Monday, October 14, 2013

As Police Chased Leads About ‘Baby Hope,’ Those Who Knew Her Kept Quiet


Neither did her parents, who never reported the girl missing, nor did at least two of her sisters, who spoke of it to each other but not to the authorities.


A livery-cab driver reportedly ferried her killer, an accomplice and the blue cooler packed with her body under soda cans to near the spot where it would be found by the side of a Manhattan highway in 1991. Images of the cooler circulated widely in the news media, but the cabby never came forward either.


For 22 years, as detectives pleaded for information in the killing of the unidentified young girl and scoured the city for leads, those who knew the answers kept quiet about what they had seen or heard. Indeed, more than a half-dozen of Anjelica’s relatives carried part or all of the haunting secret of her disappearance.


So it was that while the police and prosecutors said Saturday they had solved one mystery, charging her cousin Conrado Juarez with the killing, another disturbing question arose: how could so many have remained silent for so long?


At Mr. Juarez’s arraignment late Saturday, the prosecutor, Melissa Mourges, said interviews with Anjelica’s mother and with “other family members led to this defendant,” though she did not describe what each person knew about how or why the young girl had disappeared. Mr. Juarez, 52, was taken into custody early Friday outside an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village, where he worked in the kitchen.


From early in the questioning, investigators were suspicious. Mr. Juarez claimed to be ignorant of basic facts, including whether he knew Anjelica, according to a law enforcement official who, like others who spoke about the case, requested anonymity because the case is continuing.


That was the first red flag, the official said. Over the course of several hours, Mr. Juarez “made statements admitting that he forced sexual contact with the child” and that “during that act, he put a pillow over her face, suffocating her,” said Ms. Mourges, now the head of the Manhattan district attorney’s cold case unit and the original prosecutor on the Baby Hope case in 1991.


According to the authorities, Mr. Juarez said he had enlisted the help of Balvina Juarez-Ramirez, his sister and the child’s caretaker, and that she recommended placing the body in the cooler and depositing it far from their Astoria apartment. Detectives believe Ms. Juarez-Ramirez died around 1995.


Mr. Juarez’s lawyer, Michael J. Croce, said Sunday that his client denied the charges and disputed the “miraculous confession,” which came after Mr. Juarez had been “interrogated for 12 to 14 hours.” He said prosecutors had not shown him the statement or said whether there is forensic evidence tying Mr. Juarez to the crime. He added that Mr. Juarez did not speak much English.


Detectives are looking into further allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Juarez, according to another law enforcement official, who said on Sunday that recent developments in the murder case had unearthed accusations that he had abused other cousins and other family members. The official also said that some investigators believed the sexual attack that immediately preceded Anjelica’s killing may not have been the first time Mr. Juarez abused her.


In New York, there is no statute of limitations for the most serious sex crimes against children.


The gravity of the accusations seemed to hit Mr. Juarez before his arraignment. Other inmates at the Manhattan detention complex near the courts shouted that he was “a child rapist,” and urged correction officers to put him into their cells, a law enforcement official said. Mr. Juarez is being held in protective custody.


“He was scared to death,” the official added.




William K. Rashbaum, Rebecca White and Vivian Yee contributed reporting.






Yahoo Local News – New York Times




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