20 Year Old Jane Doe Cold Case SOLVED | TWISTED Baby Hope Case

 One of New York’s most notorious cold cases has come to a close a Crime Stoppers tip let investigators to tune new information to find the killer of baby hope on an early summer day on July 23 1991 a horrific Discovery was made by construction workers often an embankment of a southbound lane of the Henry Hudson Parkway in Manhattan New York the disturbing Discovery was of a naked and battered body of a female child inside a dirty picnic cooler was she a victim of a pre-planned murder or had someone

gotten rid of a dead child in a hurry using that place welcome to mysterious hook where we shed light on mysterious cases across the country and today we are looking at the 22 year old solved Jane Doe case but first if you haven’t subscribed to our Channel by now please consider hitting the Subscribe and like buttons let’s dive deep into the mystery without further ado Manhattan New York with the densest population Manhattan is geographically the smallest of the five boroughs of New York City situated on one of the world’s

largest natural Harbors it is mostly made up of Manhattan Island other than its cultural offerings and iconic Scenic Beauty the city is known for its towering skyscrapers including the Empire State Building neon lit Times Square and the theaters of Broadway even with such a reputation the Inwood area of Manhattan became a subject of grim headlines after the discovery of human remains in the summer of 1991.

 on the early summer morning of July 23 1991 the New York City Police Department of Washington Heights 34th Precinct received a chilling call regarding a gruesome Discovery two construction workers were repairing a southbound lane along the Henry Hudson Parkway about 40 miles off of Dyckman Street in Manhattan New York org when they noticed a foul odor from the wooded embankment area off the road the smell only grew stronger and eventually led the construction workers to a blue and white Igloo cooler after finding the source of the

overpowering smell the workers began to open the lid of the cooler when they discovered a few cans of coke underneath those cans there was a black plastic bag that contained what seemed like human remains when the NYPD detectives approached the scene at first glance they were not sure if the remains really belonged to a human this was assumed given the fact that the place was used as an illegal dump site where people often dumped their waste along with deceased animals however an inspection of the garbage proved otherwise as the

skeletal remains were quickly determined to be human inside the garbage bag the young female child was lying in a fetal position with her hands clasped together bound with rope and a cord from Venetian blinds the decomposing body was completely naked and Bloated in addition to the Coke cans the garbage bag was also surrounded by water which the investigators suspected to originally be ice they estimated she had been dead six to eight days before the cooler was found they believed she was dead for a week and the hot sunlight

not only melted the ice but popped several of the cans causing soda to leak out and Destroy forensic evidence such as fingerprints and DNA the body was then taken to the medical examiner’s office for an autopsy although identifying the body was impossible due to the level of decomposition the autopsy result brought out several significant details regarding the cause of death and the physical characteristics of the victim the coroner determined that the child was either white or Hispanic and aged between three to five years she had long

wavy dark hair which was pulled back in a ponytail the child was also believed to be extremely malnourished weighing only 28 pounds which was quite low compared to Children of her age the report also indicated that the young girl had been sexually abused and died on or about July 18 1991 as a result of asphyxiation without a doubt the finding suggested that the little girl was regularly tortured before her short life came to an abrupt end unfortunately no other clue was found that could lead to the identification of the poor child

clearly the NYPD detectives were landed with the daunting task of not only identifying the victim but also tracking down her killer in the neighborhood of Inwood Manhattan which was considered to be a place of rampant crimes this crime stood out as a symbol of sheer brutality in an attempt to crack this case the NYPD detectives tried out every tactic they could possibly think of from Distributing Flyers to urging the people to come forward if they had any knowledge about this Jane Doe police tried everything but came up

empty-handed the murder received plenty of attention from both the police department and the media back then and investigators had every reason to believe that someone would soon come forward with information and people did come forward in the initial phase of the investigation countless tips came in one of the tips included a call from a woman that came in just six days after the remains were discovered of the caller who did not identify as self said on a Sunday in July 1991 she was going to a wedding and from the toll booth of the

