A former store clerk was convicted Tuesday of murder in one of the nation’s most haunting missing-child cases, the disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz on the way to the school bus stop 38 years ago.
Pedro Hernandez, who once worked in a convenience store in Etan’s neighborhood, had confessed, but his lawyers said his admissions were the false imaginings of a mentally ill man.
A 2015 jury had deadlocked following 18 days of deliberation, leading to a retrial that spanned more than three months.
This time, the jury deliberated over nine days before finding Hernandez, 56, guilty of murder during a kidnapping, resolving a case that shaped both parenting and law enforcement practices in the United States. Hernandez showed no reaction as jurors delivered their verdict.
“The Patz family has waited a long time, but we’ve finally found some measure of justice for our wonderful little boy, Etan,” said his father, Stanley Patz, choking up as he thanked jurors for reaching the same conclusion that he had: “that this man, Pedro Hernandez, is guilty of doing something really terrible so many years ago.”
He added: “I am truly relieved, and I’ll tell you, it’s about time. It’s about time.”
The verdict spurred tears from some pro-conviction jurors from the first trial, who had attended the second one after their own panel split 11-1 for conviction: “We love you!” the former jurors said of their successors. The lone holdout from the first trial didn’t immediately respond to phone and email messages about the verdict.
The current jury’s foreman, Thomas S. Hoscheid, said deliberations had been difficult, but “we had constructive conversations, based in logic, that were analytical and creative and adaptive, and compassionate.