Stan left the apartment and turned toward the SoHo post office half a block away. He skirted the colorful, mawkish jumble of sidewalk vendors that he liked to gripe were turning SoHo into one giant flea market. The storefronts he passed were less obstructive but just as disagreeable to the pioneer sensibilities of those who’d lived in the neighborhood as long as the Patzes. The sweatshops and hardware stores had been gradually replaced with Chanel and Louis Vuitton, and the bodegas were now tony sushi bars. Stan often wondered how many customers were needed to support the lingerie shops that seemed to be on every corner, selling $100 underwear. Even the post office he now entered was rumored to be clearing out soon and moving to an annex in the rear of its 1920s landmark building, to make way for some fancy top-secret retailer.
Stan took out the letter, along with a second one he sent annually to Sandy Harmon, begging her to come forward with any information to advance the case. He put hers in the local slot, and dropped the envelope addressed to Ramos in the one marked “out of town.”
Back in the apartment, Stan listened to the answering machine. A New York Post reporter wanted a quote for his retrospective, pegged to the twentieth anniversary. Out of habit, Stan marked it down in the spiral logbook, but he wouldn’t be returning the call. These largely ignored requests were few and far between nowadays, although the tradition of the logs remained. By 1999, one notebook lasted much longer than in the past, a year or two per book, and the entries were more along the lines of a family message board.
“9:20am, Gary, borrow a ladder?”
“18:52 Ben for Ari. Game?”
“Happy 35th Anniversary.”
But every once in a while, there would be a reminder of why the logbooks were there in the first place. This twentieth year saw a few more hang-ups than there usually were around the actual day.
And there was this call, an invitation to lunch.
“11:10 Stu G.—Tuta Pasta on Carmine South Side @13:00 Stu’s office.”
On the designated day a few weeks later, Stan Patz walked ten blocks due west to GraBois’s Hudson Street office. Entering the lobby of the stately building, he admired, as he always did, the gleaming, ornately inlaid cherrywood paneling. The custom-crafted workmanship was a fitting showcase for the New York District Council of Carpenters Union, the headquarters for the area’s union carpenters. Stan walked to the elevator and passed an imposing three-and-a-half-foot-square sign with raised lettering that read “New York District Council of Carpenters, Carpenters Benefit Funds, Stuart R. GraBois, Director.”
In 1993, after over eleven years as an assistant U.S. attorney and more than twenty-one with the Justice Department, GraBois had left to oversee a staff of some two-hundred employees—money managers, accountants, attorneys, and assorted others needed to grow the multibillion-dollar funds. At the time, the union itself was under scrutiny from the federal government amid corruption allegations. The U.S. Attorney’s Office had filed a civil racketeering suit against the Carpenters Union in 1990, and just months after GraBois started his new position, the union submitted to court-appointed oversight. GraBois’s presence as a scrupulously honest and tough but fair manager of the union’s benefit fund was a step in the right direction.
He had loved being a federal prosecutor, but this was a great opportunity—a real change and the kind of challenge he thrived on. GraBois was reluctant to leave the Patz case unresolved, even though he’d officially handed it off years earlier. Ultimately, he’d decided that with his long history at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the inside contacts he’d maintain after he was gone, his voice would still be strong working the case from the outside. When GraBois had called Stan Patz about his plans, he’d told Stan he’d continue to give him legal counsel; support him in any way he could.
Whenever Stan came to the West Side for these occasional meetings, he enjoyed the panoramic views overlooking the Hudson River that took up one whole wall in GraBois’s spacious new quarters. The other three walls were filled with memories: photos of the old office softball team, framed commendations, the U.S. attorney’s edict that recalled GraBois’s grandfather’s words about justice. GraBois’s souvenir mesh cap collection adorned the top of a wall-length filing cabinet, hats cadged over the years from every branch of the government—NYPD, FBI, the Postal Inspectors, U.S. Customs—each one a souvenir of a case he’d worked. There was even one from the Pennsylvania State Police. Above the display hung a large framed courtroom artist’s sketch of the 1990 sentencing hearing in Warren County, catching GraBois mid-argument, his hand raised toward the judge while Ramos, in his bright orange prison jumpsuit, slouched dejectedly next to him.
