53 year old Conrado Juarez was arrested in connection to a brutal murder cold case from 22 years ago after a 4-year-old'sdecomposed body was found stuffed in a dirty cooler, news reports said. Juarez was arrested and arraigned Saturday on a felony murder charge and pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan court. Authorities identified the murdered girl as Anjelica Castillo. Until last week, she had been identified as 'Baby Hope,' CBS News reported.
22 years later, Castillo told police that he had sexually assaulted the child before smothering her on July 23, 1991. Juarez encountered Castillo in a hallway at his Astoria Queens building, and after killing the 4 year old, Juarez summoned his sister from another room at the apartment he shared with relatives, asking for help to discard her.
Juarez, with help from his sister, stuffed the girl in a blue cooler, before hailing a livery cab, taking them to Manhattan. There, they dumped the cooler with Castillo's naked body inside it, dropping hr by the Henry Hudson Parkway, news reports said. Construction workers had smelled something rotten, and detectives believed Castillo was suffocated. She was later buried at St. Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx in 1993 by officers who investigated her murder.
New York detectives hung fliers and circulated sketches of the girl and a photograph of the cooler, announcing a $12,000 reward leading to an arrest, CBS News reported.
“Cold cases are not forgotten cases. [The] arrest of the man charged with killing Angelica in 1991 is an extraordinary example of police work. For more than two decades investigators never stop searching for the person who ended this young girl's life. They made it their mission to identify this young child, to lay her to rest, and to bring her killer to justice. Now we will do that,” said DA Cyrus Vance.
