Emmanuel Haro's Father Learns Fate After Murdering Baby, Faking His Kidnapping By Chris Spargo

The father of baby Emmanuel Haro will spend at least the next three decades behind bars after pleading guilty to his son’s murder.

Jake Haro appeared in a California courtroom on Monday, Nov. 3, where he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to murder, filing a false police report and child endangerment, among other charges.

The murder sentence is what prosecutors with the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office had recommended to the court. Jake will spend at least five years behind bars on the other charges, resulting in a sentence of at least 30 years, KTLA reported.

It has now been almost three months since anyone had seen Emmanuel alive. He was just 7-months-old when he disappeared and is presumed dead, according to authorities.

Meanwhile, Rebecca Haro, Emmanuel’s mother and Jake’s wife, is still pleading not guilty to murder.

She and her husband both entered not guilty pleas initially — before her husband made a sudden decision to confess to his son’s murder in October. Despite that confession, there is nothing to suggest that Jake has told authorities how he killed the child or where the boy’s remains might be found.

Rebecca had reported that her son was kidnapped on Aug. 14 just before 8 p.m. from the parking lot of a sporting goods store in Yucaipa, a city located 10 miles east of San Bernardino.

“I took him out of the car seat and I laid him on the chair, and I had his diapers right here,” Rebecca said after filing what authorities claim was a false kidnapping report. “Someone said ‘Hola,’ and I couldn’t even turn and … I don’t remember nothing.”

Rebecca then said her next memory was waking up to find her son gone, she alleged. At first, no one doubted the grieving mother, who still had the large black eye she claimed to have sustained in the attack, PEOPLE previously reported.

The investigation quickly ran into road blocks, however, in the form of glaring inconsistencies in Rebecca’s stories, according to authorities.

Investigators also said that the couple began to distance themselves, and within a week had stopped providing any sort of assistance in the matter.

That prompted the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department to shift the focus of their probe, and on Aug. 22, the agency released a statement saying that deputies had “determined a kidnapping in Yucaipa did not occur.”

And after hundreds of hours poured into a search for the missing baby, the statement said: “It is believed Emmanuel is deceased and the search to recover his remains is ongoing.”

Jake and Rebecca were arrested that same day on suspicion of murder and booked into custody.

On Aug. 24, Jake briefly left jail to help investigators in their search for his son.

Authorities now believe that Emmanuel was killed days before his mother’s false reports, with the last known sighting of the child occurring on Aug. 5, according to a copy of the criminal complaint obtained by PEOPLE.

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

In a separate case, Jake entered a guilty plea to a charge of willful neglect of a child just two years ago after severely abusing his 10-week-old daughter.

The incident occurred back in 2018, and the girl’s injuries were so severe that prosecutors said at a news conference she is “permanently bedridden” and suffers from cerebral palsy as a result of the abuse.

Rebecca is still being held on $1 million bail at this time and is due in court on Nov. 3 for a preliminary hearing on murder and filing a false police report charges.

The couple also has a 2-year-old child who was removed from their custody.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.