Justice, delayed

Slate has an article by Rachael Levy and Abby Ohlheiser about an old crime finally revealed:

A law enforcement official tells The New York Times that a suspect in the 1979 disappearance of six-year-old Etan Patz has confessed to strangling the boy, and then wrapping his body in a bag and putting it in a box in a downtown Manhattan building. News of the confession follows the official announcement that the NYPD had taken a suspect in the three-decade-old case into custody.
The man in question is reportedly Pedro Hernandez, a Camden, New Jersey resident who, in 1979, worked in a bodega near where the boy vanished. Hernandez, who the Times reports was very emotional during his taped confession, had been considered a suspect during the decades following the boy's disappearance although it was not immediately clear what made him the object of authorities' interest.
Patz disappeared from his home exactly 33 years ago as of Friday, when his parents let him walk alone from their SoHo apartment in Manhattan to his school bus stop. In 2001, Etan was declared legally dead.
Investigators had considered the prime suspect in the Patz case to be Jose Ramos, who dated one of Etan’s babysitters around the time Etan went missing and who is a convicted child molester. Ramos is currently serving time in Pennsylvania on another case, but he once admitted that he was with Etan the day he disappeared. Ramos denied abducting or killing the boy.
In 2004 a Manhattan judge ruled Ramos responsible for Etan’s death, largely for his refusal to contest the case.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said Monday that the search for evidence in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz ended without the discovery of any "obvious" human remains, CNN reports. FBI experts, however, are not done with their investigation and plan to do another check of the basement to make sure nothing was overlooked.
Sources tell ABC News that the most promising discovery— a "stain of interest"— tested negative for blood in initial tests and that human hair found during the search was not blond, the color of Etan’s hair.
The FBI, however, is asking everyone not to read too much into the evidence, or apparent lack thereof, at this time. "The process of removing material, sorting it and analyzing it proceeds at a deliberate pace," the agency said in a statement.
Investigators haven’t publicly said what led them to search the basement, which is less than a block from the Patz family home. But a law enforcement official, speaking under anonymity, told the Associated Press that the building housed the workspace of a carpenter who was thought to have been friendly with Etan at the time of his disappearance.
Meanwhile, The New York Times notes that the basement being searched is along the route Etan is thought to have taken the day he went missing. The basement was also a known meeting place for sexual liaisons at the time.

Rico says it's good that someone is going to finally take the fall for this one. (And Etan Patz has the dubious distinction of being the first, though not the last, child to appear on a milk carton...)