Before he’d left the U.S. Attorney’s Office, GraBois had written to the Pennsylvania Parole Board and requested an advisory in advance of Jose Ramos’s first parole date. Over the years he’d stayed in touch and had marked his calendar so he couldn’t forget—September 13, 2000.
Now at lunch a year ahead of time, Stan Patz and Stuart GraBois strategized about how to ensure the 2000 parole date would come and go, leaving Ramos right where he was. During GraBois’s civilian years, it was GraBois who tracked Ramos’s moves to different state facilities and listened for any news to pass along. Out of their shared frustration, he and Stan had formed a bond, vigilantly looking for opportunities to keep the case alive. Keeping Ramos in prison was ancillary, but it was also a goal in and of itself.
“We’ll need press to do this, to get the word out,” GraBois cautioned Stan. “If the parole board is going to vote no, they have to understand who this character is, and they have to know the public is very aware of him, too.”
Stan looked doubtful but he didn’t immediately object.
“Will you talk to the press? I know it’s been a while, but I think it’s important.”
This was the part Stan hated more than anything else. He’d had cameras trained on him many times, and it always made him feel like he was trapped between layers of glass under a microscope lens, midway through a dissection. Besides, people got interviewed for all kinds of reasons, usually because of some impressive accomplishment. In his case, it was always as a victim. Early on he’d been relieved whenever Julie would get out in front. But Julie wasn’t going to be involved in this campaign. He knew without asking she’d be unwilling to thrust herself back in the limelight. He was on his own now.
GraBois was promising to be at his side in whatever he chose to do. The former prosecutor had a lot of contacts and a few ideas of his own. If they did this right, it could mean extensive, targeted exposure with very few actual interviews. As usual, Stan Patz agreed to think about it. Months later, GraBois called Stan to tell him I was now a 60 Minutes II producer, interested in reporting on Ramos’s impending parole. But that update alone wouldn’t sustain a lengthy network news story.
“Would you go on camera and make the case against him?” GraBois asked Stan.
So with some trepidation, in April 2000 Stan Patz sat down in front of a camera for the first time in over a decade to warn the public about Jose Ramos.
“He’s a predator,” Stan said angrily, “and he should never be allowed to be near children again. He should be kept behind bars until he’s too old to walk.” As much as he hated public speaking, he’d foregone his usual ritual of writing out talking points in advance and simply spoke from the heart.
“I would appeal to anyone who could possibly keep him in jail—this is the time to come forward.”
The reporter facing him, Vicki Mabrey, wondered at his motivation. “Is it enough that he is in prison now, even on an unrelated charge?” she asked.
“For me, it is enough that he’s behind bars.” He stopped himself midthought. “Well, no, it isn’t,” he said, pausing briefly as he changed his mind. “I—I really do want him to admit it.”
The story gave an overview of the case, including a mention of the two informants’ claims. “Over the years,” Stan said, “he’s made certain incriminating statements to the effect that Etan’
s dead and that no one’s ever going to find anything.”
Breaking down in public was anathema to him, but he knew it was red meat to most journalists. When the interview ended, he worried the piece would highlight his tears, rather than what he hoped had been the persuasive argument of a father fighting for his son’s case to be heard.
Julie went to bed every night no later than 8 p.m., so Stan occasionally watched evening television with a neighbor from the building. But the night the broadcast aired, he called his friend and asked her not to come over. He didn’t want her to witness him losing his composure again, as he’d done at that one point during the interview. So he watched alone and cried again, when the moment came.
“I believe this man stalked my son,” he said to Mabrey. “I believe he lured him back to his apartment. I think he used him like toilet paper, and I think he threw him away.” His voice quivered, full of emotion, and then he looked down.
