Relief, horror for ‘Baby Hope’ investigators in New York City

Associated Press

NEW YORK

New York police Assistant Chief Joseph Reznick went this weekend to visit the grave of a child long known as Baby Hope, as he’s often done in the past two decades, but this time he came with more answers than questions about her death.

Her name was made public the same day a distant cousin confessed sexually abusing the girl, then suffocating her, police said. So Reznick replaced a placard on her headstone at St. Raymond’s Cemetery that read “the identity of this little girl is unknown” with one that spelled out her name, Anjelica Castillo.

For investigators including Reznick, who worked as a lieutenant in 1991 when the body of the unknown 4-year-old was discovered inside a picnic cooler discarded along a Manhattan highway, the long-awaited answers were both a horror and a relief.

Conrado Juarez, 52, was charged Saturday with murder in the girl’s death, one of New York’s most notorious cold cases.