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In the first desperate days after Etan Patz disappeared, scores of neighborhood kids frantically took to their bikes to help search for the missing SoHo 6-year-old.
But one 19-year-old, known for his explosive temper, stood alone in front of the corner store where he worked, silently watching the futile efforts of his friends.
He was the boy’s killer, bodega stock boy Pedro Hernandez.
“Every day, we were all out looking for Etan — everyone except Pedro,” said Roberto Monticello, who was 16 at the time.
“We would meet every morning, our posse with our bikes, at the jewelry store across the street from the deli” where Hernandez worked — which was plastered with photos of Etan.
They were “inside, outside, everywhere you looked,” he said. “Pedro would just stand outside, looking at us, watching. Looking back, it seems strange. Everyone was searching. But he didn’t.”
Monticello, along with several Hernandez relatives, said the suspect always had a dark side and was full of simmering rage.
“He was tightly coiled — you wouldn’t want to get him angry,” Monticello said.
“He was the kind of guy you just knew, even as a kid, that one day he’ll lose it. He’ll just blow up, hit someone, stab them, whatever,” he said.
“But kill a child? I never would have thought that of him.”
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Hernandez, now 51, was charged yesterday with second-degree murder for allegedly killing Patz after the boy’s disappearance on May 25, 1979.
Hernandez — who police and relatives said is HIV-positive — is accused of strangling the boy in the basement of the bodega.
In an eerie twist, just days after his son’s disappearance, Stanley Patz photographed the bus stop where his boy was headed the day he vanished — and the corner bodega appears in the background. The father shot the photo, which was posted on the Web site afteretan.com, to help investigators, including psychics, track down his boy.
Back then, nobody thought to suspect Hernandez in the case, even though he had “a lot of pent-up anger,” Monticello said.
“We all thought Jose Ramos did it,’’ Monticello said, referring to the pedophile and longtime suspect now in a Pennsylvania prison for molesting kids. “Jose was the one you kept your eye on, the one that disappeared after. Nobody really even thought of Pedro.”
Monticello said Hernandez stayed around for only a few weeks after Etan’s disappearance before bolting for New Jersey.
The brooding Hernandez — whose family members told cops they believe is gay — had been working at the deli with his sister Luz’s husband, Juan Santana, at the time, Monticello said.
“Pedro wasn’t a friendly guy, he didn’t smile very much,” Monticello said. “He was 19, but he looked older, and he wasn’t a guy you wanted to really hang around with.”
Still, Hernandez often was asked to join in neighborhood pickup volleyball games because “we needed 12 people to play,” Monticello explained.
Hernandez, one of 12 children, originally arrived in New Jersey from Puerto Rico as a child, settling in the Camden area, his sister Lucy Suarez told The Post.
The family was raised in a strictly religious Catholic household — their father, Esteban, was a church usher — said Suarez, who is 11 years younger than Pedro.
“Our parents were very strict, and over-protective. We went to Catholic school, we were straight-A students,’’ she said.
But the troubled Pedro dropped out of high school. At some point, he moved to New York City.
As a teen, Pedro was quiet and a loner and stayed that way through adulthood, Suarez and other family members said.
“He really kept to himself, and didn’t talk a lot,” she said.
Shortly after Etan disappeared, Hernandez returned to New Jersey.
In the days after, he became violently ill — with vomiting and diarrhea, law-enforcement sources said.
Hernandez would eventually get married and had two kids, Nathalie, now 27, and Peter, 28. He and first wife Daisy divorced, and Hernandez is estranged from his kids and Daisy, relatives said.
Relatives also said Hernandez had a bad temper and smashed windows.
Hernandez’s ex-wife and his daughter — wearing dark glasses and crying as she walked into her Camden-area home — declined to talk about him yesterday.
Hernandez later remarried. He, his second wife, Rosemary, and their 23-year-old daughter, Becky, lived in a rented home on a tree-lined street in Maple Shade, NJ.
Relatives said he struggled through his adult life. In his 30s, Hernandez went to work for a dress company but got injured on the job and started popping prescription meds, Suarez said.
In the late 1990s, Hernandez was diagnosed as bipolar, according to Suarez and another sister, Margarita Lopez.
“One day he was very happy, and the next day he wasn’t,” Suarez said. “We really didn’t know what was wrong with him. He lived a very private life. He would never tell us if he was broke or sick.”
He also has cancer and four years ago was hospitalized and diagnosed with HIV, Suarez said.
Also, the family has been plagued by financial problems for years. Public records show a string of liens and judgments and at least two bankruptcies.
Hernandez had previously confided in family members, as far back as 1981, that he had “done a bad thing and killed a child” in New York.
“I really think [the cops] did him a favor. It’s probably a relief for him that it’s finally out,” Saurez said.
Monticello said he hopes Hernandez’s arrest brings Etan’s parents some peace.
“All those years ago, they were out in the streets all the time, walking up and back,” Monticello recalled.
“They were destroyed. They aged 10 years in front of us in those weeks.”
Additional reporting by Natasha Velez, Frank Rosario and Kate Kowsh