Etan Patz murderer sentenced to 25 years to life in prison

A former grocery store clerk convicted of the 1979 kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz is sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

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

Hernandez, who was found guilty in February after two trials, is 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 reports. Hernandez did not speak to the court.

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.

— JTA