Pedro Hernandez, a former store clerk who told the police that he murdered Etan Patz as the boy headed to school in 1979, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison on Tuesday, bringing to a close a missing-child case that bedeviled investigators for decades and forever changed the way American parents protected their children.

It took two trials, each of which lasted five months, for prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office to persuade a jury to convict Mr. Hernandez of kidnapping and murder. His first trial ended two years ago in a hung jury after one juror held out for acquittal.

On Tuesday, Etan’s parents, Stan and Julie Patz, stood and spoke inside a packed Manhattan courtroom before Mr. Hernandez was sentenced. Mr. Patz turned toward Mr. Hernandez and said: “Pedro Hernandez, after all these years, we finally know what dark secret you had locked in your heart. You took our precious child and threw him in the garbage. I will never forgive you. The God you pray to will never forgive you.”

Mr. Hernandez stared straight ahead, his face betraying no emotion. He declined to speak, but his lawyers, Harvey Fishbein and Alice L. Fontier, rose to proclaim his innocence and vowed to appeal.</s>Pedro Hernandez was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years to life in prison for killing Etan Patz. The 56-year-old former store clerk was also given 25 years to life for kidnapping, with both sentences to run concurrently.

It was a different time when the 6-year-old walked alone to catch the school bus in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood on May 25, 1979. His disappearance sparked decades of investigation and helped create a generation of wary parents.

Hernandez confessed to the murder in 2012, saying he lured the little boy with the promise of a soda. He said once he got the child into the basement of the neighborhood store where Hernandez worked, he choked him and left his body in a box on the curb.

Patz's body has never been found. Hernandez's lawyers argued their client is mentally ill and made false confessions under police pressure.

A previous trial for Hernandez ended in a mistrial in 2015. In February, he was found guilty of second-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping.

Patz became one of the first missing children to be pictured on milk cartons. And his case helped launch a national hotline for missing children. The anniversary of his disappearance, May 25, is designated as National Missing Children's Day.</s>(JTA) — A former grocery store clerk convicted of the 1979 kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Pedro Hernandez, 56, of New Jersey, was sentenced Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Hernandez, who was found guilty in February after two trials, was given the maximum allowable sentence. He will not be eligible for parole for at least 25 years.

He did not look at Etan’s parents, Stan and Julie Patz, who were in the courtroom as he received his sentence, The Associated Press reported. Hernandez did not speak to the court.

“Pedro Hernandez, after all these years, we finally know what dark secret you had locked in your heart. I will never forgive you,” Stan Patz said in court before the sentencing, according to the AP. “The god you pray to will never forgive you. You are the monster in your own nightmares.”

Etan, who was Jewish, was one of the first missing children to be featured on the side of milk cartons. He disappeared in May 1979 while walking to his school bus stop two blocks from his home in the downtown SoHo section of New York for the first time by himself. Hernandez, then 18, worked nearby at a grocery store.

Hernandez was arrested based on a tip from a brother-in-law. He confessed in 2012 to having strangled Etan in the basement of the grocery store after luring him there with a soda, then putting the boy’s body in a box, which he left in an alley.

Hernandez’s defense attorneys said at the trial that Hernandez is mentally ill and the confessions were coerced. He also reportedly has a very low IQ.

Jose Ramos, a convicted pedophile, was declared responsible for Etan’s death in a 2004 civil case.

At the first trial of Hernandez, the defense argued that the evidence pointed to Ramos, not Hernandez. In 2004, Justice Barbara Kapnick declared Ramos liable by default after he declined to answer questions about the murder. He was questioned while serving time for raping young boys in Pennsylvania.</s>The former delicatessen worker convicted of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in Tuesday.

Pedro Hernandez, 56, was sentenced nearly 40 years after the boy’s disappearance, an event that ultimately helped raise national awareness about the plight of abducted children.

A jury convicted Hernandez of murder and kidnapping in February. The sentence was handed down in Manhattan State Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon. Patz's parents, Julie and Stanley, were in court for the sentencing.

Patz vanished as he walked alone for the first time to a school bus stop in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood on May 25, 1979. He would become one of the first missing children to appear on the side of a milk carton seeking information.

