[6][7] In reality, he left Anjelica in New York, taking her to stay with the children's adult female cousin, Balvina Juarez-Ramirez, who lived in a house in Astoria, Queens.

[1][6] Years later, Balvina's brother and Anjelica's male cousin Conrado Juarez admitted to torturing, raping, and sodomizing the child before smothering her.

Juarez, who was 30 years old at the time of the murder, had bound Anjelica to a table in his sister's apartment, and had deprived her of water on multiple occasions.

[10] Anjelica's decomposing body was discovered on July 23, 1991, inside a navy blue cooler along the Henry Hudson Parkway in Manhattan, New York.

[11] The body was then wrapped in a garbage bag and placed inside the cooler, which was filled with unopened soda cans and water (which was presumably ice at one time).

Examiners concluded that "Baby Hope" was possibly Hispanic, had dark, wavy hair in a ponytail, was malnourished, weighing only 28 lb (13 kg), was a victim of sexual abuse, and had died on or about July 18.

[12] After the examination was completed and with the case remaining unsolved, police provided the money in 1993 to have the victim buried after a public funeral was held.

[11] After the remains were originally discovered, a witness told authorities that she had seen a Hispanic man and woman carrying a cooler in the location where the body was found, prior to the discovery, around the time the girl was estimated to have been murdered.

A few months later, in the autumn of 1991, some suggestive images of a nude child were located in New Jersey, which some believed might have been "Baby Hope", as the girl in the photographs matched the victim's description.

The tip that broke the case came from an anonymous woman who told authorities that she had overheard a conversation two years prior between a mother and another person regarding the disappearance of her daughter.

"— Margarita Castillo, mother of the victim Once investigators had identified Anjelica and her family, further effort led them to the names of her paternal cousins 52-year-old Conrado Juarez and his now deceased sister, Balvina Juarez-Ramirez.