NY police arrest 'Baby Hope' killer

New York City police arrested and charged a 52-year-old man in one of the city’s most notorious cold cases Saturday, ending a decades-long investigation into the murder of "Baby Hope," a 4-year-old girl whose body was discovered in a picnic cooler beside a Manhattan highway in 1991.

Conrado Juarez, a relative of the child, Anjelica Castillo, was arraigned on a felony murder charge, authorities said. He pleaded not guilty and was held without bail.

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 to sexually abusing Castillo before smothering her. Mourges said Juarez then enlisted the aid of his sister, Balvina Juarez-Ramirez, who helped him dispose of the body.

Juarez and Juarez-Ramirez, who the New York Daily News reported is deceased, were cousins of the child’s father.

The girl's name, age and circumstances of her death were unknown for 22 years. But earlier this week, police announced that a new tip and a DNA test had allowed them to finally identify the baby's mother.

The case became an obsession for investigators who nicknamed the girl "Baby Hope." Her body was exhumed for DNA testing in 2007, and then again in 2011.

In July, detectives tried another round of publicity on the 22nd anniversary of her death. They canvassed the neighborhood where her body was found, hung fliers, circulated sketches and announced a $12,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

A tipster, who saw 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 Juarez's sister police said.

Police closed in on the suspect and waited for him Friday outside a Manhattan restaurant where he worked. He told them he noticed Anjelica while visiting the family apartment and killed her, police said.

"When she went motionless, he summoned his sister from another room," said Raymond Kelly, commissioner of police.

He and Juarez-Ramirez, whose idea it was to hide Castillo in a cooler, took a livery cab from Queens to Manhattan where they left it beside a highway, then separated.

Her parents never reported her missing, though they had contact with the suspect. Juarez had never been considered a suspect before, and 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.

The detectives assigned to the case were instrumental in organizing a burial in a Bronx cemetery for the girl in 1993. They even paid for the girl's headstone that reads: "Because we care."

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press