Cops are one step closer to solving the mysterious murder of “Baby Hope,” after a tipster led officers to the child’s sister — and now cops are questioning the tragic tot’s mother and looking for her father.
Sources said the father of Baby Hope has been named a person of interest.
Detectives have already tracked down the mother of the 3- to 5-year-old child, whose body was found stuffed in a cooler near Henry Hudson Parkway in 1991.
The mom was found in Washington Heights after a tipster acquainted with the victim’s sister contacted police, law-enforcement sources said.
The sister, now in her 20s, told investigators she remembers traveling to Mexico with her father as a young girl not long before Baby Hope went missing, police sources said.
She claimed she and her father left the child with her mom — and that she never saw Baby Hope again, police sources said.
The mother, however, placed the blame on the father. Sources said she told cops she had long suspected her husband had something to do with the child’s death, police sources said.
The mom, a Mexican immigrant, claimed she was too afraid to contact police about the murder because her husband was abusive, cops said.
She claimed the father had disappeared with the child in 1991.
The mother has not been named a person of interest, police sources said. The names of the parents have not been released.
The tipster, who overheard a conversation with the sister in a Laundromat two years ago, told police she was inspired to come forward after seeing a 22nd-anniversary news report about Baby Hope’s murder.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly on Tuesday cheered his department’s hard work on the case.
“This has been an investigation that has been conducted for the last 22 years, and the detectives in the 34th Precinct Detective Squad and Cold Case Squad did great work. And I’m proud of them,” Kelly told The Post.
The child’s body was discovered alongside the parkway in Washington Heights in a dirty cooler full of soda cans.
Witnesses told police at the time that they saw a man and a woman walking with a cooler, not far from where body was recovered, sources said.
The child — who was named Baby Hope by cops who paid for her funeral — died due to asphyxiation after neglect and sexual assault, police sources said.
Cops for the past 22 years have sent out fliers on the anniversary of the child’s death.