Dead 22 Years, ‘Baby Hope’ Has a Name Again
By JAMES BARRON and JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
As the officers tacked up posters and handed out fliers last July, a van
with loudspeakers inched through Washington Heights, announcing yet
another attempt by the police to dredge up anything resembling a clue in
an emotionally wrenching case from 1991: the little girl whose
emaciated and bound body had been left in a cooler by a highway in Upper
Manhattan.
There was no name. No known family. No suspects.
After 22 years, it had become one of those cases that seem destined to
go unsolved, no matter how detectives tried to jog people’s memories or
find something that had eluded them the last time.
But that on-the-ground effort in July produced a tip. A woman recalled a
conversation, years ago, in which another woman spoke of a younger
sister murdered. She did not know if the dead girl was the one the
police called Baby Hope, but the similarities were apparent.
The lead was pursued, and the older sister was found. Investigators then
tracked down the woman’s mother, surreptitiously taking a sample of her
DNA.
The forensic results produced a match. Suddenly, Baby Hope had a name,
and the police were moving toward answering questions that had perplexed
the many detectives who had invested time and emotion in the case. The
detectives had acted as her surrogate family, providing a headstone for
the girl; they had even given her the name of Hope, maintaining it even
when little seemed to exist. Over the years, detectives would visit the
cemetery plot every so often, out of respect but also to stake it out
for any semblance of a new clue.
The developments in the haunting case came after the mother spoke with
police detectives and prosecutors from the office of the Manhattan
district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr.
Police officials would not answer questions as to the father’s
whereabouts. Detectives were now trying to talk to relatives on the
father’s side of the family, John J. McCarthy, the Police Department’s
top spokesman, said on Tuesday. The mother is not considered a suspect,
and police officials did not release the name of Baby Hope or her
relatives.
The girl was between 4 and 5 years old when she died, the police said.
At a time when violent crime in New York City was far more common —
there were 2,154 murders in 1991 — the stark outlines of the crime still
shook its residents.
The medical examiner’s office said then that the girl had been strangled
and sexually abused. The body had been bound with a cord, and she had
been starved before she died.
The mother told detectives that Baby Hope had been taken from her and
that she had made attempts to locate her, but was unsuccessful. She told
the police she did not know what became of her daughter until
detectives recently approached her, adding that she was not living with
the girl’s father at the time of her disappearance, Mr. McCarthy said.
The forensic tests matched the mother’s DNA sample to DNA from Baby
Hope, whose body had been exhumed in 2007 so genetic samples could be
taken. The effort to secure DNA failed then, but a 2011 effort using
newer techniques succeeded. There were no matches in the databases the
police checked. Mr. McCarthy said the tip that made the difference came
from a woman who said she had been involved in a conversation, years
ago, in a Laundromat.
The tipster described hearing a woman say that her younger sister had
died. The police say the woman the tipster heard was Baby Hope’s older
sister.
The older sibling had learned of her sister’s death from another sister,
younger than Baby Hope, who was living with Baby Hope and their father
when the girl was killed. It was not clear when the younger sister told
the older sister about Baby Hope’s death.
It was enough for detectives to track down both the sisters, then the
mother. They proceeded with deliberate speed, an approach seconded by a
retired investigator who worked on the case several years ago, after it
went to the cold case squad.
“You only have one key to this whole thing right now, and by arresting
this person, you turn off the only key to the past that you have,” said
the investigator, Joseph L. Giacalone, who retired as a detective
sergeant. “The public is going to have to be patient.”
One law enforcement official, who has been briefed on the case and who
spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was still
going on, cautioned that a good deal of detective work remained to be
done before any charges could be brought. That official said the
investigation was focusing on determining the circumstances surrounding
the little girl’s death as well as who was responsible.
The official also noted that the statute of limitations had lapsed on
every possible crime a suspect could face except murder, including
manslaughter and possible sex crimes, so no arrest could be made until
investigators had enough evidence to charge someone with second-degree
murder.
The long search began on a Tuesday in July 1991, the sixth day in a week
of sweltering 90-degree weather. A highway maintenance supervisor
working on the Henry Hudson Parkway noticed something partly covered
with branches and leaves. He recognized it as a picnic cooler. It sat by
a tree where the land drops off on the southbound side of the parkway
near the Dyckman Street exit.
For days, a foul smell had drifted up from there. Now the workers seemed
to have found the source: soda cans and a black plastic garbage bag. A
caustic liquid poured out. When they cut the bag open, they saw a leg
and an arm. They ran to summon help.
The police said the body was that of a child, naked except for an
elastic hair band. She had black hair; it was too late to determine the
color of her eyes. A preliminary autopsy established that she had no
broken bones or obvious bruises. She had grown to 3 feet 2 inches. The
body weighed 20 pounds, which pathologists figured was slightly less
than when she had died.
It was not clear how long the body had been in the cooler.
In the first few weeks, detectives tried to figure out where the child
had lived by, among other things, tracking the soda cans that were found
in the cooler, with the girl’s body, through codes printed on the cans.
The codes were of no use. They had apparently been partially washed-out
by the melted ice and fluids in the cooler. Still, the police
questioned Coca-Cola delivery people.
The police hoped the cooler itself would provide a lead. They traced it
to the Texas factory where it had been manufactured. The trail all but
ended there. The manufacturer said that 79 coolers from that same batch
had been shipped to New York State, but the dealers did not keep track
of the purchasers.
The most promising early lead came from a pay phone. A woman said she
had seen something on the parkway, but her family had not wanted to get
caught up in a police matter. She said they had driven by on July 14, a
Sunday, and had noticed a man and a woman carrying a cooler.
Later another woman, apparently the first caller’s daughter, telephoned
the police and described the man as having been about 5 feet 6 inches
tall. She said he had appeared to be in his 40s, with dark hair and
light brown skin. He had been wearing a brown sport jacket, she said,
and had appeared to be “Mexican or South American.” She said the woman
had been about the same age and height, had had shoulder-length hair and
had been wearing a gray dress and high heels.
The body remained in the morgue for two years while detectives worked on
the case. Then, in 1993, they arranged her funeral, with a bagpiper
playing “Amazing Grace” and a eulogy by Lt. Joseph Reznick, the
plain-spoken commander of the detectives in the 34th Precinct in
Washington Heights. More than 500 people attended the Mass at St.
Elizabeth’s Church, on Wadsworth Avenue near West 187th Street.
Mr. Reznick is now a chief who commands the department’s narcotics division.
“I have had a few goals before leaving this job,” he said. “One was to
reach 40 years; I will reach that in December. The other was to make
sure that this case never left the minds of people, and to solve it.
That was my ultimate goal.”
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