NEW YORK _ Pedro Hernandez, an intellectually limited former bodega worker, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison on Tuesday for killing Etan Patz, bringing to a climax a case that haunted parents and police alike for 37 years since the 6-year-old's disappearance in 1979.
Hernandez, 56, of Maple Shade, N.J., was convicted based on a disputed confession in which he said he strangled the boy in the basement of the Soho bodega where he worked and left the body in a box near a trash bin _ setting off a frenzied search, a national movement to find missing children and a mystery that lasted nearly four decades.
When Etan's father, Stanley Patz, with his wife, Julie, beside him, stood to address Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley at Tuesday's sentencing and denounced his son's convicted killer, Hernandez did not appear to meet the dad's glare.
"Pedro Hernandez, after all these years we finally know what dark secret you had locked in your heart," Patz said. "You took our precious child and threw him in the garbage.
"We will never forgive you, and the god you pray to will never forgive you," added Patz, who then referenced testimony about horrific beatings Hernandez had suffered from his own father. "You are the monster in your nightmares and you'll join your father in hell."
Hernandez confessed after a relative tipped off police in 2012. He gave no motive and the body was never found, but prosecutors _ without evidence _ claimed Hernandez tried to molest Etan.
The defense said Hernandez's confession was a delusion caused by a mental disorder, and tried to blame a convicted child molester who had links to the Patz family.
Detained since 2012, Hernandez was convicted in February after his second monthslong trial. The first ended in an 11-1 deadlock for conviction in 2015. Tuesday's sentencing unfolded in a courtroom packed with Patz relatives, news media and former jurors from both trials. Hernandez's wife and daughter were not inside the courtroom.
Hernandez, who has a low IQ, declined to speak to Wiley, but defense lawyer Harvey Fishbein said his client had asked him to say two things on his behalf _ he felt bad for the Patzes but wasn't the one who killed Etan.
"He wanted to express his deep sympathies to the Patz family over the disappearance of their child," Fishbein said, "but he also wanted me to make it quite clear that he is an innocent man that had nothing to do with the disappearance of Etan."
Fishbein also pledged an appeal, complaining that the judge had deprived his client of a fair trial. His co-counsel, Alice Fontier, said that like the Patzes, her client's family had been destroyed.
"There can be no just sentence where there isn't justice," Fontier said. "... This family has been destroyed. It has been destroyed by police and prosecutors' endless pursuit of a guilty verdict."
Wiley said he believed the jurors who thought Hernandez was guilty got it right. Even though Hernandez had no criminal record from before or after Etan's death, Wiley rejected any argument that his clean record in the decades he kept the crime a secret called for leniency.
"It does not," said the judge. "His silence caused the Patz family indescribable anguish."
Wiley imposed concurrent sentences of 25 years to life on Hernandez for murder and kidnapping. He will serve a minimum of 25 years before being eligible for parole.
In a news conference after the sentencing, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said the Patz case reflected his office's commitment to never forget the victims of cold cases, and Stanley Patz said he attributed Hernandez's failure to show remorse to his lawyers' false hopes of a reversal.
"He should have, but we know who this person is," Patz said. "He doesn't have feelings like the rest of us. "
