The girl known only as "Baby Hope," whose abused, decomposed body was found in an ice chest by the side of a New York roadway in 1991, has been revealed.
She is 4-year-old Anjelica Castillo, and her alleged killer has finally been arrested as well, 22 years later: Conrado Juarez, 52, is the girl's cousin.
He has been charged with murder.
Remarkably, detectives from the New York Police Department's Cold Case Apprehension Squad never stopped searching for answers in the case.
Even more remarkably, they eventually got them.
Each year, on the anniversary of the July 23, 1991, discovery of her body, they canvassed neighborhoods, handing out fliers and asking for information.
It was an anonymous tip called in after the latest canvass in July 2013 that helped crack the case at last, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
It led detectives to Anjelica's sister, now an adult; from there, they identified the woman believed to be the girl's mother, and the pieces came together.
"That individual's actions were the catalyst for this most recent lead," Kelly said, referring to Juarez's arrest. He is Anjelica's cousin on her father's side.
Police arrested Juarez after questioning him near the restaurant where he worked as a dishwasher. He was expressionless as he was taken into custody.
Juarez admitted to the crime Saturday morning.
Then 30 years old, he said he went to a Queens shared by seven of his relatives and saw Anjelica in the hallway, where he smothered and raped her.
When the girl went motionless, Juarez summoned his sister from another room. She told Juarez to get rid of the body and who provided the cooler.
He then "folded the girl in half," tied her, placed her in a garbage bag inside the cooler and placed soda cans on top of her body, said NYPD officials.
Construction workers found the body of Anjelica, who was never reported missing, bound and in a garbage bag, hidden in a blue and white cooler.
She had been smothered and sexually molested, and her body was so badly decomposed that sketches were made to suggest what she looked like.
Two years later, the girl was laid to rest in a donated plot, buried in a white dress bought by a detective's wife, with a tombstone paid for by detectives.
"Because we care" reads the inscription at the bottom of the tombstone of the long-nameless child known only until this week as Baby Hope.
The Hollywood Gossip
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