May 25, 1979, I was seven. Etan Patz was six. My walks to school on Staten Island changed immediately. We used to "cut through the woods" in Richmondtown to get to P.S. 23. That stopped. The school had an assembly in the auditorium to teach us about warning signs from predators. The next year, a 10-year-old girl named Lorraine Pacifico was murdered in nearby Oakwood. Those were formative years. Dark moments in an otherwise blessed childhood.

One day before the 33rd anniversary of the disappearance of Etan Patz, police say an individual in custody has made statements "implicating himself" in Etan's "disappearance and death." Law enforcement sources reportedly say Pedro Hernandez of Camden, New Jersey confessed to suffocating the six-year-old boy and leaving his body in a box in a Manhattan alley.

On May 25, 1979, Etan disappeared in SoHo on his first trip alone to school. The case helped give rise to the missing-children's movement that puts faces on milk cartons. Hernandez reportedly worked at a convenience store in the neighborhood where Patz lived, and had been considered a person of interest in the past.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is expected to give a briefing on the case later today. What's your reaction to the apparent break in the case today? What questions do you want answered by investigators? How did the disappearance of Etan Patz affect you or your family in 1979? What impact has this case had over the last three decades?

Send your thoughts using the link above.