Is Etan Patz the Most Famous Missing Child of All Time?

what a young life he's the little boy whose disappearance gripped the nation a new lead in the disappearance of atom paids eton pads he had a little boy law i mean it was just everywhere it was just haunting many pictures i remember taking including this one this shows a happy kid with the future it's just joyous my name is carrie boretz and um i'm a photojournalist i began in 1975 interning at the village voice i remember it was just it was early fall and i was still really raw really raw shooting [Music] every day i would spend a few minutes on the streets because i was still living with my parents on long island so this was all very new to me shooting on the streets of new york it was a mother you could tell with a few kids all lined up holding each other holding the stroller and it was just really a lovely image and it wasn't a riveting image but it was just sweet and i knew i wanted to take it i shot one frame i remember it was easy to shoot the 70s was easy there were no barriers so this was just lovely and i remember standing there i do remember standing there on that corner just going wow can't wait till i have kids so many years later i decided to do a book of my street photography of new york the 70s 80s and 90s and i have thousands and thousands of negatives i scanned every single role i had ever taken i'll never forget the day i i'm looking with my loop at the negatives on the light table and i see this kid this face and i printed it up and there was eight-ton pets at 7 55 last friday morning julie pat says she took her son downstairs she came back up and watched from this fire escape as he passed down west broadway toward the bus stop where a group of other children and parents were waiting she never dreamed he didn't get on that bus not until four o'clock in the afternoon when he failed to return home eitan was this supposedly sweet adoring kid who was just happy and he was six begged his parents to go to the bus stop they lived in a very family oriented area of new york back then soho everyone knew each other he was walking and he went out of view and that was the last time they saw him i hope he's with somebody wiser than he who will take care of him and is still taking care of him and if he is i don't want to hurt you in any way i don't want to prosecute i just want whoever you are to bring him home who could not remember that face it was on every milk carton i remember hanging out on the pier on bank street on the village just hanging out with my friends and the airplanes would go by with the banners a-ton pads he had a little boy law i mean it was just everywhere it was everywhere it was the first big case and the fact that he was just never found [Music] and i held on to it for around a year part of me wanted to figure out how to get in touch with the parents but i knew that the father had been a professional photographer and they had dozens of photographs of him but and i didn't want to reopen any wounds and so i held on to it i felt like i had this little treasure of a life that had been destroyed but just i had caught in a moment of joy and i felt very protective of him i felt really close to him in a way and then i felt really guilty that i had held on to it so i decided to reach out to an editor at the new york magazine and they did this piece about it and subsequently they found the guy who did it and they brought him to trial a man has reportedly just confessed that he killed the six-year-old boy he has been identified as pedro hernandez pedro hernandez is in a jail cell seen here in pictures obtained by inside edition this photo from inside edition's website shows pedro hernandez the d.a called me and said we just saw your photograph you know we'd love to have it and blow it up and keep it in the courtroom and uh use it as a photograph of you know showing what was destroyed i find it extraordinary that the sense of timing of all this above the photograph being used in the courtroom that it had just been published the d.a saw it and used it just in time for the indictment of this murder of eitan i'm glad they got the guy i'm glad he was indicted and if my picture had any part of that you know i'm happy about that of course it didn't but you know the fact that it was in the presence of that courtroom sort of completed it for me i mean it wasn't going to sway the jury you know but it there was a little tiny bit of positive feeling on my part that i had shot this um something so innocent and ordinary it was just an ordinary photograph which is really what i shoot i shoot ordinary moments you know that become extraordinary sometimes in a way and this became horribly extraordinary [Music] you

Channel: Inside Edition

Views: 3,643,042

Keywords: carrie boretz, cat-crime, child, crime, disappearance, etan patz, ie newsdesk, inside edition, inside_edition, julie patz, milk carton, missing, new york, new york city, news, nyc, pedro hernandez, photograph, photographer, photojournalist, prosecution, trial

Id: fUU_q9abNJc

Length: 5min 43sec (343 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2019