NEW YORK â€"  They are looking for evidence of death in a SoHo basement that once bustled with life.

Photos emerged yesterday that show beaming kids in the basement of 127 Prince St., where FBI investigators have been searching for evidence in the disappearance 33 years ago of Etan Patz.

The cellar that police now believe may hold the answers to the city's most heart-wrenching mystery was a space transformed by industrious parents from a commercial cellar to a bright playground.

“We all got together and put down vinyl tiles on the floor and painted the walls,” said Donald Gangemi. “We wound up with 13 kids.”

The parents, lacking community facilities, chipped in to renovate the space, donated by an adjacent art gallery.

But by 1979, the basement was also the domain of Othniel Miller, the now-75-year-old handyman known for doing odd jobs around the neighborhood who emerged this past week as a prime suspect in the case.

Click to read more from the New York Post