Around the time of my bar mitzvah a few days later a child disappeared in Greenwich Village. The child was never seen again and his name has entered the lexicon for abducted children. Most children are abducted in a custody situation and this was clearly not the case.
All of us in NYC knew the ending of this story in our hearts. The question of if the killer would be brought to justice was something many of us doubted. Today with video cameras this likely would have been resolved quicker.
The real tragedy is that a Jamaican handiman who had no connection to this crime was a suspect. Even scarier was that this person lived an unexceptional life and may not have repeated this act. The other suspect was a convicted pedophile and should be loathed even if not guilty of this crime.
The body of Eitan Patz will likely never be recovered. However, his family does have some measure of closure for this crime. Those of us in NYC in 79 and many around the world will never forget the name of Eitan Patz.
Do any of you remember Ari Halberstam? How about Robert Stethem? Edward Byrne?
2 comments:
I was familiar with the Stetham case, but not the others.
Officer Edward Byrne was executed by a drug kingpin in Cold Blood in Queens.
Ari Halberstan was gunned down on the Brooklyn Bridge in an act of terrorism explained as road rage in the press.
I am still looking for an article linking a drive by shooting at a pizzeria in Yeshiva University to the drug wars. The crime was never solved.
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