Watching this, Stan was relieved to see the camera cut away quickly to another shot, and gratified that he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do, without looking like the pathetic victim he’d feared appearing. I can do this, he thought, thankful for Stuart GraBois, the cool hand behind the curtain, moving him into position, if not pulling the strings.
The next day, GraBois had an early morning meeting in his office with the benefit fund’s outside counsel. Brian O’Dwyer was senior partner in O’Dwyer and Bernstien, founded in 1935 by his late father Paul, such a legendary New York political figure that the firm’s address, amid the stately downtown courthouses, was Paul O’Dwyer Way. The elder O’Dwyer, a vocal civil rights supporter and champion of the underdog, was the quintessential liberal Democrat of an era. His son, also a noted attorney and New York Democratic Party stalwart, had the classic, silver-haired, ruddy-faced, genial look of a true son of Ireland.
Like GraBois, O’Dwyer had watched the broadcast the night before, and the former prosecutor was now giving him more background on the case as he described the scene portrayed in the court sketch on his wall.
“Have you ever thought about filing a civil suit against this guy?” O’Dwyer asked, almost thinking aloud. “I ask because I’ve done a few like this myself, where there was clear guilt, but for whatever reason the criminal case wasn’t going to proceed.” Winning a civil case, O’Dwyer reminded his friend, only required a preponderance of evidence rather than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of a criminal prosecution.
GraBois was interested. “Tell me more.”
“It can make a practical difference in certain cases. I had one recently where a man was killed by his jealous wife, who caught him in flagrante. She was found civilly responsible for his death, which kept her from inheriting his big insurance payout.”
“It’s an interesting idea,” GraBois said. “Ramos has no money, but he’s been talking forever about making big bucks in a tell-all book, and that would be just unacceptable.” The “Son of Sam Law,” passed in New York and adopted by many other states, prohibited a criminal from making money off his crime—any profits would go to the victims. But Ramos had never been convicted for this crime; he’d never even been charged.
More importantly, Ramos had been sitting in prison for fourteen years. Who knew how good his defenses were now? During the process of a civil suit, he might incriminate himself in a deposition, or even confess. And at the end of it, he might be judged responsible for Etan’s death—a finding that could push the DA to action.
“We need some legal research done, though,” GraBois said. “Would we be on firm legal ground? How viable is our case?”
O’Dwyer offered to have his office look into it, and they agreed Stan would have to be brought in very early to give his blessing. He was the one, after all, who’d have to file the suit. GraBois took it as a good omen when independently reporter John Miller, now a network correspondent on ABC’s 20/20, came to him with a news story he’d recently aired of a similar Long Island lawsuit.
“It’s an incredibly valuable tool,” Miller pressed him. “How many times as a reporter have I wished I could just slap a subpoena on someone and make them answer my questions when they said ‘no comment’? It’s like deputizing Stan to do some of the things the cops or FBI could do.”
When O’Dwyer came back to say the initial findings were encouraging, GraBois thought another Carmine Street lunch was called for, this one featuring guest speaker Brian O’Dwyer.
O’Dwyer had grown up in New York City, in a sprawling apartment on the Upper West Side. As a boy of eight or nine in the mid-fifties, he’d walked to school and hung out in Central Park with friends until dinnertime. In late 1978, after a ten-year-long effort, he and his wife had finally adopted their son, and he was still an infant when Etan disappeared. O’Dwyer had passed the posters every day when he went to work in downtown Manhattan, and read in the newspapers about every parent’s worst nightmare. His family lived in the tame suburbs now, but Brendan O’Dwyer was never out of his parents’ sight. His father walked his young son to school; his mother or babysitter picked him up. They knew where he was at all times. If the boy didn’t have an adult to go with him, he didn’t go out. Brian O’Dwyer was one of those parents for whom everything changed after Etan disappeared.
