It will be 30 years this Memorial Day weekend since reporters swarmed the Soho loft of Stan and Julie Patz, along with hundreds of policemen, as the grim-faced parents spelled their son's name over and over again: “E-T-A-N … ay-tahn.”
The Patzes' story was already front-page fodder. That Friday, May 25, 1979, 6-year-old Etan, wearing his favorite Eastern Air Lines Future Flight Captain hat, had vanished somewhere in the two short blocks between his Prince Street home and the West Broadway school-bus stop. It was the first time his parents had let him walk the route alone, a decision they'd agonized over. (Other kids are allowed, Etan had said. Why not me?) His school never alerted the Patzes to Etan's absence, and it wasn't until 3:30 p.m., when he hadn't returned, that Julie called their neighbors, wondering if he might be with a friend. Twenty minutes later she called the police.
Now journalists gathered in the hushed, sun-washed front area of the loft, where Julie normally ran an in-home day-care center and Stan, a commercial photographer, often sat immersed in photo editing. Most of the reporters were respectful if awkward; there is no painless way to ask a parent How do you feel? at such a time. But then there was the tabloid photographer whose question they would never forget.
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