For more than three decades, the case endured as one of the country’s most infamous missing child cases until police arrested Hernandez in May 2012 after receiving a tip.

Hernandez, who worked in a bodega near the bus stop, confessed to strangling the boy and then leaving his body in a box outside. He reportedly gave investigators a detailed account of the crime.

His lawyers argued that the admission was the result of police coercion as well as mental illness that made it difficult for Hernandez to separate fantasy from reality. Patz’s body was never found, leaving the confession as the key piece of evidence at trial.

The defense also pointed to another man, Jose Ramos, a convicted pedophile who was long considered a suspect in the crime. Ramos, who is in prison, had a relationship with a woman hired to walk Patz home from school.

A previous trial ended in a mistrial in 2015 when a single juror out of 12 refused to convict Hernandez after weeks of deliberations, prompting prosecutors to retry him.</s>The bodega clerk convicted for the 1979 murder of New York first-grader Etan Patz was sentenced on Tuesday to 25 years to life in prison. Pedro Hernandez, 56, was convicted of kidnapping and murder in February, nearly 40 years after the 6-year-old disappeared on May 25, 1979.

Start the conversation, or Read more at WEHT.</s>(UPI) — The man who murdered 6-year-old Etan Patz in New York City nearly 40 years ago will spend at least a quarter-century in prison, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Pedro Hernandez, who was convicted of the crime in February, received a sentence of 25 years to life for the boy’s death in a Manhattan courthouse on Tuesday.

Hernandez, 56, was found guilty of the boy’s presumed death based on what was viewed as a videotaped confession to police and prosecutors — an admission defense attorneys argued resulted from stress and persuasive detectives during interrogation.

Patz’s body was never found after he disappeared on his way to elementary school in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City in May 1979. Tuesday, his mother, and father were present in the courtroom.

“After all these years we finally know what dark secret you had locked in your heart,” father Stan Patz said. “You are the monster in your nightmares. The God you pray to will never forgive you.”

“The defendant kept a terrible secret for 33 years,” Judge Maxwell Wiley said. “His silence caused the Patz family indescribable anguish and served to compound their grief.”

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., reopened the cold case in 2010 at the request of the Patz family. Renewed publicity from the case led to Hernandez’s arrest in 2012, and ultimately his conviction. Hernandez was a high school dropout who worked at a store near the boy’s bus stop at the time of his disappearance. His first prosecution in 2015 ended in a mistrial.

In the videotaped confessions, Hernandez admitted to luring Patz into the basement of the store and choking him to death. He claimed the boy was still alive when he left him in a nearby alleyway and denied he was sexually assaulted.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Hernandez continued to maintain his innocence.

“He had two things he wanted me to say,” defense attorney Harvey Fishbein said in court. “He wants me to express the deep sympathy he has for the Patz family but also to make clear that he’s an innocent man.”

Patz was one of the first missing children in the United States to appear on a milk carton. He was legally declared dead in 2001.

“Etan was never forgotten,” Vance said at Hernandez’s sentencing Tuesday. “We refused to let him disappear into history because we were committed to taking another hard look at this case, and that hard look paid off.”</s>The man convicted of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison Tuesday, nearly 40 years after he kidnapped the boy.

Pedro Hernandez, 56, of Maple Shade, New Jersey, appeared before Justice Maxwell Wiley in Manhattan state court. He was given the maximum sentence for the kidnapping and murder.

“We will never forgive you,” Stanley Patz, Etan’s father, said in a statement to the judge. “The God you pray to will never forgive you.”

Former bodega worker Hernandez confessed in 2012 to strangling Patz to death after luring him into a SoHo basement on May 25, 1979. His lawyers claimed he hallucinated killing Patz, and a jury was deadlocked 11-1.

A retrial began in October 2016 and the second jury found Hernandez guilty of murder on Feb. 14, 2017. His sentencing was postponed after it was revealed that multiple jurors knew that members of the previous jury were attending the trial along with Patz's family.

