David Creato Jr., the New Jersey man whose relationship with a teenage girl reportedly led him to kill his own 3-year-old son, will face a decade behind bars for the 2015 crime.

On Oct. 13, 2015, Creato called police to report his son, Brendan, missing. About three hours later, the boy’s dead body was found in a park a few blocks from his home.

A jury heard that the boy was wearing the pajamas he had last been seen in, but he only had a pair of clean socks on his feet. Prosecutors said that fact ruled out the possibility he had walked to the wooded location on his own.

During the trial, attention focused on the defendant’s ex-girlfriend, Julia Stensky, who was 17 at the time of the murder. As a witness, she acknowledged that while dating Creato, his son “was an aspect of his life that [she] was not very happy with.”

According to the Associated Press, prosecutors argued Creato resorted to murdering his son out of fear that Stensky would break up with him after she left for college. No charges were ever filed against Stensky.

People reported that at a hearing Friday, about a month after he pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated manslaughter, he was given a 10-year prison sentence. Prosecutors released a statement pointing to Creato’s own plea as evidence of his “extreme indifference to the value of human life.”

Even the evidence submitted during trial and his own guilty plea, however, do not dissuade those who have defended Creato from the beginning.

Talking to reporters after the sentencing hearing, his father, David Creato Sr., said he is already looking into private investigators willing to look for the person actually responsible for Brendan’s death.

“The wrong person is sitting in jail,” he said.

[Featured image: Associated Press]