A team of investigators was tearing up an empty SoHo basement Thursday morning in a hunt for the remains of long-missing 6-year-old Etan Patz.
The joint FBI/NYPD team, which began searching around 8:30 a.m., was reinvestigating the cold case that has captivated the nation for the last 33 years, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
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“Information that was known at the time is being re-examined,” Browne said. “It does involve a suspect. They’re looking to see if they find any remains.”
The intensive, inch-by-inch search of the 13-foot-by-62-foot basement at 127B Prince St. could last up to five days.
The building was along the path where the blond-haired boy disappeared on May 25, 1979, while walking the two blocks from his nearby home to catch a bus to school.
There was a connection between the building and boy, Browne said, but he refused to elaborate.
But sources indicated the link was Othnie l. Miller, a local handyman who gave Etan $1 in “pay” for helping him the night before the disappearance.
Miller was interviewed by police but never named as a suspect, with the NYPD opting not to dig up his basement after the Patzes said he was a family friend, one source said.
Investigators are reexamining a key issue: whether Miller performed a sudden renovation of his basement shop shortly after Patz disappeared.
A search warrant from the Manhattan district attorney’s office indicated the investigators were looking for remains, clothing or personal effects from the child.
Sources said the decision to get a warrant came after an FBI cadaver-sniffing dog brought up from Quantico, Va., picked up the scent of human remains in the basement.
The subterranean sniffing session occurred in SoHo about two weeks ago, the sources said.
If the dig finds anything, it would mean the child’s remains never left his neighborhood as a national manhunt proceeded in vain.
“We hope we will be able to bring closure to the investigation and family,” said FBI spokesman Tim Flannelly.
“We are committed to this case, and despite the fact that a disappearance occurred in 1979, we are here today doing the best we can.”
A woman who answered the bell at the Patz family home said they were not speaking to the press.
Browne, while declining to provide details, said the family was notified about the latest twist.
“It’s going to involve taking down walls,” Browne said. “They’re also going to dig up the basement.”
According to Browne, the building was previously examined but never excavated. After breaking up the concrete floor, crime scene investigators will sift through the dirt below in a hunt for remains
Once the original brick walls are exposed, the search team will use luminol in a search for any blood spatter.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment, but prosecutor Cyrus Vance reopened the case two years ago.
No one was ever arrested or convicted in the disappearance, which created a coast to coast outcry. Authorities identified a suspect, Jose Ramos, who remains jailed for molesting two boys in Pennsylvania.
Ramos, who dated Etan’s babysitter, has acknowledged trying to molest the boy that morning — but denied killing him. He is up for release this coming November.
NYPD detectives brought a cadaver-sniffing dog to the basement of Ramos’ E. Fourth St. tenement in August 2000 and dismantled the furnace in a fruitless effort to find the boy’s body.
Ramos became a suspect about a decade after the disappearance.
Patz was snatched off the street as he walked alone to school for the first time. His devastated parents, Stanley and Julia Patz, had their son declared legally dead in 2001.
The couple has continued to fight for a legal resolution to their son’s death.
In 2005, the couple received a $2 million award in their lawsuit against the imprisoned Ramos.
“He was as nice a little boy as there could ever be,” his father testified during their proceedings.
The blue-eyed boy’s disappearance brought national attention to the issue of missing kids, with May 25 declared “National Missing Children’s Day.”
