Etan’s disappearance was an anomaly. Reichler moved to Callicoon Center, which seemed to have almost as many horses as Soho had cobblestones.
“There was no place to eat and do anything,” Reichler continues. That was okay with her. Working for legal services, she got involved in helping victims of domestic violence, directly representing battered women. “I was very active statewide,” she says, a member of the board of directors of the state Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “Our office eventually moved to Kingston.”
Working in Kingston in the mid-1980s, Reichler got a call from Mario Cuomo. The governor cared about children. He gave her the mandate to start and become the head of his new state Commission on Child Support. The governor’s appointment paid dividends. Reichler helped to draft what eventually became the state’s Child Support Standard Act. Her office was at the World Trade Center.
In Soho, Etan Patz’s face was still attached to flyers on utility poles. The case received national attention. But Reichler no longer got to Soho much. She was too busy working for the governor. But she didn’t forget Etan Patz, and neither did anyone else. It was still an open case.
Sort of a start-up person
After finishing her work with the state, Reichler became a Family Court judge in Manhattan, where she put her expertise to work for the city, judging child support and custody cases. “I never flame out, I flame up,” she says in explanation of her many career turns. “I’m sort of a start-up person.”
She settled in New Paltz, where she was approached to run for town justice. “I really wanted to do that,” she remembers. “It was a good way to pay back. I ran like crazy! I went and knocked on 1600 doors.” She was elected.
In 2004, she found herself in the middle of the gay-marriage controversy. Two Unitarian ministers in the village, the first community in the country to legally approve of gay marriage, had performed same-sex marriages. The state indicted the two. Justice Reichler disagreed and dropped the charges. “I’m feeling great,” Rev. Kay A. Greenleaf, one of the ministers, was quoted by The New York Times as saying on hearing the news. “It is just wonderful.”
Reichler decided to step down when her term was up. It was once again time to move on. “I liked the defendants, the court officers, everybody,” she says, but adds, “You should always be doing something you want to do. If it isn’t, move onto something that is energizing.”
Reichler has a passion for knitting, and now conducts several area classes teaching the art. She is also very involved with the Life Time Learning Institute.
No matter how far you go or where you are involved, being even on the periphery of the biggest missing person’s case in New York City history is going to follow you. When the New York Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation began their April 2012 forensic dig of the building in Soho that had once housed Reichler’s playgroup, reporters began calling her about Etan Patz.
Talking to the parents and the now-adult members of the playgroup — Patz would now have been 40 years if he had lived — Reichler says that none of them could recall a feeling of dread back then. They did not believe that Etan would not come back alive. “We don’t remember being all that affected,” she says.
That all changed with Hernandez’s confession.
“I wondered myself how easy it would have been to put [Etan] in the garbage on Memorial Day weekend,” she says.
Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. now needs to prove in a Manhattan court that Hernandez did what he confessed to. Without corroborating evidence and considering Hernandez has a history of mental illness, that might not be so easy to do. If the court finds Hernandez is so mentally ill that he cannot help in his own defense, he won’t go to trial. He’ll be committed to a state hospital.
Fred Rosen is an author of crime stories. His latest book is “Trails of Death: The True Story of Gary Hilton, the National Forest Serial Killer.” His website is fredrosen.com.
