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For Decades after 6-year-old Etan Patz Disappeared while walking home ALONE from School, NYPD & the Feds were fixated on a BLACK Handy Man named Othniel Miller.
In fact Mr. Miller's life was made a Living Hell by NYPD, Etan's Family & the Feds even though they had NOT one shred of Evidence against this Man.
Why?
Just Because He was BLACK!
And while the Feds, NYPD & Etan's Parents were fixated on Othniel Miller, the REAL Killer Pedro Hernandez, remained FREE for 33 Years!
This is another logical reason why NYPD needs to STOP Racially Profiling BLACK Men!
Now that the case of Etan Patz a WHITE, Jewish Child, has been Solved Will Feds & NYPD use the SAME resources & time to help solve the cases of New York City's BLACK Missing Children?
Search for Boy’s Body Returns to Cellar That Looked Uneven Decades Earlier
Investigators looking into the disappearance of Etan Patz began focusing recently on a handyman after a review of old case files showed that a concrete floor in a building in SoHo where he once had a workshop — and that was on the route Etan took when he disappeared — had looked uneven or was not all the same color, a person briefed on the case said on Friday.
The explanation the handyman, Othniel Miller, gave shortly after Etan disappeared 33 years ago — that work had been done beneath the floor — led investigators to conduct a new round of interviews in recent weeks that led to the search and excavation of Mr. Miller’s old work space this week, the person said.
Mr. Miller was not initially a suspect, the person said, in part because he told investigators that he had not been in SoHo the morning of May 25, 1979, when Etan vanished while walking from his home to a school bus stop.
“He said he wasn’t there; he had some sort of alibi, and it sort of checked out,” said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing. That alibi was supported in part by a coworker, the person said.
On Friday, Mr. Miller, 75, hired a criminal defense lawyer who, after meeting with Mr. Miller and his relatives for more than an hour, said that his client had had nothing to do with Etan’s disappearance.
The lawyer, Michael C. Farkas, said his client did not deserve the scrutiny brought on by his long-ago connection to the basement of the building that investigators began searching on Thursday.
“He had no involvement with what happened to this beautiful young boy,” Mr. Farkas said. “Mr. Miller has cooperated with this investigation for over 30 years, and he will continue to cooperate to the best of his ability.”
Mr. Farkas, who said he had not yet spoken with investigators, added: “We do not know at this time why he is now a suspect as opposed to sometime in the past.”
After Etan disappeared, investigators focused on a pedophile, Jose A. Ramos, who has been the prime suspect since then, although he has never been charged. He is currently imprisoned for another crime.
At the site of Mr. Miller’s old workshop, a phalanx of investigators, utility workers and others continued a painstaking excavation of the 806-square-foot basement below 127B Prince Street, at the corner of Wooster Street, just half a block west of the loft where Etan lived 33 years ago, and where his parents, Stan and Julie, still reside.
Using jackhammers and pickaxes, they split the 13-by-62-foot space into quadrants and began their work along the northern wall, breaking up separate sections of poured concrete flooring, between two and six inches thick, spread over a relatively flat area of dirt, officials said. Outfitted in ear muffs, dust masks, safety glasses and gloves, agents from a Federal Bureau of Investigation evidence response team and New York City police officers formed a bucket brigade, handing larger chunks of concrete along an assembly line leading out of the basement, upstairs and into a large garbage bin on the street.
Smaller chunks of broken concrete and debris were put in pails and passed along in the same way, officials said.
The investigators also planned to dig down four or five feet into the earth, or until it appeared undisturbed; shine sophisticated X-ray machines onto the cinder-block walls of the basement; and spray the area with a chemical that could expose bloodstains or other aberrations.
Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, reopened the case in 2010, and the SoHo excavation represents the most extensive effort since then to find clues. But Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly warned against expecting a quick solution.
“I think what it indicates is that a lot of careful work is going to be done,” Mr. Kelly said after an event at 1 Police Plaza on Friday. “Precise, detailed, deliberative work is going to be done, as opposed to characterizing it as being something that should lead to optimism.”
Stephen Kuzma, 78, the manager of the building on Prince Street, said he had lived on the fourth floor since the 1970s and recalled Mr. Miller pouring cement for a new bathroom on his floor as well as doing work in the basement. But he did not remember when that work was done.
“He was a nice fellow,” Mr. Kuzma said of Mr. Miller, who now lives in Brooklyn, adding that he could not recall seeing Mr. Miller with any children and that he had never seen Etan.
Mr. Kuzma said that he was in the basement recently when an F.B.I. agent took a cadaver-sniffing dog there, and that he was told to restrict access to the space. The dog, which was in the basement about three weeks ago, indicated the possibility of remains.
Before that, Mr. Kelly said, special odor-absorbing pads that had been placed in the basement for four days were sniffed by a dog, whose response indicated “some positive reaction.” Those developments led the authorities to seek a search warrant.
A spokesman for the New York F.B.I. office, Timothy Flannelly, said the scent detected in the basement did not mean that evidence would be found. “There are no guarantees,” he said. “We’re cautiously optimistic that we’ll find evidence.”
It was during the initial investigation 33 years ago that investigators first focused on the Prince Street basement, Mr. Kelly said.
“It’s along the route that Etan took to leave his house and go to the bus,” he said, “so it’s a logical place to look.”
Mr. Kelly said he could not speculate on why the basement floor was not dug up soon after the boy vanished, and he declined to discuss “any people who we’re talking to or any possible suspects.”
In the past, Mr. Miller had invited the police to examine the basement and had suggested they could tear up the floor if they paid to replace it, according to a person involved in the initial investigation.
According to a law enforcement official, as F.B.I. agents questioned Mr. Miller recently, they raised the possibility of Etan having been buried in the basement, and Mr. Miller blurted out, “What if the body was moved?”
Outside Mr. Miller’s home in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, his lawyer, Mr. Farkas, said he came from a “wonderful family.”
“Mr. Miller is as disturbed about all this as much as all of us New Yorkers are,” he said.
Etan Patz case: what's next?
The handyman who allegedly gave long-missing Etan Patz a dollar before he disappeared 33 years ago is accused of abusing his own niece, according to a report.
Othniel Miller's niece said he molested her when she was 12, according to the Daily News, which cited law enforcement sources. The News also reported that Miller's ex-wife told investigators the same thing. That is partly why the FBI and police tore apart the basement of 127 Prince Street in SoHo looking for the remains of Patz, who was 6 years old when he vanished.
Miller, 75, had a basement workshop at 127 Prince Street in 1979 and knew Etan. Long-time suspect Jose Ramos also worked for Miller back then doing handy work.
Miller, who lives in a basement apartment the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, has cooperated with investigation. He put up a sign saying he won't talk to media and instead reporters have to talk to his lawyer.
So we did.
Michale Farkas, Miller's lawyer, said it is "outrageous" that good man's name is being dragged through the mud because of accusations from nameless and faceless people.
So far there has been no evidence from the search of 127 Prince Street connected to Patz.
Unless dirt or partitions sent to the FBI Quantico, Virginia, lab reveals something, the long search for Patz will have to on.
A civil court ruled that Ramos was responsible for Etan's disappearance. Ramos is prison for molesting minors. He will be released from prison in November after serving 20 years.
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Sources: AP, ABC News, Fox News, Inside Edition, NY Daily News, NY Times, MSNBC, Google Maps
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