Hudson they saw a Hispanic man in fleece and a Hispanic woman in heels walking North on the parkway with a picnic cooler in their hand the lead seemed legit but did not go anywhere and in the end the woman denied cooperating with the police by helping them create a sketch there were other tips including a young female drug addict who claimed the girl was her niece and a grieving grandmother who insisted the child was her granddaughter both of which yielded no results sadly every other lead NYPD detectives followed hit a dead end

eventually detective scanned through the national missing children databases but nothing panned out leaving the deceased child without a name as the mystery deepened in the case so did the affection of the detectives for the little Jane Doe since no one knew the girl’s name and the cops had no way of identifying her she was given the name baby hope because by then Hope was all they had left in their attempts to solve the Jane Doe case and they truly hoped that it wouldn’t take long for justice to prevail after a few days of Investigation an

anthropologist developed an enhanced sketch based on the bone structure of baby hope and distributed it to the media this was the first sketch that showed what she might have looked like but even this effort remained fruitless for nearly two years Jane Doe’s corpse remained in the NYPD morgue when detectives decided it was finally time to let her go in those two years no family members came forward to claim her and the NYPD took the responsibility upon themselves to provide her with a proper burial with their own money on

July 23 1993 on the second anniversary of baby hopes remains being found uniformed cops from NYPD carried the tiny coffin of Jane Doe which was led by eight children to the Campbell Funeral Home on Wadsworth Avenue Manhattan the lead detective Jerry Giorgio actively participated in the funeral while his wife bought a white dress for baby hope to offer their affection for a stranger they only knew by death not only the detectives but the community also played their part more than 500 people from the neighborhood attended the funeral while

praying for justice for the little girl she was buried at St Raymond Cemetery in the Bronx with the name of baby hope etched on her black headstone over the years both the detectives from the NYPD and the people from the community periodically visited her grave and left her things in her honor without any solid leads to go on the investigation into baby Hope’s case went nowhere although the NYPD never gave up on this case the urgency of the case faded away underneath all the new crimes throughout the years there were minor

developments in the case but it mostly remained cold with every anniversary of baby Hope’s murder local media in New York ran the story in hopes of refreshing the memories of a potential witness or spreading awareness of this horrific crime the efforts always fell short and the case remained cold by 2000 there were many new technologies and forensic profile developments that were introduced into the criminal system which were not available back in the 90s seeing that the Technologies were proving to be helpful in other cold

cases the NYPD attempted to utilize these techniques in an attempt to build a forensic DNA profile on baby hope and run it through all missing children’s databases but that effort remained unsuccessful as technology continued to progress baby Hope’s body was exhumed for DNA tests two times in the span of four years the first one in 2006 and the second one in 2011.

 none of them proved to be significant as detectives were still not able to unveil the mystery of baby Hope’s identity with encouragement from the public the NYPD reopened the case in 2013. in July of the same year on the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of the discovery of baby hope the NYPD tried another round of publicity on the case detectives canvas the neighborhood where her body was found hung flyers and distributed the sketches of the girl and a photograph of the cooler they even announced a twelve thousand dollar reward for information leading to an

arrest their efforts finally got a breakthrough in the case for the first time in two decades after seeing the Flyers a woman called the New York City Crime Stoppers the tip line for New York City to share some valuable information she shared with police a conversation she had overheard in a laundromat two years ago in which a woman claimed that baby hope might have been her sister the tipster also provided several pieces of information to the police regarding the woman’s family this tip led the investigators to

a 27-year married Brooklyn mother of three laurencita Lorena Ramirez as investigators knocked on Lorena’s door and she opened it they are met with a shocking mere image of baby hope if she were alive then Lorena had a striking resemblance to the police catch of baby hope almost providing reassurance to the detectives that they might have come to the right place so without wasting any time detectives began questioning Lorena about her missing sister Lorena said that she had not remember remembered anything about one of her sisters being

missing even her name that was until Lorena was 11 and her younger sister Maribel rejoined her family after staying with her father’s family for years it was Maribel who told Lorena that she remembered being suddenly awoken by something one night she then went on to witness her sister’s body being stuffed into a refrigerator and placed into a cooler later on she also remembered looking to the other room and seeing plastic bags placed on the ground along with the conversation between two adults which included the sentence she

