The New York City police commissioner says a person who's in custody has implicated himself in the disappearance and death of Etan Patz 33 years ago.

Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a statement that further details would be released later Thursday.

The 6-year-old vanished while walking to a Manhattan bus stop in 1979.

The April excavation of a Manhattan basement yielded no obvious human remains and little forensic evidence that would help solve the decades-long mystery of what happened to Patz.