convinced that the voice on the other end of the phone was Patricia Grimes.

Then, on January 15 a woman operating a police switchboard picked up a call from a man who would not give his name or anything to indicate his identity. He stated that the bodies of the two Grimes sisters were located in a park near the intersection of 81st and Wolf. To make things even stranger, he told the operator that this had come to him in a dream. He then hung up the phone and when the police attempted to trace it they traced it back to Green's Liquor Market which was located on South Halsted. When the police began questioning witnesses they traced the call to a Water Kranz. He was taken into custody and questioned by police when, several days later, the bodies of the two girls was found in a park less than a mile from where he said he had envisioned them being found.

The revelation that the girls were dead came about on January 22, 1957. A construction worker named Leonard Prescott was headed south on a road called German Church. As he was driving past he saw something out of the corner of his eye that he thought were two store mannequins that had been tossed beside the road. They were lying just beside the road, near the guardrail. Not far from where he thought the mannequins were lying was a sharp drop-off that lead into Devil's Creek. Prescott was shaken and curious.

He drove home and told his wife that he thought he had seen what he was hoping were store mannequins beside the road. Both of them were curious and they got back into his car and drove back to the spot. She confirmed that it looked like there was something there and they continued past the spot and drove to a local police station. Prescott's wife was so upset over what she thought she had seen that she fainted and had to be carried back to her car. The police swarmed the place.

What the found were two nude bodies lying not far from the road. Both of the bodies were female. Barbara was laying on her left side with her legs drawn toward her body as if to keep warm. Her head, however, was covered by the body of her sister. Patricia had been tossed on top of Barbara and she lay there with her head back at an odd angle.

The Cook County Sheriff's Police took charge of the investigation. When the police and the detectives arrived at the scene the first investigators were certain that the bodies had been there for some time. Their initial guess was that they had been there possibly as far back as January 9. That date was the last time the city had received any significant snowfall and the bodies were not covered with snow, but the cold had obviously preserved the bodies and many thought they had been preserved in the exact state in which they had met death.

From this point forward, things would continue to get stranger. A dispute would develop between the Medical Examiner's office and the police. The bodies were taken to the morgue where an autopsy was performed. Of course, when the bodies first arrived they were literally frozen solid. So, the bodies had to be stored in the morgue until the bodies thawed and the autopsy performed.

When the police first took control of the investigation the similarities between the Grimes sisters and the murders of three young boys several years before, known as the Schuessler-Peterson murders, were obvious. Both had involved the disappearance and brutal murders of young victims. In both cases the bodies, nude, were dumped beside the road. However, the investigation into the death of the three boys had been botched by arguing law enforcement divisions and other problems. The police vowed it would not happen again during the investigation into the Grimes sisters.

However, things went wrong almost from the beginning. When word got out about the sisters being found 162 police officers showed up at the site. They walked all over the area where the bodies had been found. The trampled potential evidence. When the word spread further, reporters and photographers arrived there were even more people walking all over potential evidence.

It was hoped that the autopsy would reveal key evidence about how the sisters died and answer questions about how long after they were kidnapped that they were killed. However, it turned out the medical examiner only made things more confusing. Three noted and respected pathologists examined the bodies and none of them could agree on a time of death. They also could not agree on a cause of death. The various investigators had noted bruises and what appeared to be puncture marks on Barbara's body, which looked like it had been caused by an icepick. None of these were explained when the final conclusions were made public.

It was ultimately decided by the medical examiner's office that the two girls died the day they disappeared on December 28. Additionally, they determined that the girls had died from exposure to the cold rather than any trauma or the puncture wounds. However, this could not explain the sightings of the girls that so many witnesses had reported after that date. Also, it was not an explanation for why no one else had seen the bodies if they had been lying beside the road for that long. Also, they were not covered with snow.

The medical examiner admitted that they only reached the conclusion by eliminating every other potential examination. Now investigators were more confused than they were before the bodies had been found. So, they turned to the public and offered a reward for any information that might help them put the pieces together.

The girls were buried on January 28. The city was in shock and they began pouring out help for the Grimes family. The family was completely broke and money was raised to help them. Communities began raising their own rewards for people who came forward with clues. Descriptions of what the girls had been wearing the day they vanished were released to the press and the community in hopes more witnesses might come forward having seen them.

The police ended up questioning an amazing 300,000 people in hopes of finding information about the girl's killer. Of those, 2,000 people were seriously interrogated as people of interest. However, their killer was not charged and despite the reams and reams of paperwork there was not a single suspect charged with their deaths. There were some key suspects, though.

One of the first suspects was a 20-year-old Tennessee man who looked, in some ways, just like the girl's idol, Elvis Presley. His name was Edward "Benny" Bedwell and he sometimes watched dishes at the D & L Restaurant. According to witnesses he was seen with the girls at that restaurant on December 30. After a harsh interrogation, which was the norm in the day, Bedwell had confessed to the crimes. However, he eventually withdrew the confession after he said the investigators had coerced him. It turned out only the Cook County Sheriff actually believed that Bedwell was the murderer. The rest of the investigative team never believed he was involved.

Another suspect was a 17-year-old man named Max Fleig. He took a polygraph test voluntarily and, unfortunately for him, he failed it miserably. According to investigators he confessed to kidnapping the two sisters, but refused to admit any hand in their deaths. Despite this, the law forbid investigators from giving a polygraph to a minor. As such, his confession and any other evidence was ultimately thrown out. There was just no hard evidence that he had kidnapped the girls or killed them and he was let go. However, just a few years later Fleig would end up going to prison for the murder of a young woman.

Walter Kranz, the man who had called in the switchboard and stated a dream told him where the bodies were found, was also considered a prime suspect. He was questioned longer and harder than anyone since the bodies were found so close to where he said he had dreamed they would be. However, he did not confess and no evidence was ever found linking him to the girls in any way and he was released.

Beyond that, and despite one of the largest investigations that had ever been seen in Chicago, there was never anyone charged or sent to prison for the murder of the two teenage girls. To this day, the murders remain unsolved. However, there have been theories put forward about what might have happened and some have indicated that there might be more to the tale than has ever come out. For example, a book by a man named Richard Lindberg put forth the theory that the two girls were abducted into a white slavery ring. When they refused to become prostitutes, he theorizes, they were strangled and left beside the road.

Others have said that the girls would never have gotten involved with people who would run a white slavery ring. In fact, there is controversy over whether the girls were as nice as many who knew them said they were, or if they had dark secrets hidden behind their innocent smiles. Since no one has ever been caught and the evidence has vanished, there are only theories.

Of course, the area where their bodies were found has become famous for being "haunted." Some claim that they see phantom cars or hear the sound of a car screeching to a halt at that spot, a car door opening, and then a car screeching away into the night. Houses that are around that area have been abandoned and torn down.

Whether or not there are ghosts is up to dispute. What is known, however, is that this murder has never been solved. Two young girls were abducted and brutally murdered and then dumped beside the road like garbage. The crime remains open and the city still bears a scar from a time when whatever innocence it still had was torn away with the disappearance of two young girls.

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