They finished digging up the carpenter’s basement looking for Etan Patz. And, as I had figured, they found nothing. I don’t know whether that means the carpenter, Othniel Miller, was ruled out as a suspect or not. It may not matter much to him if he has been: his name’s been dragged through the mud in the national news and he’ll be drawing suspicious looks for quite awhile.
I am curious if he raped his 10 year old neice why weren;t there charges? Has the SOL expired? I think Etans body was out in a hot furnace and incinerated.
They couldn’t prove it, that’s why there were no charges.
Off-topic, but we finally got some details on the resolution to Marx Barnes case. His mom apparently had a breakdown, was taken to a psychiatric hospital where she gave a false name, and left the baby behind when she checked out. He went into state custody and was eventually adopted.
It’s still a little hinky that nobody realized the unidentified baby in state custody was the baby who had been reported missing — how many unclaimed babies can there have been floating around Hawaii that fall? — but I guess those things were different in the ’70s. (And it’s not atypical for people to fall through the cracks even now.)
Apparently Carlina White was what prompted him to start looking into his background.
It’s also on the cover of People this week.
yeah I emailed Meghan on this a week ago and for some reason she didn’t post an update. Of course I got the story from Dailymail which reports things much quicker than everyone else.
You probably already know because of your research mastery, but I thought I’d comment that a new person is in custody and apparently implicated himself in the Patz case. Ironically, tomorrow is Missing Children’s Day, which I believe was created in homage to Etan among other missing children.
Yes, I just saw that on television. Like, five minutes ago. It’s shocking. I hope something comes of this but I’m afraid it will be just like the other false leads.
He supposedly confessed in 1979 but the police didn’t believe him.