DALLAS, Pa. — The man long suspected in the 1979 disappearance of a New York City boy was ordered to stand trial Thursday for allegedly misleading police about where he planned to live after his release from prison on child molestation charges.
Jose Antonio Ramos, sporting a long white beard and ponytail, said nothing as he was led into a district judge’s office in northeastern Pennsylvania a day after another man was charged with kidnapping and killing of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
Ramos, 69, was the prime suspect in Patz’s disappearance until earlier this year, when a New Jersey man told police he’d choked the boy to death in the basement below a convenience store. Ramos was even declared legally responsible for the boy’s death by a civil court in 2004.
Brian O’Dwyer, who represents Patz’s family in their civil suit against Ramos, said he remains convinced of Ramos’ guilt.
“Nothing has changed my mind that Jose Ramos is responsible for the abduction and murder of Etan Patz,” O’Dwyer said in a statement Thursday.
Ramos completed a 27-year sentence last week but was immediately arrested upon his release from the State Correctional Institution at Dallas because authorities said he had given them a fake address for where he’d be living.
When New York City police checked out the Bronx address he provided on his Megan’s Law registration form, they found no one living there who knew Ramos. And when police tracked down the cousin whose name Ramos had listed, she told them she hadn’t had any contact with him in 35 years and did not plan to allow him to live with her, New York police Detective James Menton testified Thursday.
Ramos actually was making other arrangements, authorities said.
Letters intercepted by prison officials indicate that Ramos was planning to stay in a New York City hotel with a woman and her grandson, then head to Florida or Brazil, according to testimony.
“He had no intention whatsoever of even going to that building,” Pennsylvania State police Trooper Martin Connors testified, adding that Megan’s Law required Ramos to “have the ability to live at the address he provides.”
In a strange twist, police also found no evidence the grandson claimed by Ramos’ pen pal even existed.
Ramos’ relationship with the woman, Janet Hicks, was unclear, and authorities aren’t sure why she falsely claimed to Ramos that she would bring a boy to live with them. Hicks didn’t return a phone message left by The Associated Press.
Police “really looked into that because they wanted to make sure that no other kid would be harmed by this man,” but “we weren’t able to establish that there was a grandson,” Luzerne County prosecutor Lexie Falvello said outside court. “I think one can infer that he had questionable intentions, if he was making arrangements with a woman and requesting that she bring her grandson along with her, especially given his history.”
Ramos’ public defender, Jonathan Blum, argued for a dismissal of the felony charge, saying that Ramos could have headed to the address he gave police, found out he wasn’t permitted to live there, then given police another address and still be in compliance with Megan’s Law. But Judge James Tupper said Ramos’ jailhouse letters provided evidence of criminal intent to mislead authorities.
After Tupper ordered Ramos to stand trial, Blum tried for a bail reduction — and provided a post office box in Reno, Nev., as the address Ramos would use should he make bail. Tupper kept bail at $75,000 and told Blum he would need to ask the trial court for a reduction.
Around the time of Ramos’ hearing, the man now charged in Patz’s death appeared in a New York City courtroom. Pedro Hernandez’s attorney said his client is mentally ill and made a false confession.