Tuesday

The tip that finally solved the case of Baby Hope: Conversation overheard in laundromat led police to 4-year-old's COUSIN, 52, who admitted her rape and murder as details of her sad life emerge



·     Conrado Juarez, 52, told police he killed his 4-year-old cousin Anjelica Castillo and dumped her body inside a picnic cooler in the woods
·     The child had been starved, sexually abused and suffocated to death
·     She was never reported missing and no one came forward with any leads as to her identity
·     Juarez claimed his sister brought the cooler for him to dispose of the girl 

'Monster': Conrado Juarez, cousin and confessed killer of 4-year-old Anjelica Castillo, nicknamed Baby Hope, waits to be arraigned at Manhattan Criminal Court, Saturday 
 'Monster': Conrado Juarez, cousin and confessed killer of 4-year-old Anjelica Castillo, nicknamed Baby Hope, waits to be arraigned at Manhattan Criminal Court, Saturday






The NYPD cracked the murder case of 'Baby Hope' after 22-years when an anonymous tipster who overheard a conversation in a laundromat led police to the sister of the four-year-old girl - and eventually, Conrado Juarez, who has confessed to killing the child.
Following a media blitz over the summer as the NYPD marked the 22nd anniversary of her death, a Manhattan mom phoned police to say that two years ago she listened in as a lady said her little sister had died and may have been killed.
Using old-fashioned detective work, police found that woman was the sister of 'Baby Hope' and in turn that led them to the girl's mother - and to identify the dead child as Anjelica Castillo through DNA matches over two decades after her brutal killing.
Having discovered the child's family, police built up a family tree, discovering that 'Baby Hope's' mother - who is not being identified - has nine children by three fathers and is part of a sprawling family tree that includes relatives in New York and Mexico.
They also finally discovered the girl's name after more than two decades was Anjelica Castillo, age 4.
Her mother never reported her daughter missing, allegedly because she feared deportation and when police confronted her about this, she blamed Angelica's father who had custody at the time of her death.
'She’s a piece of s***,' one law-enforcement source said of the mother to the New York Post. 'She tried to put all responsibility on the father.'







Relief: NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, center, speaks to the media during a news conference at One Police Plaza to announce that they had arrested the killer of a then unidentified child nicknamed Baby Hope  
Relief: NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, center, speaks to the media during a news conference at One Police Plaza to announce that they had arrested the killer of a then unidentified child nicknamed Baby Hope


Detectives solved the decades-old mystery of 'Baby Hope,' a little girl whose body was discovered inside a picnic cooler beside a Manhattan highway in 1991, and arrested a relative of the child Saturday after he admitted he sexually assaulted and smothered her, police said on Saturday.
Conrado Juarez, 52, was arrested and arraigned on a felony murder charge. He pleaded not guilty.
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Melissa Mourges, chief of the cold case unit and the original prosecutor on the case in 1991, told a judge at Juarez's arraignment that he had admitted sexually abusing the child before smothering her. Mourges said Juarez then enlisted the aid of his sister who helped him dispose of the body.
They were cousins of the girl's father, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

The girl's name, age and circumstances of her death were unknown for more than two decades. But earlier this week, police announced that a new tip and a DNA test had allowed them to finally identify the baby's mother, a dramatic turnaround in one of the city's more notorious cold cases.
The child's naked, malnourished corpse was discovered on July 23, 1991, beside the Henry Hudson Parkway by construction workers who smelled something rotten. Detectives thought she might have been suffocated but had few other clues as to what happened.
The case became an obsession for some investigators who nicknamed the girl 'Baby Hope.' Hundreds of people attended a funeral for the unknown girl in 1993. Her body was exhumed for DNA testing in 2007, and then again in 2011.
  
  
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly speaks to the media on Saturday  as Former NYPD detective Jerry Giorgio (right) explains how he never gave up trying to identify the child and to catch her killer
In July, detectives tried another round of publicity on the 22nd anniversary of the discovery. They canvassed the neighborhood where her body was found, hung fliers, circulated sketches of the girl and a photograph of the cooler and announced a $12,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
Former detective Jerry Giorgio, who had the case from 1991 until his retirement over the summer, said he remained confident the case could be solved. Assistant Chief Joseph Reznick, who also worked the case, said they never gave up.
'I think reflecting back on what we named this little girl, Baby Hope, I think it's the most accurate name we could have come up with,' Reznick said.
Giorgio left the NYPD and went to the Manhattan district attorney's cold case squad, from which he retired this year. 'I missed the tipster call by a couple of weeks, damn it,' he said.
The tipster, who saw the recent news stories on the case, led police to Anjelica's sister, who told detectives she thought her sister had been killed. Police matched DNA from Anjelica to their mother.
The mother, who was not identified, didn't have custody of Anjelica at the time of the girl's death — she had been living with relatives on the father's side, including Balvina Juarez-Ramirez, police said.
Juarez-Ramirez is the sister of Juarez. Police closed in on the suspect and waited for him Friday outside a Manhattan restaurant where he worked as a dishwasher in Manhattan at Bleecker Street restaurant Pesce Pasta.
He told them he noticed Anjelica while visiting the family apartment and killed her, police said.
He told police that on the night of Anjelica's death he arrived home drunk said Jerry Giorgio, a detective who worked on the case when it first broke 22-years-ago.
'It was nighttime, and she was in the hallway for some reason — maybe she was going to the bathroom,' Giorgio said.
'He said he just took her by the hand and she went with him.'
'She may at one point have started to yell or scream, looking for help. That’s when he put the pillow over her face.'
  
