Bryan Pace for New York Daily News
The grave site of Anjelica Castillo, who was found dead on July 23, 1991. Her mother said she feared contacting police after her daughter went missing because she did not speak English and felt ‘intimidated.’
The mother of “Baby Hope” says she was too scared to contact police even once during their desperate 22-year hunt for her long-lost daughter.
“I didn’t speak English,” Margarita Castillo told the Daily News by phone. “You feel dumb going to the police station and asking for a translator.
RELATED: SLAIN BABY HOPE’S MOM SPEAKS OUT: ‘I’M DEVASTATED’
“I was intimidated,” she continued, her voice soft and full of pain. “It’s hard to explain. I felt ignorant about the process.”
Sources had told The News last week that Castillo — who never so much as dialed 911 to report the girl was gone — was also afraid of little Anjelica’s dad.
RELATED: BABY HOPE’S MOTHER SHOCKED AND RELIEVED
Reuters
Artist renderings of Baby Hope, along with the cooler where her tiny body was found after she bad been abused.
The mother, a native of Puebla, Mexico, remembers her lost daughter as a tiny dancer.
“She was so little,” she told The News on Tuesday. “She loved music. She loved dancing. That’s what I remember from the little time I had with her.”
RELATED: LUPICA: ARREST IN BABY HOPE CASE A ‘EUREKA!’ FOR KELLY
Her memories are eclipsed by the sad reality of her 4-year-old daughter’s brutal death at the hands of a cousin.
“My pain is so big, there isn’t punishment enough,” Castillo told the News. “(The killer) needs to pay. I just hope the judge hands out fair justice.”
RELATED: COUSIN CONFESSES TO KILLING MISSING TODDLER IN DECADES-OLD ‘BABY HOPE’ CASE
Jeff Bachner for New York Daily News
Lorena Ramirez, sister of Baby Hope, outside her Sunset Park home on Tuesday.
Relative Conrado Juarez, 52, was arrested over the weekend as determined NYPD detectives closed the case in the infamous 1991 murder. Cops said he confessed to the killing.
The little girl, in a case that stunned the city, was sexually abused, killed, bound and stuffed inside a blue picnic cooler that was found off the Henry Hudson Parkway on July 23, 1991.
“I still feel bad — I was really surprised when I learned who did this,” she said. Juarez’s late sister, Balvina Juarez-Ramirez, helped dispose of the tiny victim’s body, cops said.
Castillo was unsure about attending any court hearings involving Juarez: “I don’t want to see his face.”
She heaped praised on the investigators who never stopped pursuing the killer across three decades.
“The detectives had been very helpful,” she said. “They were the ones who gave her the name. They were good to her.”
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via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
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