Othniel Miller
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Etan Patz may never have made it off Prince Street.
The 6-year-old boy, whose disappearance in 1979 riveted New Yorkers and sparked an international manhunt, might be buried in a SoHo basement — just steps from his family’s home — where a creepy local handyman kept a woodworking shop, authorities said yesterday.
Stunning new evidence developed in recent weeks suggests that Etan’s remains were hidden at 127 Prince St., authorities said.
Othniel Miller, now 75, had his workshop there and had given Etan a dollar for helping out the night before the youngster vanished on May 25, 1979, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
Etan — whose photo was the first of missing-kid alerts to be put on the side of a milk carton — was last seen walking from his home on his way to a bus stop at Prince and West Broadway for the ride to school. It was the first time he was allowed to make the trip on his own.
His route would have taken him right past Miller’s workshop site.
The boy was officially declared dead in 2001, and District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. reopened the case in 2010.
Police actually had Miller in their sights shortly after Etan vanished, when they spotted a freshly poured concrete floor in his shop. But they never dug it up after Miller told them they’d have to pay for a new one.
Miller was married and had a 9-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son at the time Etan vanished, said a relative. Divorced since 1986, the Jamaican immigrant now lives on Quincy Street in Brooklyn with his daughter. He has not been charged and is not in custody — although sources called him “the target” of the probe.
Tony Miller, 33, a truck driver in Bed-Stuy, said his grandfather never spoke of the case.
“He’s just a hard-working man,” Miller’s grandson said. “He helped me a lot — set me straight. I don’t think he could have done anything like this.”
Miller said his grandfather suffered a stroke two years ago.
Othniel Miller remained holed up yesterday in his apartment, where he was visited by FBI agents.
The potential breakthrough came after probers interviewed Etan’s mother, Julie, who told them they should talk to Miller again.
After questioning him, the feds put “scent pads” — which absorb and retain odors — in the basement and then brought the pads to an FBI cadaver dog.
The dog “got a hit,” which means the pooch got the scent of human remains from the pads, sources said.
The feds then brought the dog to the basement and got another hit, the sources said.
“They let this dog loose and it sniffed around and went in the boiler room,” said Stephen Kuzma, 78, the building manager at 127 Prince.
“For a couple of weeks now, I’ve had FBI agents checking in and I took them to the basement.”
Agents went back to Miller, who blurted out, “What if the body was moved?” after being told of the dog’s discovery.
Miller originally fell under suspicion because he worked out of a nearby building that housed the city’s first gay-erotic art gallery.
Cops noticed the new cement basement floor and talked about using jackhammers before deciding it wasn’t worth the cost.
Miller also had what cops believed at the time was a credible alibi, sources said.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne acknowledged yesterday that the space had been looked at before, and described the new search as a painstaking process.
“There will be a systematic removal of things like drywall and eventually the digging up of the basement, digging up the concrete and getting to the dirt underneath, and a careful screening of that material,” which will be stored at a special landfill, he said.
Browne said forensics experts from the FBI and NYPD will work around the clock in the 16-by-62 foot space.
A team of 40 investigators from the FBI, the NYPD and the Manhattan DA’s Office started clearing the basement of the SoHo building at about 8:30 a.m. yesterday searching for evidence and the possible remains.
Last night, Browne said digging had begun on the north wall, but nothing was found.
Investigators are looking for human remains, clothing or other personal effects that could lead to Etan’s identification, he said.
“Obviously, we’re hopeful that we’ll find evidence in the disappearance of Etan Patz. There is obviously probable cause that exists for us to be here,” said FBI spokesman Tim Flannelly at the scene.
Cops and FBI agents swarmed the neighborhood surrounding the seven-story building and cordoned off a section of Prince between West Broadway and Wooster Street, a block filled with galleries, lofts and clothing boutiques.
“Time doesn’t matter to us and the NYPD in investigations like this. He was 6 when he disappeared and we’re not going to quit,” Flannelly said.
“We are hoping we can provide some sense of closure to the investigation and to the family.”
Miller’s family was not aware that he was being targetd in the revived investigation, said a woman who answered the phone at the home of his daughter, Angella, last night.
She identified herself as Miller’s granddaughter, and said the family has little contact with him.
Etan’s parents, Stan and Julie, declined comment yesterday. Late last night, Etan’s drained-looking dad stepped outside to post a sign on their door asking for privacy.
Lisa Cohen, author of “After Etan,” a 2009 book about the case, told The Post she talked to Stan Patz yesterday and he was taking a cautious attitude toward the new disclosures.
“There have been so many ‘Aha!’ moments in this case but they don’t pan out. He is taking a wait-and-see posture. If they find something, they find something,” Cohen said.
For years after Etan vanished, Stan Patz, a commercial photographer, tirelessly distributed photos of his son in hopes of keeping their search on the public’s mind.
Images of the smiling, blond boy were plastered all over New York, and also on milk cartons.
Milk-carton pictures soon became a regular tactic in missing-child cases.
“When this case broke in 1979, it probably gained the kind of attraction we hadn’t seen since the Lindbergh kidnapping,” said Browne. “So this was a very high-profile case. It was before the coverage by cable TV of missing children around the country.”
Investigators have apparently backed away from the decades-old assumption that Etan was abducted by convicted pedophile José Ramos.
Ramos, now in prison in Dallas, Pa., in an unrelated case, was never charged in Etan’s disappearance.
Additional reporting by Geogett Roberts, Reuven Fenton, Jessica Simeone, Josh Margolin and Bob Fredericks