Lisa R. Cohen

Adam Walsh, Polly Klass, Megan Kanka, Amber Hagerman, names that will strike terror into any parents heart. Names that when heard make you hold your kids closer and look at strangers harder. Names that now equal unbelievable heartache. Before those children though there was Etan Patz. Etan would have been only 6 months older than me had he lived. I grew up hearing the story of his abduction. When a basement of a former friend was recently dug up to search for his body I hoped that at last the case would be solved for his parents. Sadly it was not to be be and apparently the one person who does know what happened is too mentally ill or evil to tell.

This book does an excellent job detailing the abduction and aftermath of Etan Patz from his NY Soho neighborhood in the 70's. Having grown up in the 70's there was so much I could identify with this story. There were also many painful moments that made this book at times difficult to read. When I got to the passage where Reve Walsh the mother of Adam is sitting at a table with Julie Patz, Etan's mom and she gets the call that her little boy's body has been found, it was so emotionally written that I had to put the book down. Equally heartbreaking is the picture Stan Patz, Etan's dad sends twice a year to the man he believes killed his son. On it are the words what did you do to my little boy?

Thanks to Julie and Stan Patz and all of the parents of the murdered children listed above, the kids of today are safer. There are now alerts, and centers, and all kinds of help that were not available when those children were taken. I recently read a statistic that said 99% of abducted children are found and returned. Sadly that does nothing for the Patz's and wish with all my heart that they could have a final resolution to their case. John Ramsey, Jon Benet's father said in his book that as awful as having his daughter murdered was at least he found her. Even he couldn't imagine the anguish of never knowing where your child's final resting place is.

This author did justice to Etan's story. It was clear that she was very emotionally involved in the case. This book is transcended from a quickly crafted true crime story written for thrills into something that is closer to literature like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It's the story of how an urban oasis can go to hell in the span of the time it takes one child to walk a block to the school bus. The real life heroes and villian in this story are so richly portrayed that you will keep thinking of Etan's story long after you have finished the last page.… (lisätietoja)

A great book about the Etan Patz case and what happened in the years after and about the main suspect. I really liked this book, I thought there were alot of bizarre things that happened right after the Patz family found their son vanished, like all the weird leads and the part about the look-alike who'd stand outside the apartment and just stare with the little pilot's cap on. That just seemed very strange to me - I know it was the 70's, but why would someone let their kid do that? And I was very curious about the area by the bridges that the medium led them to, obviously no one found anything, but I wonder if it wasn't a tribute or something. Got a bit bogged down with the parts about the interviews with Ramos and his cell mates, but it was a really good book. I'd only briefly heard about this boy, and it was good to learn the rest of his story, or at least what we know. It's very frusterating that this mystery hasn't been solved yet.… (lisätietoja)

Reporter Lisa Cohen, who's been covering the Etan Patz disappearance for years now, has put together a very impressive account of the investigation with all its twists and turns. Though the book covers thirty years, the story never drags, and I stayed up and sacrificed precious sleep to get through it, although I knew already how it ended -- or didn't end, as it were. Etan Patz has never been found and the prime suspect in his disappearance, a thoroughly creepy pedophile named Jose Antonio Ramos, has never been charged in his case.

The first half of the book mainly focuses on the pain of Etan's parents, Stan and Julie, and their struggle to keep their own sanity and provide a normal life for their two remaining children. It's a very rare and intimate window into how a family copes with having a missing child. Stan and Julie aren't sure how to answer when a stranger asks them how many children they have. Etan's younger brother was very afraid to turn six, because Etan was six when he disappeared. Tipsters, well-wishers and cranks phoned the Patz home at all hours and Stan kept a log of every single call, just in case one of them lead to his son's whereabouts. Julie was remonstrated by strangers when they recognized her on the street: they accused her of negligence for letting Etan walk to the bus stop alone the day he was abducted, and flat-out told her that his disappearance was all her fault.

The second half of the story focuses more on Jose Antonio Ramos and the quest by a dedicated federal prosecutor, Stuart GraBois, to bring Ramos to justice for the crimes he's committed against children. Largely through his efforts, Ramos was sent to prison for twenty years for an unrelated child molestation charge, but he's not going to stay in there forever. GraBois continues to lobby for charges in Etan's case, and I hope this book will spur that effort along. He is the real hero in this story, a tireless advocate not only for Etan but for other children Ramos violated. Using actual dialogue from transcripts and recordings, Cohen makes you feel like you're actually in the room with Ramos and GraBois as they talk about Etan and Ramos makes a "90% confession."

This is a must-read for those interested in the Patz case and the phenomenon of missing children in general. Though it's 400 pages, it felt like a much shorter book to me. The details and the snappy journalistic writing style moved it along. I don't think it could have been any better written.… (lisätietoja)