A 7-Year-Old's Cold Trail
NYPD Officers Haunted by Search for 7-Year-Old Boy in East New York
On a snowy night in January, 7-year-old Patrick Alford went missing. Within 90 minutes, Jeffrey Maddrey began to search.
Four months later, he's still looking.
Mr. Maddrey, 39, is the commanding officer of the precinct covering the crime-ridden East New York section of Brooklyn. He and the precinct's chief of detectives, Lt. John Tennant, 44, have seen it all. Yet the Alford case haunts them, and they now regard it as the most important in their decades-long careers.
Police said it is among the most intense searches in recent history with 9,100 apartments at 214 buildings canvassed and 14,000 people interviewed.
They've even devoted a situation room to Patrick at the precinct house. Maps and photographs cover the walls. On the main table, a chart connects at least 40 people related to the case, from Patrick's mother to a member of the Bonanno crime family.
At the top of the chart is a photo that has been distributed throughout the city: a little boy with his shirt buttoned to the top and a breakout smile. His photo was shown twice on "America's Most Wanted," though police said it generated few leads.
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