Jose Antonio Ramos, a convicted child molester long suspected in the disappearance of Manhattan first grader Etan Patz, has passed away.
Ramos died at the age of 82 on March 7 at Bellevue Hospital, as revealed in a court filing related to Pedro Hernandez, a bodega clerk who is undergoing a third trial for the 1979 murder of 6-year-old Patz.
Although Ramos was frequently linked to Patz’s abduction, he consistently denied any involvement and never faced criminal charges for the boy’s disappearance. In 2016, Supreme Court Justice Joan Kenney overturned a 2004 civil ruling that had awarded $2.7 million, asserting Ramos was responsible for the child’s death.
In his final years, Ramos lived a transient life in New York City, struggling on the streets before being diagnosed with cancer.
After returning to New York, he managed to secure accommodation near Washington Square Park in downtown Manhattan, as reported by Rabbi Howard Cohen, a former prison chaplain, to the Associated Press.
Ramos spent much of his earlier life incarcerated in Pennsylvania, serving time for various crimes, including the sexual assault of a child.
“The situation was pretty bleak,” Cohen said, noting Ramos has listed the New England rabbi as his emergency contact.
Patz became the poster child for missing children across the country after he vanished from a Soho street on May 25, 1979, while walking to his school bus stop alone for the first time. His body has never been found.
Ramos came under suspicion for Patz’s killing in the early 1980s after he was investigated for allegedly taking backpacks from two boys and attempting to lure them into a Bronx drain pipe.
He then told police he had a relationship with a woman who walked Etan and other children home during a bus strike — but evidence didn’t link him to the first grader’s disappearance.
A former federal prosecutor said Ramos claimed to be “90 percent sure” he had taken the boy from Washington Square Park, tried unsuccessfully to prey on him, and sent him on his way.
Two jailhouse informants claimed Ramos made incriminating statements about Etan.
Ramos said he’d never encountered Etan and had “nothing to hide” during a sworn questioning in 2003. Prosecutors never felt they had enough evidence to charge him criminally.
The boy’s parents filed the wrongful- death case in 2001 against Ramos, and he was declared civilly responsible for Etan’s death in 2004 before the ruling was overturned. The Patzes were awarded a largely symbolic $2.7 million judgment.
Hernandez, 64, became a suspect in 2012, when cops received a tip that he’d confessed during a prayer group to killing a child in New York.
A first trial ended in a hung jury in 2015, and a second one in 2017 that landed him a murder conviction was overturned by an appeals court in July.
Hernandez’s lawyers insist that he’s an innocent man and that delusions he suffered as part of his mental illness drove his confessions to the heinous crime.
With Post wires