Vindicated: Anjelica Castillo, seen right in an age-progression sketch and left in a sketch released in 1991. The third photo is of the cooler which the child was found inside
Then, the sister got the blue cooler — which still contained full cans of Coke. They took a livery cab from Queens to Manhattan where they dumped the cooler, then separated.
'A tip produced a lot of investigative work, and with great detective work we were able to track people down and interview them,' Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
Jerry Giorgio said that Juarez described his own behavior as 'ugly, ugly' and said that Angelica would have died anyway, because she was being so badly cared for.
'She was better off dead, I’m sorry to say, because they were starving her. She was skeletal. In six more months she would have died. I mean, she was 28 pounds and 4  years old. That poor thing,' said Giorgio.
'I hope he’s miserable every day of his life,' Giorgio added.
Her parents never reported her missing, though they had contact with the suspect. Juarez had never been considered a suspect before. Police refused to say whether he had previous arrests or had been accused in other sexual assaults.
Kelly called the arrest a superb case of detective work, and said he was proud of his officers.
'For me, it makes you proud to be a member of this organization — they were unrelenting,' he said.
  
Hopeful: Locals examine a poster put up by police in July 2013 in the area where Baby Hope was found in New York City
The detectives assigned to the case were instrumental in organizing a burial in a Bronx cemetery for the girl in 1993. Hundreds attended the funeral; Reznick gave the eulogy. The girl was dressed in a white frock and buried in a white coffin.
The detectives paid for the girl's headstone that reads: 'Because we care.'
District Attorney Cy Vance credited the efforts of the police and tireless members of his office with the arrest.
'Cold cases are not forgotten cases. Today's arrest of the man charged with killing Anjelica in 1991 is an extraordinary example of police work,' he said, adding that Assistant District Attorney Melissa Mourges, who responded on the day Anjelica's body was was discovered, had 'worked the case ever since.'
Juarez's sister and Anjelica's caretaker, Balbena Ramirez, have since passed away. 
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said in a statement Saturday that investigators never gave up on Anjelica. 
'They made it their mission to identify this young child, to lay her to rest and to bring her killer to justice,' he said.
Conrado Juarez, a dishwasher at a Manhattan restaurant, reportedly told detectives that in 1991, Anjelica was lived with his sister in Queens while her parents were going through a separation, the New York Post reported. 
Write caption he
  
Grisly discovery: The cooler containing Baby Hope was found in Washington Heights, on an embankment off the Henry Hudson Parkway
On the night of the murder, Juarez, who lived in The Bronx, arrived at his sister's home drunk and ran into the toddler in the hallway. According to the suspect's confession, he attacked Anjelica, sexually assaulted her and then smothered the child to death.  
The arrest comes just two days after child, previously known by the nickname 'Baby Hope,' was identified as Anjelica Castillo, which was discovered when police tracked down the girl's mother after receiving a tip from a woman who believed she knew the older sister of the slain girl.
The sister told investigators she remembers traveling to Mexico with her father after leaving Anjelica with her mother and then never seeing her again.
After releasing a sketch of the girl in July when the NYPD were making a renewed push to solve the decades-old case, police tracked down her mother - who has not been identified - in Washington Heights, the New York Post reports.
The mother told police she did not want to call them because her partner was abusive. She last saw him in 1991 when he took the children and told her to 'disappear' before slamming a door in her face.
One of her daughters was brought back to her through a relative but Anjelica was never seen again.
The mother said she 'tried to find out about them, and to see them, but she says he told her to get lost', a police source said, and she wondered for 22 years what happened to her child.
Police have obtained the birth certificate that identified Anjelica, although other information, such as the date and place of birth, were not revealed.
She was found tied with rope and squeezed into a picnic cooler beneath full cans of Coca-Cola off the Henry Hudson Parkway. Tests revealed she had been sexually abused.

Outpouring: Baby Hope's case struck a chord with New York Police and residents alike   Artists impression: Another sketch of what Baby Hope may have looked like
  
  
Outpouring: (Left) The gravesite of Baby Hope, paid for by the NYPD's 34th Precinct and (right) a sketch of what Baby Hope may have looked like


Deuteronomy 22:25  But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.

Numbers 35:30  Whoso killeth any person, the murderer shall be put to death by the mouth of witnesses: but one witness shall not testify against any person to cause him to die.

No comments:

Post a Comment