After Etan: The Missing Child Case that Held America Captive by Lisa R. Cohen

From the Publisher

On the morning of May 25, 1979, six-year-old Etan Patz left his apartment to go to his school bus stop. It was the first time he walked the two short blocks on his own.
But he never made it to school that day. He vanished somewhere between his home and the bus stop, and was never seen again.
The search for Etan quickly consumed the downtown Manhattan neighborhood where his family lived. Soon afterward, "Missing" posters with Etan's smiling face blanketed the city, followed by media coverage that turned Etan's disappearance into a national story-one that would change our cultural landscape forever.
Thirty years later, May 25 is recognized as National Missing Children's Day, in Etan's honor. But despite the overwhelming publicity his case received, the public knows only a fraction of what happened. That's because the story of Etan Patz is more than a heartbreaking mystery. It is also the story of the men, women, and children who were touched by his life in the months and years after he vanished. It's the story of the agonies and triumphs of the Patz family. It's the story of the extraordinary twists and turns of federal prosecutor Stuart GraBois's relentless pursuit of his prime suspect. From GraBois's creative "outside the box" tactics, to the veteran cop who made his first pedophile bust on a dark Times Square rooftop, to the FBI rookie who cut her teeth chasing the case through the dark recesses of a child molester's mind, this is the story of all the heroic investigators who to this day, thirty years later, continue to seek justice for Etan.
In AFTER ETAN, author Lisa Cohen draws on hundreds of interviews and nearly twenty years of research-including access to thepersonal files of the Patz family-to reveal for the first time the entire dramatic tale.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

After Etan is a complex, many-tentacled account of just how tantalizingly close Mr. Ramos has come to incriminating himself in the Patz case and just how tirelessly he has tormented prosecutors, who have said they do not have enough evidence to charge him. In a book loaded with evidence of Mr. Ramos's pedophilia, his attraction to Etan, knowledge of the Patz family and capacity to dispose of a child-size body, Ms. Cohen makes a persuasive case that Mr. Ramos was involved. But her emphasis is less on his actions than it is on the winding, obstacle-strewn path to justice. She tells a story that is stranger than crime fiction and messier too.

Publishers Weekly

Emmy-winning TV newsmagazine producer Cohen examines one of the most publicized missing child cases in America. On May 25, 1979, Etan Patz left his family's SoHo loft to walk two blocks to catch his school bus, the first time his parents let him make the trip alone. He was never seen again. Early in the investigation, police interviewed Jose Antonio Ramos, whose "interest in little blond boys" had become known to police, yet they dismissed Ramos as a suspect in the Patz case. But over the years, Ramos repeatedly intimated that he molested and murdered Patz and hid the body. Assistant U.S. Attorney Stuart GraBois doggedly and shrewdly pursued Ramos, hoping prison informants could coax a confession. Cohen details GraBois's efforts and the pain Stan and Julie Patz endured as years passed and Etan's fate remained a mystery. Perhaps most heart-wrenching is Stan's twice-yearly ritual of mailing Etan's "missing" poster to Ramos in prison, always with the same message: "What did you do to my little boy?" As true crime, this tragic tale is a standout, and Cohen, though no prose stylist, does a creditable job telling it. (May)

Kirkus Reviews

An engrossing account of a watershed missing-child case. On May 25, 1979, six-year-old Etan Patz disappeared while walking the two blocks to his bus stop on his way to school in lower Manhattan. The case-which TV newsmagazine producer Cohen convincingly argues changed the way Americans think about their children's safety-had a ripple effect beyond New York, eventually leading to the establishment of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, whose ubiquitous missing-child alerts on milk cartons in the 1980s raised public awareness about the phenomenon across the country. While most of those children were found and their abductors brought to justice, the Patz case remains open 30 years later. The author tells the complete, heartbreaking story, from day one of the boy's disappearance to his family's continuing efforts to bring a rapist and killer to justice. First-time author Cohen, who covered the case for 60 Minutes and Prime Time Live, admirably avoids a hysterical approach to the shocking subject matter. Instead, she lets the disturbing facts speak for themselves. The author had access to an astounding amount of information, including multiple interviews with Patz's parents and former chief prosecutor Stuart GraBois. She also consulted the TV interviews with the prime suspect, though he declined to cooperate on the book. Cohen covers the story from all angles and keeps the main thread of the investigation clear, even while sharing some of its most intriguing left turns and red herrings, including a series of child molestations by a former boyfriend of one of the boy's caretakers, and a trip, prompted by a psychic's vision, to Hell's Gate in the East River in search ofPatz's body. A masterful combination of deep human interest and detailed criminal investigation into a parent's worst nightmare.

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