Baby Hope's mother shocked and relieved

Bryan Pace/for New York Daily News

Grave site at St. Raymond's Cemetery, Bronx for 'Baby Hope', Anjelica Castillo.

Baby Hope's mother reacted with shock and relief when cops revealed her child was killed 22 years ago by a sex-fiend relative within a mile of where she lives now, her daughter told the Daily News on Sunday.

The reaction came as an unknown person printed Baby Hope's name - Anjelica Castillo - on a piece of paper and taped it to her tombstone at St. Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx.

'It's important to put her real name, but we are going to put it under Baby Hope so people will remember,' said retired NYPD Detective Jerry Giorgio, who worked on the case for years and helped pay for the girl's tombstone. 'We will also put in her date of birth.'

Until cops knocked on the door of her Elmhurst, Queens, apartment last week, Margarita Castillo had claimed her little girl had been taken from her at age 4 by the abusive man who fathered her. She told cops she never knew her daughter had been murdered.

'Surprised, I guess. She's relieved,' Castillo's daughter, Jessy Rojell, 22, described her mother's reaction since learning the heinous details of a cold case that had shocked the city and baffled detectives since 1991.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced over the weekend that the mystery of the Baby Hope case was solved and her killer, the victim's own cousin, Conrado Juarez, 52, had confessed. He has been charged with second-degree murder.

RELATED: COUSIN CONFESSES TO KILLING MISSING TODDLER IN DECADES-OLD 'BABY HOPE' CASE

For the first time, Kelly put a name to the tragic tot found July 23, 1991, her body folded in half, stuffed in a plastic Igloo cooler and dumped alongside the Henry Hudson Parkway in Washington Heights.

In his sick confession, Juarez, a father of four, said he was visiting relatives at an Astoria, Queens, apartment building in 1991 when he came upon Anjelica in the hallway alone, police officials said.

Juarez, who worked as a dishwasher at a Greenwich Village Italian restaurant, told detectives he sexually assaulted the girl and accidentally smothered her to death in a closet trying to keep her quiet.

He said he told his sister, Balvina Juarez-Ramirez, who responded, 'You got to get rid of her,' a police source said.

Not long before the murder, Anjelica's father had taken the girl and her sister from their mother, then left them with his niece, Juarez-Ramirez, and moved to Mexico. Juarez-Ramirez, who helped her brother dispose of the body, has since died.

Police, acting on a new tip, arrested Juarez Friday night.

RELATED: LUPICA: ARREST IN BABY HOPE CASE A 'EUREKA!' FOR KELLY

'If I had known, I would have called the police myself,' a co-worker of Juarez at Trattoria Pesce Pasta on Bleecker St., said.

'Here I am working beside him. . . . I have two kids myself,' the co-worker said. 'When I found out, I was disgusted.'

Anjelica's sister continued to live at the Astoria apartment for four years after the murder and was reunited with her mother when Juarez-Ramirez died, a police source said.

'Where's the other girl?' Margarita Castillo, who never reported her girls missing, told a relative at the time, the source said.

Detectives caught a break over the summer when a tipster told them of a years-ago conversation in a Washington Heights laundermat in which Anjelica's sister, who has not been identified, told her of a murdered sibling.

Police said no other arrests are expected, but they'll continue interviewing relatives of Juarez to determine if he abused others.

RELATED: 'BABY HOPE' MOM'S LAST IMAGE OF CHILD 22 YEARS AGO WAS CHILLING GOODBYE FROM DAD

News of the break in the Baby Hope case brought closure even to strangers.

At the victim's grave, Cynthia Martinez, 40, of the Bronx, said that as a mother, she had been strongly affected by the story. 'Finally, she's resting in peace,' Martinez said, placing a bouquet on the grave.

Castillo, a baby-sitter, swore to cops that she knew nothing about Anjelica's death, and neighbors said they believe her.

'They're extremely close, close as you get,' neighbor Jorge Gonzalez, 24, said of Castillo and her daughters. 'She's a sweetheart. I've known her since I was a kid.'

But one neighbor, a 25-year-old teacher, said Castillo's oldest daughter, Lorena, 26, had spoken of a sister who died.

'Lorena would always mention she had a sister who died,' the neighbor said. 'We thought she was making stories up. We were just kids, we didn't think anything of it. We thought she was crazy.'

With Erin Durkin, Thomas Tracy, Rocco Parascandola and Chelsia Rose Marcius