doesn’t fit however neither Maribel nor Lorena ever came out with this information Lorena did not even link baby Hope’s case to these memories until a few months after the anniversary of the discovery of remains when she was watching it on a TV channel the story was eerily convenient as far as baby Hope’s murder was concerned however investigators needed a parent for a DNA match which led them to Lorena’s mother with assistance from Lorena detectives did not waste much time tracking down her mother Margarita Castillo not far

from her daughter Lorena Margarita at the time resided in Washington Heights in Queens New York however as eager as investigators were to talk to her Margarita did not reciprocate the same feelings she was not interested to talk to the investigators and turned them down before the investigators legally obtained an envelope that had Margarita’s DNA on it the test results of this DNA came back with the answer detectives had been searching for for over two decades Margarita Castillo was the biological mother of baby hope with

tears in her eyes Margarita agreed to talk only when she saw the DNA result and the composite sketch of baby hope Margarita let the investigators know that baby hope was indeed her long-lost daughter Angelica Castillo after Decades of lying nameless in a Manhattan Cemetery baby Hope finally got her name back however this Revelation created more questions and answers one of the most significant of them was why margarita would never report her daughter missing in the first place claiming that she only acted that way

because she had no knowledge of Angelica being missing Margarita began to tell the investigators the story of how she became estranged from her own daughter Angelica was born on April 24 1987 to her mother Margarita Castillo and her father Gennaro Ramirez despite having several children the couple’s marital life was Rocky as Margarita was scared of Gennaro who had a reputation for being abusive just after a few years of Angelica’s birth Margarita and Gennaro separated as a result of their regular fights according to Margarita it was

after one of those fights in 1991 that she took her three daughters with her and left the home the next stage in Arrow calter saying that he wanted to meet his daughters though still angry due to his behavior Margarita accepted considering Gennaro was still the father of the girls as per Gennaro’s instructions Margarita brought the girls to the house of his adult knees where he was already present after spending the night there Margarita decided to leave the next day when Gennaro had a strange request for her he wanted her to leave

their two younger daughters Angelica and Maribel with him and take the older Lorena with her Margarita who was well aware of his violent nature knew that it was not just a request but a threat despite not agreeing to the arrangement Margarita left her younger daughters with him Margarita also said that she often visited the girls after being forced to leave them with their father and brought them little gifts during one visit when she saw that her estranged husband wasn’t around she asked the niece velvino Juarez Ramirez if she

could take her kids back which velvina rejected saying that her uncle would be upset if she let the kids go Margarita claimed that she kept visiting the place until one day the family moved without informing her or leaving any address Margarita had no idea where her estranged husband or daughters were in 1995 four years after baby hopes remains ever found Margarita got a call from a woman saying that belvina had passed away Margarita headed to the location and inquired about her daughters after giving her condolences to the deceased

unfortunately nobody in the family told her about the whereabouts of her two daughters and she came home empty-handed it was only later that another call from the same woman requesting her to pick up her daughter referring only to Maribel that she realized that there was something terribly wrong she was then informed that Maribel was the only daughter who had been there all along while nobody had any clue where Angelica was although Margaritas suspected Janeiro of being responsible for Angelica’s disappearance she never went

to the police to report her daughter missing asserting an explanation for her actions Margarita said that since her family had illegally immigrated from Mexico and she did not speak English and only spoke Spanish she was scared to go to the police though Margarita accepted her fate never taking a stand for her own daughter detectives were dedicated to providing their precious baby hope with Justice they now consider Gennaro Ramirez as the prime suspect in his daughter’s disappearance and murder and a massive

search began for him unfortunately to this day no information about his whereabouts have come to light as he continues to be a missing person yet some people including Margarita believe he fled the U.S and returned to his home country Mexico when tracking down Angelica’s father failed everyone thought the mystery of baby Hope’s brutal murder would never be solved until police pointed their fingers at another man the man was none other than Angelica’s own cousin on her father’s side and velvina’s brother then

