Hello,
I'm the author of the recently released "AFTER ETAN: The Missing Child Case That Held America Captive" (Grand Central, May 2009). This is the first book ever in thirty years on the case. I'm a former "60 Minutes" producer - I did all the longform television coverage on the Patz case, including the only interview ever with Jose Ramos, the man found responsible for Etan's death.
To finally tell this story, I had complete access and authorization from the very private Patz family, the investigators, and almost everyone else who covered the case. I can finally tell about how the Patz family endured a parent's worst nightmare, then the crazies and the psychics and the hate mail (!); the prosecutor who escaped near death and pursued his suspect out of jurisdiction to finally lock him away
for a DIFFERENT child molestation; the undercover operation behind prison walls where the serial pedophile finally spilled his guts - twists and turns that took the whole thirty years to unravel. It's one of the greatest detective thriller's I've ever heard, and it's all true. AND it's still going on.
As Ernie Allen, the head of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, told me, its also an important story, about the birth of a movement. PLUS a mobilized public opinion could keep the bad guy behind bars after more than two decades in prison, he's getting out in three years. As the book explains, he's never been criminally charged for this, even though a civil judge found him responsible for Etan's death. That could change this fallo with a new New York DA, and one of the candidates, a tough woman named Leslie Crocker Snyder, wants to take the case on.
This book lays out the evidence, and the case, for the first time. Read the book and you can make up your mind for yourself, but it will answer so many questions I see on this forum and that people have been asking me throughout the 20 years I've covered this case.
see
http://afteretan.com for more info or go to
http://tinyurl.com/dzvslc to buy the book on Amazon.
Thanks for your attention to this important case,
Lisa R. Cohen
