“Now I know what the face of evil looks like.’’
Etan Patz’s emotional father uttered those words minutes after the former bodega clerk convicted of murdering his 6-year-old son was sentenced to the maximum 25 years to life in prison Tuesday.
“After all these years, we finally know what dark secret you kept locked in your heart,’’ Stanley Patz, flanked by his wife Julie, raged at Pedro Hernandez in a Manhattan courtroom.
“You took our precious child and threw him in the garbage. I will never forgive you. The god you pray to will never forgive you,’’ the dad said.
“You are the monster in your nightmares and will join your father in hell,” Patz added, glaring at Hernandez, who was convicted of luring his son into a bodega basement and strangling him May 25, 1979.
Family members wept as Patz spoke — while Hernandez, 56, refused to look at the grieving parents.
Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. was personally in the courtroom to watch the proceeding.
Etan’s mother, who stood by her husband during his statement, wiped away tears as the judge and prosecutors spoke.
Hernandez was found guilty of kidnapping and murder in February 2016, finally bringing to a close one of the most famous missing-child cases in the country.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Julie and Stan were seated near six jurors from Hernandez’s earlier 2015 trial, which ended in a hung jury after a single holdout voted against conviction.
Justice Maxwell Wiley, who presided over both trials, said the prosecution “presented a compelling, convincing case, an extremely convincing case, proving the defendant’s guilt.”
“The defendant kept a terrible secret for 33 years,’’ the judge said. “His silence caused the Patz family indescribable anguish and served to compound their grief.”
Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon described the fear that gripped the nation when Etan vanished the first day he walked alone to school bus stop.
“[Hernandez] singlehandedly caused many families to fear their neighbors and their parks and their playgrounds,” she said. “He is the stuff that nightmares are made of.”
Defense lawyer Harvey Fishbein insisted that Hernandez is innocent and that the judicial process is “flawed.”
“Pedro Hernandez is not the answer to what happened to Etan Patz 38 years ago,” he said. “This is not the last stop. This is what we believe is the beginning of the appeal process.”
It wasn’t until 2012 that authorities got a tip that led them to Hernandez of Maple Shade, NJ.
After a 6 1/2-hour interrogation, Hernandez confessed to luring the child into the bodega basement next to the bus stop and choking him until he went limp. He said he stuffed the boy’s still-breathing body into a plastic bag and dumped it in an alley a few blocks away.
Prosecutors had to overcome significant hurdles in trying the case. The child’s body was never recovered, there are no eyewitnesses, and police were unable to gather any useful forensic evidence. But they did have Hernandez’s numerous confessions to police, prosecutors and psychiatric experts.
At trial, Fishbein argued that the real killer is convicted and currently imprisoned child molester Jose Ramos, 73, who was a longtime suspect in the case.
He was dating a woman who was hired to walk Etan home from school in 1979 and had a relationship with the Patz family.
Hernandez has low intelligence and suffers from a personality disorder which made him susceptible to a false confession, the defense told jurors.
The guilty verdict is a major victory for the Manhattan DA’s Office, which reopened the dormant case eight years ago and pumped significant resources into it.
“We will do whatever it takes to bring justice to families and victims,” said Vance Jr. at a press conference after the sentencing. “And we are so proud to have done that in this case.”
Stan, sitting beside Vance and the prosecution team, said, “I’m glad we’re at the end of this road.”