Pedro Hernandez
Here is the police photograph of Pedro Hernandez, 51, who was arrested last week and charged in the death of Etan Patz, the 6-year-old boy who disappeared from a SoHo street in 1979. Mr. Hernandez has been charged with second-degree murder. He is being held at Bellevue Hospital Center.
Mr. Hernandez said he strangled Etan after luring the boy to the bodega where he worked with the promise of a soda. He said he put the body in the trash on nearby Thompson Street.
On Wednesday, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said that investigators were “engaged in conversations with a committee at the Sanitation Department” concerning the effort to recover Etan’s body.
Although Mr. Kelly has said that the body is unlikely to be found, his investigators are trying to determine precisely where trash removed from SoHo at the time of Etan’s disappearance would have been buried. “We’re doing a lot of interviews, gathering a lot of information,” Mr. Kelly said.