'Dark cloud' of Patz case lingers in SoHo

The SoHo neighborhood has changed dramatically in the 33 years since little Etan Patz vanished on his way to school, but the pall over his death has not dissipated for longtime residents.

"That this child could have been murdered is like this dark cloud," said Andrea Swan, who was 31 when Etan went missing and who still lives at the same SoHo address.

Swan, 64, was shocked Thursday when a reporter told her that Pedro Hernandez, 51, who used to work as a stock clerk at the neighborhood bodega where she went "all the time," had been arrested, charged with killing the 6-year-old boy.

She spoke softly, with a tinge of regret for what her beloved neighborhood has become and nostalgia for the grittier SoHo of yesteryear. She said she had hoped through the decades that someone would be caught. "It hurt me for the parents," said Swan.

On Prince Street, near where Etan lived with his parents, Roberto Monticello, 49, said he remembers Hernandez working at the neighborhood bodega at the time of the boy's disappearance.

Although missing posters were hung in the store, Hernandez did not join the search parties with some other neighborhood adults, Monticello said.

Hernandez was friendly, Monticello said, "but never a friend."

Etan disappeared on his first day going to school by himself, on May 25, 1979.

Etan's disappearance starkly illustrated to the nation how unsafe the streets were becoming for children; he became one of the most well-known missing child cases in U.S. history, one that sparked a national movement to publicize the plight of missing children.

"This was the second biggest disappearance of a child since the Lindbergh kidnapping," said Sean Sweeney, 66, director of the SoHo Alliance, a community group. "It didn't change SoHo as much as it changed the world."

Thursday night, he had words of comfort for the boy's parents Stan and Julie: "Hopefully it will bring closure. The parents were indomitable and relentless in their pursuit to find their child's killer.

"I hope their minds will be at ease."