O’Dwyer had never met Stan Patz, and once the three were seated at a quiet table in Marinella’s, GraBois’s favorite Italian restaurant, he was immediately impressed by Stan’s educated air, and his soft-spoken but articulate demeanor. GraBois had already outlined the idea of the civil suit over the phone, but after two decades of shaky proposals and wild goose chases, Stan was clearly cautious. Over seafood and salad, the three talked through the details.
“You have to be very comfortable with this idea,” O’Dwyer started carefully. “It’s an unusual approach. We could launch the suit, and then Ramos could easily torpedo it.”
O’Dwyer explained that once the lawsuit was filed, Ramos would have thirty days to respond. If he didn’t, the Patzes would win by default—meaning that Ramos wouldn’t be able to keep any blood money should he ever sell his story. It would also be seen by the Pennsylvania Parole Board as another good reason to keep Ramos in prison for his full sentence.
“But if that happened, we wouldn’t get the chance to depose him,” the lawyer said.
O’Dywer turned to GraBois sitting beside him. “Now, Stu hopes Ramos won’t be able to resist filing a response, that he always engages with Stu given the chance. This is a guy who has very little to keep himself occupied and fancies himself a jailhouse lawyer. I’d love for Stu to get his wish, but frankly we’d both be surprised. There’s nothing in it for Ramos.”
Stan asked the first of several questions. “What exactly is the point of all this? He doesn’t get punished; he has no money, and I don’t want his money. If I ever got any, it would go to charity. Worst of all, he’s still not convicted of anything.”
GraBois and O’Dwyer explained that more than anything else, the lawsuit would be a chance to wrest some control back from the district attorney. In a civil case, the defendant is under oath during his deposition, but it’s not cops or DAs asking the questions, it’s the plaintiff’s own lawyer. “The DA says he needs more evidence, so why not try to get him some?” O’Dwyer said.
“The U.S. Attorney’s Office has advised me that while representing your family is a conflict of interest,” GraBois added, “I can be your unofficial, unpaid adviser and work with Brian to fill in any aspect of the case.”
“Do you honestly think Ramos would talk to you?” Stan asked. “He has a long history of successfully avoiding that.”
“He’d be required to answer the questions or he’d lose his case,” O’Dwyer replied. “He may not bite, but again, we think there’s a chance he will. In a best-case scenario, this is an open court case, and we add to new evidence that prompts a criminal trial. Middle ground—we win a civil suit and get a judicial judgment that Jose Ramos is responsible for the death of your son.”
�
��And the worst-case scenario?”
“He doesn’t respond and it all fizzles, which still has the advantage that he loses by default. Or, worse, we have the ugly full court scene, a tabloid spectacle, and everyone gets to see us lose. There’s a whole matrix of outcomes.” Both GraBois and O’Dwyer were clear—this had to be a decision made with eyes wide open.
“So I guess this is how they got O.J.,” Stan said after digesting for a moment.
“O.J.’s the most prominent example, but it’s a growing trend.” O’Dwyer told of his own experiences. “There are two big advantages to a civil suit. When you go into the criminal system the family has no influence. You’re basically waiting on the authorities. Here, the family runs the case. You make the decisions about where you want to go and how, and I would consult with you at every step.”
As ideas went, this one landed square in Stan’s ambivalence column. He liked the prospect of ensuring Ramos would never make money from his family’s tragedy, and any such award would go straight to charity. And he agreed that a judgment against Ramos would influence the parole board favorably. That was a huge plus. But he doubted the two other men’s hope that the DA would be moved by their efforts. Plus there would be the resurgence of unwanted publicity. He’d done his dance on national television, and had hoped he was off the stage. A full-blown court trial, civil or otherwise, guaranteed a media circus à la JonBenét Ramsey that would be hard on his family. And then what if they lost?
“This is always the issue,” GraBois agreed. “The publicity is a constant source of aggravation. But it’s what we need to keep Ramos in prison.”
After Etan Page 43