30 year old conrado Juarez Ramirez Juarez was a regular visitor of the home where Angelica and Maribel were living under the care of belvina and five other relatives in an apartment in Astoria Queens Juarez had a long criminal history comprising different kinds of crime including sexual assault surprisingly his family still let him hang around the children based on past records NYPD detectives wanted to zero in on this guy and went looking for him they waited in front of the Manhattan Restaurant where he worked

as a dishwasher and later brought him in for questioning although he was asked questions regarding Angelica’s disappearance detectives still suspected Angelica’s father to be the one responsible until Juarez dropped a bombshell after initially denying it a few hours into the questioning 52 year old Juarez began confessing to the murder he revealed that in July 1991 he was visiting his sister valvina in her Queen’s apartment when one night he came back to find four-year-old Angelica in the hallway in the middle of the night

Angelica was seemingly looking to go to the bathroom when Juarez took her by the hand into his room and she went with him at some point Juarez claimed that alcohol made him lose control and he tried to sexually molest her and she started screaming to keep her buy it or as bound the little girl to the table which was often done to her to stop her from getting food or water he claimed that he did not intend to harm her and only suffocated her to stop her from crying he then took a pillow and suffocated her until she went motionless

after he was done he summoned his sister belvina who was in another room shocked by the incident she began yelling at him before quickly deciding they had to get rid of the body instead of notifying the police Juarez claimed that it was balvina who gave him a cooler that was in the garage and had a conversation about how they would fit the girl inside it the very conversation Maribel had heard that night and later revealed to her sister after binding Angelica’s hands and feet Juarez stuffed the lifeless body inside

the cooler almost in half and placed Coke cans over it so that it wouldn’t look suspicious the pair then hailed a cow from Astoria to Washington Heights and disposed of the cooler in the wooded area where it was later discovered eerily juarez’s confession perfectly aligned with the tip where a woman saw a Hispanic man and a Hispanic woman carrying a cooler a few days before the discovery suggesting it was legit all along hoping that the remains would never be discovered the pair parted their separate ways never to talk about

this again in 1995 belvina died taking the disturbing secret to her grave while Juarez went on with his life as if nothing happened in this interview with police Juarez also revealed that Angelica was mistreated and tortured at the hands of belvina and her family on a regular basis for the last two years of her life from starving to being harshly punished the little girl went through an unspeakable amount of suffering in her already short life it was finally time for her to get justice as investigators took Juarez into their custody and

charged him with first degree murder police would later learn that at one time when Margarita demanded that Juarez let her see her girls Juarez responded by saying that when he returned from Mexico there was only one girl and that the other girl was dead detectives who had held baby hope close to their hearts all those years were disgusted by the fact that even after that Margarita never went to the police or looked for her daughter when the mother was asked in an interview what she would say to her dead daughter she replied I would

ask her to forgive me that I wish I could have stopped him before he could hurt her unfortunately after initially confessing to Angelica’s murder conrado Juarez Ramirez recanted his words this time he claimed that his sister belvina called him on a cell phone one night in July 1991 describing that Angelica had fallen down the stairs and she needed his help to dispose of her body he then admitted that he helped her bind the child’s body then he and belvina drove to the Henry Hudson Parkway where they dumped her

body after the recantation prosecutors were having a hard time building a case against him they were worried due to no forensic evidence linking Juarez to the murder after balvena’s death there was no potential witness either while the investigators persisted that he described many things that only a killer would know the defense focused more on the forensic evidence eventually the case would come to conclusion after 22 years of a long battle but not in a way anybody would have wanted while in jail in 2018 52 year called conrado Juarez

Ramirez passed away after falling ill pending his trial in Manhattan Supreme Court the following year the case was officially closed after the only suspect was killed as for Angelica’s father Gennaro Ramirez investigators concluded that although he might have other potential victims of his own he was most likely unaware of his daughter’s fate once he left home and never came back there is no doubt that this poor four-year-old girl had been through a lot before tragically being murdered and left to rot yet it’s amazing to see

strangers pouring out their love for her while her own family failed and betrayed her we can only hope that the little one could rest in peace with her name on her gravestone after two decades do you think that her death could have been prevented if her mother intervened as always let us know your thoughts on this tragic story in the comment section do not forget to like comment share share and subscribe