Former clerk convicted of killing 6-year-old boy 38 years ago

In this Nov. 15, 2012, file photo, Pedro Hernandez appears in Manhattan criminal court in New York.
In this Nov. 15, 2012, file photo, Pedro Hernandez appears in Manhattan criminal court in New York.

NEW YORK — A former store clerk was convicted Tuesday of murder in the disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz on the way to the school bus stop 38 years ago.

Pedro Hernandez showed no reaction as jurors delivered their verdict. A 2015 jury had deadlocked after 18 days of deliberation, leading to a retrial that spanned more than three months. 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.

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.

"The Patz family has waited a long time, but we've finally found some measure of justice for our wonderful little boy, Etan," his father, Stanley Patz, said afterward, choking up. "I'm really grateful that this jury finally came back with which I have known for a long time — 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 even from some of the jurors from the first trial, who had attended the second one. In the first trial, all but one juror had voted for conviction.

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.

"And, ultimately, kind of heartbreaking," he said.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said the jury "affirmed beyond all lasting doubt that Pedro Hernandez kidnapped and killed the missing child" in "one of the city's most famous and formative cases."

Still, the Patz family — which focused for years on another suspect before Hernandez's 2012 arrest — may never know exactly what became of the boy. No trace of him has been found since the May day he vanished, on the first day he got the grown-up privilege of walking alone to the bus stop about two blocks away in a then-edgy but neighborly part of lower Manhattan.

Hernandez's lead lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, said he would appeal.

"In the end, we don't believe this will resolve the story of what happened to Etan back in 1979," Fishbein said.

Etan became one of the first missing children ever pictured on milk cartons, and the anniversary of his disappearance has been designated National Missing Children's Day.

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