Etan Patz, questions without answers


Whenever a cold case cracks open there is both relief and a resurgence of questions.  How was it possible for people to miss the evidence at the time?  How did the criminal get away with the crime?  What could people have done differently?

The Etan Patz case is no different.  After Pedro Hernandez confessed to the murder of 6 year-old Patz newspapers and media find themselves reexamining the past and facing several unanswered questions.  The biggest one  at the moment?  How can someone throw a body away without anyone finding out?

According to the Wall Street Journal, the 1970’s was a time before recycling bins cut away the massive amounts of trash that families threw out every day.  As such, most bags were big, opaque, and heavy, and most sanitation workers picked up hundreds of them every route.

This means that when Mr. Hernandez dumped the bag in front of 113 Thompson St. it makes sense that the bag would be gone when he returned.  It’s possible that a sanitation worker simply picked it up with the rest of the trash and never noticed that it contained a 3 feet, 4 inch tall first grader.

And given that the family didn’t learn that he was missing until he didn’t come home from school there was plenty of time for the plastic bag to disappear.  Where it went is uncertain, it either went to Fountain Avenue Landfill in Brooklyn or Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island depending on whether the building was residential or a business at the time. 

It’s also possible that Pedro Hernandez is not remembering what happened exactly correctly, with his history of auditory and visual hallucinations.  But even if the family doesn’t know exactly where Etan’s body is, at least they have some closure on the events of that day so many years ago.

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