COLD CASE

Slim Chance of Finding Patz Body

Sanitation records go back only as far as 1989.

Etan Patz’s confessed killer, Pedro Hernandez, said he left the boy’s body in a trash bag in 1979, and the New York City Sanitation Department on Tuesday quashed any hopes of finding what happened to Patz’s remains, saying that landfill records date back only to 1989. Hernandez confessed last week to killing the 6-year-old on May 25, 1979, saying he strangled the boy in the basement of a neighboring bodega where he worked and then left the body in a trash bag. Despite Hernandez’s confession, police still question whether he is guilty—especially given his history of mental illness—as there is no evidence that ties Hernandez to Patz, although Hernandez’s sister said he had “confessed to killing a little boy in Manhattan.”