Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Etan Patz's Family Asks Media to Leave Them Alone

By  Chelsia Rose Marcius Julie  Shapiro and Tom Liddy | May 29, 2012 11:57am | Updated on May 29, 2012 3:01pm

The Patz family posted a sign on the door of their Prince Street home on May 28, 2012 asking for privacy after their son Etan's alleged killer was arrested.
The Patz family posted a sign on the door of their Prince Street home on May 28, 2012 asking for privacy after their son Etan's alleged killer was arrested.
View Full Caption
DNAinfo/Chelsia Rose Marcius

MANHATTAN — The family of Etan Patz has posted a sign on their door asking the media, who have been camped out on their doorstep since the boy's suspected killer was arrested last week, to stop hounding them.

Since the arrest of Pedro Hernandez, 51, who confessed to killing the boy 33 years ago at a nearby bodega, the Patz family has been beseiged by reporters and TV cameras.

"To all the media people hanging around here: You have managed to make a difficult situation even worse," said the note posted on the door of the family's Prince Street home Monday. "It's past time for you to leave me, my family and my neighbors alone."

On Tuesday, Patz's mother, Julie, told reporters that she was growing weary because of the ordeal.

“I wish this could end,” she said, according to the Daily News. “This is taking my freedom away. I just wish this could be over.”

Hernandez admitted to luring Patz to the basement of a bodega at 448 West Broadway, where he worked as a stock boy with the promise of a soda.

There, he claims that he strangled the boy and then dumped his body in the trash.

But Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last week that they do not have Patz's body or any physical evidence to corroborate the alleged claims.

Hernandez reportedly confessed the crime to a church group in New Jersey back in the 1980s, but nothing was done with the information. The earlier alleged claims could be used to corroborate the recent claims to the NYPD.

His sister Norma Hernandez, 54, also reportedly told Camden police that her brother had killed a child in New York, but police did not act on it, according to the Newark Star-Ledger.

Camden police were not immediately available for comment.

Camden County prosecutors were reportedly meeting Tuesday to examine the claims that Hernandez had confessed to the church group.

The prosecutor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sources have told DNAinfo New York's "On the Inside" that the Patz family was skeptical about Hernandez's confession. He was the first person criminally charged in the case.

The family still believes that Jose Ramos, a convicted pedophile who was found liable for the boy's death in a 2004 civil judgment, killed Etan.