Defense lawyers had attempted to get a hearing on whether the jury deliberations were affected by the known presence of the former jurors, but Wiley ruled earlier in April that the information wasn’t sufficient to show the verdict was contaminated, and set the date for Hernandez’s sentencing.</s>Almost four decades after first-grader Etan Patz set out for school and ended up at the heart of one of America’s most influential missing-child cases, a former store clerk convicted of killing him was sentenced on Tuesday to at least 25 years in prison.

Pedro Hernandez’s sentencing was the culmination of a long quest to hold someone criminally accountable in a case that affected police practices, parenting and the nation’s consciousness of missing children.

Etan’s parents, Stanley and Julie Patz, attended the sentencing and said they will “never forgive” Hernandez for what he did.

“Pedro Hernandez, after all these years we finally knows what dark secret you had locked in your heart,” Stanley Patz said. “… The god you pray to will never forgive you. You are the monster in your nightmares, and you’ll join your father in hell.”

Hernandez didn’t look at them.

Defense lawyer Harvey Fishbein said Hernandez was reluctant to stand up in court and speak but had two things he wanted him to say: He wanted to express deep sympathies for the Patz family, but he also wanted to make sure it was clear he’s an innocent man and had nothing to do with Etan’s disappearance.

Hernandez was a teenager working at a convenience shop in Etan’s Manhattan neighborhood when the boy vanished in 1979, on the first day he was allowed to walk alone to his school bus stop.

Hernandez, who’s from Maple Shade, New Jersey, confessed to choking Etan. But his lawyers have said he’s mentally ill and his confession was false, and they’ve vowed to appeal his conviction.

Etan was among the first missing children pictured on milk cartons. His case contributed to an era of fear among American families, making anxious parents more protective of kids who many once allowed to roam and play unsupervised in their neighborhoods.

His own parents’ advocacy helped to establish a national missing-children hotline and to make it easier for law enforcement agencies to share information about such cases. The May 25 anniversary of his disappearance became National Missing Children’s Day.

From the start, the 6-year-old’s case spurred a huge manhunt and an enduring, far-flung investigation. But no trace of him has ever been found. A civil court declared him dead in 2001.

Hernandez, now 56 years old, didn’t become a suspect until police got a 2012 tip that he had made remarks many years before about having killed a child in New York.

Hernandez then confessed to police, saying he’d lured Etan into the store’s basement by promising a soda, then choked him because “something just took over me.” He said he put Etan, still alive, in a box and left it with curbside trash.

“I’m being honest. I feel bad what I did,” Hernandez said in a recorded statement.

His lawyers say he confessed falsely because of a mental illness that makes him confuse reality with imagination. He also has a very low IQ.

The defense also pointed to another suspect, a convicted child molester whom some investigators and prosecutors — and even Etan’s parents — pursued for years. That man made incriminating statements to authorities years ago about Etan but denied killing him and has since insisted he wasn’t involved in the boy’s disappearance. He was never charged.

Hernandez’s February conviction came in a retrial. His first trial ended in a jury deadlock in 2015.</s>NEW YORK -- Almost four decades after first-grader Etan Patz set out for school and ended up at the heart of one of America’s most influential missing-child cases, a former store clerk convicted of killing him was sentenced to at least 25 years in prison. 



In a few angry words, Etan’s father condemned the convicted man.

“Pedro Hernandez, after all these years, we finally know what dark secret you had locked in your heart,” Stan Patz said. “I will never forgive you. The god you pray to will never forgive you. You are the monster in your nightmares.” 



His wife, Julie Patz, wiped tears from her eyes as she witnessed the culmination of a long quest to hold someone accountable for their son’s disappearance. The case affected police practices, parenting and the nation’s consciousness of missing children. 

Hernandez, 56, didn’t look at the Patzes, speak or react as he got the maximum allowable sentence: 25 years to life in prison, meaning he won’t be eligible for parole until he has served the quarter-century.

The lead defense lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, told the court Hernandez wanted to express deep sympathy to the Patzes but also to say “he’s an innocent man and he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Etan Patz.” 



Hernandez was a teenager working at a convenience shop in Etan’s Manhattan neighborhood when the boy vanished in 1979, on the first day he was allowed to walk alone to his school bus stop. 



