I’ve posted before about Baby Hope. While working on my book The Restless Sleep I asked a friend of mine who works at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner which case haunted him the most. He didn’t hesitate when answering: Baby Hope.

Baby Hope (they put her age at between three and five years old) was found stuffed into a blue and white picnic cooler in a park off the Henry Hudson Parkway on July 23, 1991. The details they were able to glean about her brief life from the autopsy are grim.

Apparently they have just identified the mother! So, what was Baby Hope’s name? And why did the mother never report her missing?? You can read more about the new developments in this New York Times piece.

The picture below comes from a Daily Mail piece about the case that appeared this summer, when the Cold Case Squad made a new push to solve that case, a push that was clearly successful. Now that they know who Baby Hope was they can start to question those who knew her.

Great work, NYPD, the Bronx Violent Felony Squad, Forensic Investigations, NYPD attorneys and everyone else who worked on this case, and thank you for hanging in there and not giving up on this case.

Update: Baby Hope was Anjelica Castillo. She was born in Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens in 1987, so she was 4 years old when she died. Her cousin Conrado Juarez, 52, sexually abused her and killed her and his sister, Balvina Juarez- Ramirez helped him dump Anjelica’s body. He’s been arrested, Balvina is deceased.

Update: Another New York Times piece about Baby Hope, this one featuring Jerry Giorgia, the former lead detective on the case.