An NYPD detective examines a blue cooler found dumped in Inwood Hill Park off the Henry Hudson Parkway after the body of a 4-year-old baby girl - now idenfied as Anjelica Castillo - was found stuffed inside it on July 23, 1991. (Photo: Thomas Monaster /New York Daily News)
On May 25, 2004 volunteers discovered the body of 21-year-old Juliard Student Sarah Fox in Inwood Hill Park.
Manhattan
The answer to the Baby Hope murder mystery was all in the family.
Conrado Juarez, 52, confessed Saturday to killing the girl and disposing of her body in a cooler with the help of his sister,
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
His tiny victim, whose name had been a mystery for more than two decades, was identified for the first time as 4-year-old Anjelica Castillo.
Juarez, a dishwasher from the Bronx, told cops he sodomized and then quietly smothered Anjelica with a pillow in a hallway at his sister’s home in Astoria, Queens.
When the little girl went motionless, Juarez summoned his sister, Balvina Juarez-Ramirez, from another room, Kelly said.
Conrado Juarez, who confessed to sexually assaulting and killing a 4-year-old in 1991, sits in the courtroom before his arraignment Saturday night. (John Minchillo/Pool Photo)
Juarez told police he smothered her with a pillow while raping her. When the girl went motionless, Juarez told police, he summoned his sister from another room. It was the sister who told Juarez to get rid of the body and who provided the cooler. (The sister has since died)Juarez and his sister then hailed a cab to Manhattan, dropped the cooler off in a wooded area in Inwood Hill Park near the parkway, and then went their separate ways.
Juarez-Ramirez, who was caring for the girl, insisted they secretly get rid of her body, Kelly said. She brought him a filthy cooler — as the other family members living there remained unaware of the cruelty underway just down the hall, Kelly said.
Juarez and his sister, who is now dead, carried the cooler out of the apartment and took a black livery cab to Manhattan, where they dumped the icebox along a wooded stretch of the Henry Hudson Parkway.
“They then separated and Juarez returned to the Bronx and his sister to Queens,” Kelly said, “never to speak of the heinous act again until the NYPD investigators, through their relentless investigation, caught up with Juarez.”
The man’s arrest on Friday capped a case that vexed some NYPD investigators throughout their entire careers.
“You know that phrase, ‘I’m on cloud nine’? That’s where I am right now,” said former NYPD Detective Jerry Giorgio, who had the case for more than two decades until retiring from the NYPD in 1997.
The child’s rotting remains were found stuffed inside the blue and white picnic cooler along the parkway near Inwood on July 23, 1991. The little girl weighed only 28 pounds and had been folded in half. She was naked, bound and sexually abused.
Detectives pursued hundreds of leads that turned up nothing. As the years passed, the investigators’ affection and sorrow for the mystery child grew. They eventually named her Baby Hope.
Investigators paid for the the nameless girl’s burial at St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx and inscribed a touching message on her tombstone: “Because we care.”
“I’m very happy and certainly I’m relieved to the fact that when we visit this plot out in St. Raymond’s we can now attach a name to this little girl,” Joseph Reznick, the former commander of the detectives in the 34th Precinct in Washington Heights, said Saturday.
The case returned to the spotlight last week when cops announced that an anonymous phone tip led them to identify the dead girl’s mother.
Detectives obtained the mom’s DNA profile from an envelope she had licked. Her DNA matched a sample taken from Anjelica’s remains, a source said.
Investigators built up the family tree, tracing relatives from Queens to the Bronx and all the way to Mexico, where Anjelica’s father was born.
They learned that when the child’s parents split, her father took her and a sister to the home in Queens. Anjelica’s mother, who a source said had 10 children by three men, took custody of a third sister, Kelly said.
The girl’s unidentified father has not been found, a source said.
Baby Hope's grave, which did not have a name or identification on it since 1991 until recently. (Photo: Ricard Harbus For New York Daily News)
They learned that when the child’s parents split, her father took her and a sister to the home in Queens. Anjelica’s mother, who a source said had 10 children by three men, took custody of a third sister, Kelly said.
The girl’s unidentified father has not been found, a source said.
Through old-fashioned street work, detectives tracked down Juarez’s Bronx address. Juarez’s daughter answered the door and told cops a lie: that Juarez now lived in Mexico and had been there for the past 12 years, Kelly said. But his wife told investigators a different story, saying he was at work at a downtown Manhattan restaurant.
Investigators used a ruse to lure Juarez out of the eatery and then persuaded him to talk with them, a law enforcement source said.
The interrogation lasted five hours, the source added.
“At the beginning he was blowing smoke, but he finally just gave it up,” the source said.
When Juarez confessed, “it was like there was a big weight lifted off his shoulders,” a different source said.
The mustachioed monster said nothing as he was led out of the cold case offices in Brooklyn, his hands cuffed behind his back.
Juarez, a father of four also known as Enidino Juarez, was charged with second-degree murder and showed no remorse at his arraignment late Saturday night. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bail.
“I think we have a long way to go before we know what really happened,” his court-appointed lawyer, Michael Croce, said after the hearing.
Juarez’s neighbors in Morris Heights recalled seeing the quiet, unassuming man pushing shopping carts full of bottles he had collected.
“He would be digging through trash cans,” said Andre Holloway, 30. “He was always by himself.”
Giorgio said he expects Juarez to draw quite a bit of unwanted attention behind bars.
“They will have their way with this guy in prison, even though he’s in his 50s,” the ex-detective told the Daily News. “But what bugs me is that he got to live for another 20 years with no conscience at all.”
Read More:
'Baby Hope' case: Cousin confesses to sexually assaulting, killing toddler
Anjelica Castillo more than two decades ago
New York Daily News - October 12, 2013 - By Barry Paddock, Thomas Tracy , Rocco Parascandola and Rich Schapiro
CNN - October 14, 2013 - By Melissa Gray