Hernandez, who’s from Maple Shade, New Jersey, confessed to choking Etan. But his lawyers have said he’s mentally ill and his confession was false, and they vowed to appeal his conviction. 



In a sign of the case’s impact on the law enforcement officials and everyday people enmeshed in it, the courtroom audience Tuesday included Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., police officers who worked the case and a half-dozen ex-jurors.

Etan was among the first missing children pictured on milk cartons. His case contributed to an era of fear among American families, making anxious parents more protective of kids who many once allowed to roam and play unsupervised in their neighborhoods. 



“Through this painful and utterly horrific real-life story, we came to realize how easily our children could disappear,” said Vance, a Democrat who made a 2009 campaign promise to revisit the case if elected. 



The Patzes’ advocacy helped to establish a national missing-children hotline and to make it easier for law enforcement agencies to share information about such cases. The May 25 anniversary of Etan’s disappearance became National Missing Children’s Day. 



Still, Stan Patz said, he and his wife had doubted they would ever find out what happened to their child because there were “so many false leads, so many blind alleys. So many years went by.” 



“Now,” he said after the sentencing, “I know what the face of evil looks like.”



From the start, Etan’s case spurred a huge manhunt and an enduring, far-flung investigation. But no trace of Etan was ever found. A civil court declared him dead in 2001.

Hernandez didn’t become a suspect until police got a 2012 tip that he’d made remarks years earlier about having killed a child in New York.

Hernandez then confessed to police, saying he’d lured Etan into the store’s basement by promising a soda and choked him because “something just took over me.” He said he put Etan, still alive, in a box and left it with curbside trash. 



“I’m being honest. I feel bad what I did,” Hernandez said in a recorded statement. 



His lawyers say he confessed falsely because of a mental illness that makes him confuse reality with imagination. He also has a very low IQ.

They also filed a motion to throw out the conviction, arguing jurors who knew members of the first jury were in the courtroom audience and may have swayed their decision, CBS New York reports. The judge rejected the motion.

“Unfortunately in the end, we don’t believe this will resolve the story of what happened to Etan,” Hernandez’s attorney, Fishbein, said.

The attorneys have vowed to appeal.

The defense pointed to another suspect, a convicted child molester whom some investigators and prosecutors - and even Etan’s parents - pursued for years. That man made incriminating statements years ago about Etan but denied killing him and has since insisted he wasn’t involved in the boy’s disappearance. He was never charged.

Hernandez’s first trial in 2015 ended in a hung jury, but the 56-year-old was found guilty in the second trial of the case in February.

“I’m really grateful that this jury finally came back with what I have known for a long time,” Etan’s father, Stan Patz, said at the time, CBS New York reports. “That this man, Pedro Hernandez, is guilty of doing something really terrible so many years ago.”

Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley said Tuesday he’d found prosecutors’ case against Hernandez compelling. Hernandez, he said, “kept a terrible secret for 33 years.”</s>The man convicted of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz will be sentenced Tuesday, nearly 40 years after he kidnapped the boy.

Pedro Hernandez, 56, of Maple Shade, New Jersey, will appear before Justice Maxwell Wiley in Manhattan state court. He faces a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison for the kidnapping and murder.

Hernandez, a bodega worker at the time of the murder, confessed in 2012 to strangling Patz to death after luring him into a SoHo basement on May 25, 1979. His lawyers claimed he hallucinated killing Patz, and a jury was deadlocked 11-1.

A retrial began in October 2016 and the second jury found Hernandez guilty of murder on Feb. 14.

But his sentencing was postponed after it was revealed that multiple jurors knew that members of the previous jury were attending the trial.

Defense lawyers had attempted to get a hearing on whether the jury deliberations were affected by the known presence of the former jurors, but Wiley ruled earlier this month that information wasn’t sufficient to show the verdict was contaminated, and set the date for Hernandez’s sentencing.
Pedro Hernandez, convicted in February 2017 for the May 25, 1979 death of Etan Patz in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, was sentenced yesterday to 25 years to life imprisonment.