Pedro Hernandez, a former SoHo store clerk, was convicted on Tuesday of the 1979 murder of six-year-old Etan Patz.
According to The New York Daily News, a Manhattan jury found Hernandez guilty of luring Patz into the basement of a bodega as he walked alone to his school bus stop and then strangling the boy on May 25, 1979.
The panel of eight men and four women took nine days to convict Hernandez, a schizophrenic who confessed to the crime in 2012.
A previous trial ended in a hung jury, with a lone holdout for acquittal, after 18 fruitless days of deliberations.
“The Patz family has waited a long time but we finally have found some measure of justice for our wonderful little boy Etan,” said the slain boy’s father Stan, according to The Daily News.
“I’m really grateful that this verdict finally came back with what I have known for a long time, that this man Pedro Hernandez is guilty of doing something really terrible so many years ago,” added the father.
Jurors said they were convinced that the verdict was the right call in the case against Hernandez, 55, who lured Etan to his death with a bottle of soda.
“It is my hope that today’s verdict provides the Patz family with the closure they so desperately deserved,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. “The disappearance of Etan Patz haunted families in New York and across the country for nearly four decades.”
The defense immediately announced they would appeal the conviction of Hernandez, who showed no visible reaction as the verdict was returned, noted The Daily News.
The Patz case caused a national furor at the time, with Etan becoming one of the first missing children to be pictured on milk cartons.
Lawyers for Hernandez argued the damning admissions were the result of a seven-hour police interrogation that cops did not record.
They said Hernandez’s mental illness and history of delusions led him to falsely believe he was responsible. The killer has an IQ of just 70.