NEW YORK — A man has been convicted in one of the nation's most haunting missing-child cases, nearly 38 years after 6-year-old Etan Patz disappeared in New York City.

Jurors delivered their verdict Tuesday in Pedro Hernandez's retrial. Another jury deliberated for 18 days before deadlocking in 2015.

This time, jurors deliberated over nine days before finding the 56-year-old guilty of murder during a kidnapping in a case that shaped both parenting and law enforcement in the United States.

Hernandez was a convenience store clerk in Etan's neighborhood when the first-grader disappeared in May 1979. Hernandez confessed, but his lawyers say his admissions were the false imaginings of a mentally ill man.

Etan became one of the first missing children ever pictured on milk cartons.