New York — A man who was a suspect for decades – before another man was charged – Disappearance in 1979 New York first-grader Eitan Patz has died, authorities said this week.
Jose Antonio Ramos died March 7 at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, prosecutors wrote in a lawsuit in the case of Pedro Hernandez — the man who now faces a third trial in the haunting and notorious Etan case. He helped make missing children a national issue in the United States.
Ramos (82 years old) denied kidnapping the 6-year-old child and was not charged in his disappearance. but Ramos history It was part of a complex picture painted during nearly half a century of investigation, the criminal trials of Hernandez and the wrongful death suit against Ramos himself.
Ramos spent most of his life imprisoned in Pennsylvania on charges including sexually assaulting a child there. Rabbi Howard Cohen, a former prison chaplain with whom Ramos has maintained contact for decades, said he lived his final years in New York selling trash on the street until he developed cancer.
“It was very bleak,” Cohen said, recalling receiving calls from hospitals about the man’s care. After being separated from his family, Ramos listed the New England-based rabbi as his emergency contact.
Etan was last seen on May 25, 1979, proudly making his first solo trip to the bus station two blocks from his family’s apartment in midtown Manhattan. He was among the first missing children to be depicted on milk cartons, and the anniversary of his disappearance became National Missing Children’s Day.
With Ramos gone, there is a possibility that he will answer more questions about Eitan, questions that have bothered and bothered him. He complained in 2013 A message to the voice of citizens A newspaper in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, said that accounts linking him to the Etan case were “baseless and baseless.” He refused to testify In the Hernandez trials.
Hernandez was arrested in 2012 after making confessions that his defense said were false. His first trial ended in a hung jury. Produce a second A Conviction of murder That the Federal Court of Appeals It flipped last yearand an upcoming third trial where his lawyers are once again aiming for that suggests That Ramos was the real culprit. His death doesn’t change their plans.
Ramos had artistic ambitions, and came under suspicion in the early 1980s, when he was investigated over allegations he took backpacks from two boys and tried to lure them into a drain in the Bronx, where he lived.
He told police he had been in a relationship with a woman who was taking Etan and other children home during the bus strike, but there was no hard evidence linking Ramos to Etan’s disappearance.
Ramos then traveled across the country by bus, attending rallies of a group of peace activists. He was accused of luring boys onto his bus and sexually assaulting them at rallies in Pennsylvania. Ramos pleaded guilty to a sex charge in 1990 and spent decades in prison.
Over the years, two prison informants claimed that Ramos made incriminating statements against Etan, and a former federal prosecutor said that Ramos claimed to be “90 percent sure” that he took the boy from Washington Square Park in midtown Manhattan, tried to assault him unsuccessfully, and then sent him on his way.
During questioning under oath in 2003, Ramos said he had never met Eitan and had “nothing to hide.”
Manhattan prosecutors never felt they had enough evidence to criminally charge Ramos. The boy’s parents eventually sued him for manslaughter, and after Ramos refused to answer some questions, the judge ruled that he was responsible for the boy’s death.
And it was the ruling canceledAt the request of the family after Hernandez’s first trial. The boy’s father, Stan Patz, had been sending letters to Ramos for years asking, “What have you done to my little boy?” – He said he became convinced of Hernandez’s guilt.
Ramos He finished serving his time In a sexual assault case in Pennsylvania in 2012. Once he got out of prison, so was he He was re-arrested He was charged with violating sex offender registration rules by lying about where he planned to live. He was convicted He was sentenced againand was sentenced to six to 20 years in prison.
Ultimately, a Pennsylvania court decided that Ramos was not subject to the registration law, which was enacted after his initial conviction. He was released in May 2020, according to the state Department of Corrections.
Once released, Ramos moved between New York and Florida, where he unsuccessfully sought to reconnect with relatives, Cohen said. He remembers receiving a phone call from someone in Florida who had bought a violin from a stranger — Ramos, so it seemed from the buyer’s description — and found the rabbi’s card tucked into the instrument.
“This is how he acted: He would find things on the street and sell them,” Cohen said.
Cohen wasn’t exactly sure when Ramos was diagnosed with cancer. By then, Cohen said, Ramos had settled in New York, finding housing of sorts near Washington Square Park.