Baby Hope was tortured before she was killed, a law-enforcement source told The Post Sunday night.
Tragic 4-year-old Anjelica Castillo was at some point tied to a table and denied water in the family’s Queens apartment, according to a woman who told cops that, as a child, she witnessed the horrific act.
The woman said that she, too, had been tortured. It was not clear how.
Meanwhile, a police source said someone in the apartment told detectives of hearing a “strange’’ noise on the night that Anjelica went missing in July 1991.
Anjelica’s naked and bound body was found stuffed inside a cooler along the Henry Hudson Parkway in Manhattan.
Her cousin Conrado Juarez was arrested Saturday for the cold case-crime that cops refused to give up on.
They made the arrest after getting a tip from someone who overheard Anjelica’s sister talking about the little girl.
Meanwhile, her confessed killer “was only sorry that he got caught,” another source said.
“He was only sorry that we thought he f–king did it,” that source said. “That was the only remorse he felt — for himself.”
Still another source described the marathon interrogation that led Juarez, 52, to confess to smothering the child and disposing of her body with the help of his now-dead sister, Balvina Juarez.
“In the beginning, he was like, ‘It’s not me! It’s not me! I didn’t do it!’ ” that source said.
But after several hours of questioning, Juarez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, allegedly came clean about killing his tiny cousin in the Astoria apartment where they both lived with other relatives.
“His intent was to rape her, but it turned into a murder because she screamed,” the source said.
“Even a grown woman would scream under the circumstances.
“To cover up the scream, he used the pillow to suffocate her to keep her quiet.
“In his mind, he needed to kill her. Then it was like, ‘Holy s–t, I killed her,’ ” the source added.
Strangers touched by the death of the formerly unidentified child paid their respects Sunday at her grave site — where a piece of paper with her real name was taped to the “Baby Hope”-engraved headstone that cops bought in 1993.
Eddie Collazo, 52, of Worcester, Mass., touched the headstone at St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx and said, “I’m relieved they caught that madman who killed her.
“But what’s most important is that she has a name. Her name is Anjelica. It’s not Baby Hope anymore. God rest her soul.”
Anjelica’s mother, Margarita Castillo, who is also an illegal immigrant, was believed to be holed up at her apartment in Elmhurst Sunday.
She lives there with the four youngest of her 10 children — all adults — and the father of the last three.
“We nicknamed [one of her daughters] Maribella ‘Cinderella.’ [Castillo] always made her do all the chores, the dishes and the laundry,’’ said a neighbor, who asked not to be identified.
Building superintendent Jorge Gonzalez, 56, said Castillo had been renting her apartment for about 17 years and works as a baby sitter for neighborhood children.
Cops got the tip that finally led them to Castillo after news reports about the 22nd anniversary of Baby Hope’s death.
Detectives interviewed the mom in early August and used a ruse to get her to lick an envelope that was tested for DNA.
Interviews with her relatives then led to Juarez, a 5-foot-2 dishwasher at Trattoria Pesce Pasta in Greenwich Village.
NYPD Detective Robert Dewhurst identified Anjelica as Baby Hope and arrested Juarez on murder charges, Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona, Frank Rosario, Adam Janos,Kenneth Garger and C.J. Sullivan