Pedro Hernandez confesses to killing Etan Patz

According to the new York Times, Pedro Henandez, who is in police custody has confessed to strangling Etan Patz, the boy whose disappearance 33 years ago sparked the movement to put the faces of missing children on milk cartons. Pedro Hernandez, told investigators he then wrapped the 6-year-old's body in a bag and put it in a box in Manhattan. But when he returned later, the box was no longer there, a law enforcement source told the Times. Pedro Hernandez was picked up by the police in Camden, N.J., on Wednesday. Hernandez was apparently very emotional during the confession, which was videotaped. Etan went missing on May 25, 1979, while walking alone to his school bus stop for the first time. The bus stop was a just blocks from his home in New York's SoHo neighborhood. Hernandez had come up on investigators' radar in the past as a handyman who worked in Etan's neighborhood at the time the boy vanished. Further details would be released later today, Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a statement. "Everyone is looking for closure," Roz Radd, who has lived in neighborhood 45 years. "Hopefully, he can tell us where his body is and the family can get some peace." The case received renewed attention in April when a basement was excavated near where Etan disappeared. However, it yielded no obvious human remains and little evidence that could help solve the mystery of what happened to the boy.

Please see our update "Pedro Hernandez arrested and charged with the murder of Etan Patz."