After 46 years, a family thought they had closure in the disappearance of their 6

A family photo of missing child Etan Patz courtesy of Stanley Patz. NYPD/AFP/Handout/Getty Images

After 6-year-old Etan Patz vanished on his way to a school bus stop one morning in 1979, his parents, their friends and neighbors frantically scoured the gritty industrial streets and back alleys of Lower Manhattan for miles.

“I remember running around that night going, ‘Did you see this little boy?’” recalled artist and chef Susan Meisel, a longtime SoHo resident. “We were looking in dumpsters. It was a horror.”

The neighborhood surrounding Prince Street in SoHo was a far cry from what it is today – a fashionable hub of high-end art galleries, posh boutiques and trendy restaurants. Back then, its largely vacant, cast-iron industrial buildings were starting to attract young artists. Rusti