Probe of 1979 disappearance leads to NYC basement

NEW YORK (AP) — A team of police officers and FBI agents began digging up a basement in New York City on Thursday as part of a decades-old investigation into the disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz, whose case made a generation of parents afraid to send their children out alone.

Etan vanished without a trace in 1979 after leaving his family's Manhattan apartment for a short walk to catch a school bus. It was the first time his parents had let him go off to school alone.

The building being searched sits about a block from where the family lived, in the borough's SoHo section, and is along the route that the boy would have taken on his walk to the bus stop.

Police spokesman Paul Browne said a forensic team was looking for blood, clothing or human remains, and expected to be at the site for as many as five days. He wouldn't say what evidence led investigators to the property, but a law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that at the time of the boy's disappearance, the building housed the workshop of a carpenter who was thought to have been friendly with the boy.

In the past few months, the official said, investigators had received information that Etan's remains might be buried in the basement. The official spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

The 13-foot by 62-foot basement space being searched now sits beneath a clothing boutique. The building has undergone renovations over the decades, and Browne said investigators began by removing drywall partitions so they could get to the area where they planned to dig.

The excavation was part of a review of the case, recently ordered by the Manhattan district attorney, he said.

"This was a shocking case at the time and it hasn't been resolved," Browne said.

Etan's disappearance was a media sensation in 1979. The press attention helped fuel a national movement to publicize the cases of missing children. Etan's face was among the first to appear on milk cartons, and President Ronald Reagan declared May 25 to be National Missing Children's Day. Etan's parents, Stanley and Julie Patz, became outspoken advocates for missing children.

No one has ever been prosecuted for the crime, but the boy's father, Stanley Patz, sued an incarcerated drifter and admitted child-molester, Jose Ramos, who had been dating Etan's babysitter around the time he disappeared. Ramos denied killing the child, but in 2004 a Manhattan judge ruled him to be responsible for the death.

Ramos is scheduled to be released from prison in Pennsylvania this year, when he finishes serving a 20-year-sentence for abusing an 8-year-old boy. His pending freedom is one of the factors that has given new urgency to the case after so long. He is not the carpenter whose old workspace was being searched.

Investigators have looked at a long list of possible suspects over the years, and have excavated in other places before without success.

Stanley Patz didn't respond to phone calls and email messages Thursday. A man who answered the buzzer at the family's apartment, just a few doors down from the building being searched, said they wouldn't be speaking to the media.

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Associated Press writer Tom Hays contributed to this report.